Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Among 10 Priciest Airbnb Cities In The World

July 25, 2018 | Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are among the 10 most expensive cities in the world to rent an Airbnb apartment, a recent Bloomberg index said.

Bloomberg says this is, in part, due to “a combination of high hotel and apartment costs and strong tourism” in the Middle East. The region had five destinations in the top 15, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dubai, Riyadh, and Kuwait City.

According to Yoav Kerner, a statistics lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the expensive Airbnb listings in Israel “may have nothing to do with the high cost of housing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” Tel Aviv apartments make up at least three-quarters of the average person’s income, Kerner said after studying the Tel Aviv Airbnb market on behalf of a hoteliers group.

Kerner has estimated that Airbnb has pushed up overall Tel Aviv rent by about 10 percent. Short-term rents costs have gone up because Airbnb owners want a premium over what they could earn renting out their units for a full year.

Miami, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts took first and second spots on the list with Airbnb owners asking $205 and $195 a night respectively and Reykjavik, Iceland came in third at $194 a night. Tel Aviv came in 4th place, with owners asking $188 a night and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates city was in 5th place at $185. Los Angeles, California was in 6th place, asking $180, Amsterdam, Netherlands and San Francisco, California listed owners asking for $178 each.

Jerusalem was in 9th place with Airbnb owners asking $173. Sydney, Australia rounded out the top 10 also asking $173. Other Middle Eastern cities include Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 11th place and Kuwait City, Kuwait in 15th place.

Figures from Airbnb show a much lower rate with the average night in Tel Aviv costing $87 and the average night in Jerusalem only $82. Airbnb is said to use a different calculation method than Bloomberg, taking into account rates for the units rented, not the prices appearing in advertisements.

The Bloomberg index uses advertisements from over 120 cities worldwide.