Almost no one has bothered to register their short-term rental

The San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report Thursday night showing that the overwhelming majority of Airbnbhosts in the city have not bothered to register their short-term rental, and a significant minority of them are ignoring the city’s prohibition on renting out entire homes for months on end.

The numbers come a little over a year since laws went into effect that were supposed to give the city the power to lean on hosts not to let out-of-towners monopolize scarce housing stock.

The analyst's office says that the total of listings in the city jumped 54 percent between December 2014 and March of this year, coming to 9,448 citywide. The number of hosts increased from 4,815 to 7,046, showing a 46 percent spike. More than a tenth of all listings are in the Mission, with the next most popular neighborhoods being the Haight, the Castro, Russian Hill, and SoMa.

The problem, of course, is that if there are 7,046 people letting out on Airbnb in the city right now, the city’s Office of Short-Term Rentals should have about 7,046 registrations. Instead, they have 1,647.

For anyone who's not great at doing math in their head, that’s a lot less. It means that 76 percent of hosts have either been putting off registration for a really, really long time, or they just don’t care.