IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/v54w4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

New Insights into Rental Housing Markets across the United States: Web Scraping and Analyzing Craigslist Rental Listings

Author

Listed:
  • Boeing, Geoff

    (Northeastern University)

Abstract

Current sources of data on rental housing – such as the census or commercial databases that focus on large apartment complexes – do not reflect recent market activity or the full scope of the U.S. rental market. To address this gap, we collected, cleaned, analyzed, mapped, and visualized 11 million Craigslist rental housing listings. The data reveal fine-grained spatial and temporal patterns within and across metropolitan housing markets in the U.S. We find some metropolitan areas have only single-digit percentages of listings below fair market rent. Nontraditional sources of volunteered geographic information offer planners real-time, local-scale estimates of rent and housing characteristics currently lacking in alternative sources, such as census data.

Suggested Citation

  • Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "New Insights into Rental Housing Markets across the United States: Web Scraping and Analyzing Craigslist Rental Listings," SocArXiv v54w4, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:v54w4
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/v54w4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/58d54d2c594d90004aaf3061/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/v54w4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary, 2011. "Do landlords discriminate in the rental housing market? Evidence from an internet field experiment in US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2-3), pages 99-114, September.
    2. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael, 2004. "Is Housing Unaffordable? Why Isn't It More Affordable?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 191-214, Winter.
    3. Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2014. "Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided Markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 476-493, February.
    4. Robert Goodspeed, 2015. "Smart cities: moving beyond urban cybernetics to tackle wicked problems," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 8(1), pages 79-92.
    5. Kory Kroft & Devin G. Pope, 2014. "Does Online Search Crowd Out Traditional Search and Improve Matching Efficiency? Evidence from Craigslist," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(2), pages 259-303.
    6. Lisa Schweitzer, 2014. "Planning and Social Media: A Case Study of Public Transit and Stigma on Twitter," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(3), pages 218-238, July.
    7. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "Honolulu Rail Transit: International Lessons from Barcelona in Linking Urban Form, Design, and Transportation," SocArXiv mzsb2, Center for Open Science.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Danya Kim & Jangik Jin, 2019. "The Effect of Land Use on Housing Price and Rent: Empirical Evidence of Job Accessibility and Mixed Land Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Paul Waddell & Arezoo Besharati-Zadeh, 2020. "A Comparison of Statistical and Machine Learning Algorithms for Predicting Rents in the San Francisco Bay Area," Papers 2011.14924, arXiv.org.
    3. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Meunier, Baptiste & Pouget, Sylvain, 2023. "Web-scraping housing prices in real-time: The Covid-19 crisis in the UK," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(PB).
    4. Geoff Boeing, 2018. "Estimating local daytime population density from census and payroll data," Regional Studies, Regional Science, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 179-182, January.
    5. Geoff Boeing & Max Besbris & Ariela Schachter & John Kuk, 2021. "Housing Search in the Age of Big Data: Smarter Cities or the Same Old Blind Spots?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 112-126, January.
    6. Eduardo Pérez-Molina, 2022. "Exploring a multilevel approach with spatial effects to model housing price in San José, Costa Rica," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(3), pages 987-1004, March.
    7. Adu, Providence & Delmelle, Elizabeth C., 2022. "Spatial Variations in Exclusionary Criteria from Online Rental Advertisements," SocArXiv 8g4sv, Center for Open Science.
    8. Guillaume Chapelle & Jean Benoît Eyméoud, 2022. "Can big data increase our knowledge of local rental markets? A dataset on the rental sector in France," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-21, January.
    9. Geoff Boeing, 2020. "Online rental housing market representation and the digital reproduction of urban inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 449-468, March.
    10. Chris Hess & Arthur Acolin & Rebecca Walter & Ian Kennedy & Sarah Chasins & Kyle Crowder, 2021. "Searching for housing in the digital age: Neighborhood representation on internet rental housing platforms across space, platform, and metropolitan segregation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(8), pages 2012-2032, November.
    11. Boeing, Geoff & Wegmann, Jake & Jiao, Junfeng, 2020. "Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data," SocArXiv phgqt, Center for Open Science.
    12. Giuseppe Arbia & Vincenzo Nardelli, 2024. "Using Web-Data to Estimate Spatial Regression Models," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 47(2), pages 204-226, March.
    13. Julia Gabriele Harten & Annette M Kim & J Cressica Brazier, 2021. "Real and fake data in Shanghai’s informal rental housing market: Groundtruthing data scraped from the internet," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(9), pages 1831-1845, July.
    14. Alex Luscombe & Kevin Dick & Kevin Walby, 2022. "Algorithmic thinking in the public interest: navigating technical, legal, and ethical hurdles to web scraping in the social sciences," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1023-1044, June.
    15. Hu, Lirong & He, Shenjing & Luo, Yun & Su, Shiliang & Xin, Jing & Weng, Min, 2020. "A social-media-based approach to assessing the effectiveness of equitable housing policy in mitigating education accessibility induced social inequalities in Shanghai, China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vera Brenčič, 2016. "The impact of Craigslist’s entry on competing employment websites," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Victor M. Bennett & Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2015. "Cannibalization and option value effects of secondary markets: Evidence from the US concert industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(11), pages 1599-1614, November.
    3. Geoff Boeing, 2020. "Online rental housing market representation and the digital reproduction of urban inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 449-468, March.
    4. McGinnity, Frances & Russell, Helen & Privalko, Ivan & Enright, Shannen & O'Brien, Doireann, 2021. "Monitoring adequate housing in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT413, June.
    5. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 319-364, August.
    6. Chiara Farronato & Andrey Fradkin, 2018. "The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb," NBER Working Papers 24361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Maximilian Schäfer & Kevin Ducbao Tran, 2020. "Airbnb, Hotels, and Localized Competition," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1889, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Gao, Pengjie & Lee, Chang & Murphy, Dermot, 2020. "Financing dies in darkness? The impact of newspaper closures on public finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 445-467.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4edekc99or8n2bu86nu4ua8adl is not listed on IDEAS
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/26t617gatp86qree1dejcpchbr is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Heese, Jonas & Pérez-Cavazos, Gerardo & Peter, Caspar David, 2022. "When the local newspaper leaves town: The effects of local newspaper closures on corporate misconduct," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 445-463.
    12. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cage, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," SciencePo Working papers hal-03391880, HAL.
    13. Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2017. "Repositioning and Cost-Cutting: The Impact of Competition on Platform Strategies," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(2), pages 83-99, June.
    14. Bello Musa Zango & Sanni Mohammed Lekan & Mohammed Jibrin Katun, 2020. "Conventional Methods in Housing Market Analysis: A Review of Literature," Baltic Journal of Real Estate Economics and Construction Management, Sciendo, vol. 8(1), pages 227-241, January.
    15. Sarker, Rumana Islam & Kaplan, Sigal & Mailer, Markus & Timmermans, Harry J.P., 2019. "Applying affective event theory to explain transit users’ reactions to service disruptions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 593-605.
    16. Adams, Camilla & Meer, Jonathan & Sloan, CarlyWill, 2022. "The minimum wage and search effort," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    17. Button, Patrick & Walker, Brigham, 2020. "Employment discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    18. Morgan Raux, 2019. "Looking for the "Best and Brightest": Hiring difficulties and high-skilled foreign workers," Working Papers halshs-02364921, HAL.
    19. Ingrid Gould Ellen & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "Race and the City," Working Papers 2018-022, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    20. Diaz-Serrano, Luis & Raya, Josep M., 2014. "Mortgages, immigrants and discrimination: An analysis of the interest rates in Spain," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 22-32.
    21. Milena Djourelova & Ruben Durante & Gregory J. Martin, 2021. "The Impact of Online Competition on Local Newspapers: Evidence from the Introduction of Craigslist," CESifo Working Paper Series 9090, CESifo.
    22. Koster, Hans R.A. & van Ommeren, Jos & Volkhausen, Nicolas, 2021. "Short-term rentals and the housing market: Quasi-experimental evidence from Airbnb in Los Angeles," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:v54w4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.