Don’t rent loft apartments at summer time in Seattle

As the biggest city in the north west of the U.S., Seattle is a popular destination for visitors. In order to find out, how to save money when booking an apartment there, I conducted the following analysis.

Part I: In which season do prices in Seattle climax?

The first question I asked myself was whether there are price differences when searching for a flat on Airbnb at different times of the year.

To answer this question, I compared the average price of all listings month by month from January 2016 to January 2017. The results can be seen in the bar chart below.

While we observe a general upward trend throughout the year (Jan, 2016 compared to Jan 2017), it is clear to see that prices peak in the summer months of June, July and August.

I assume this is most likely due to the warmer weather at this time of year, making it more worthwhile for travellers to visit — what do you think?

Part II: Which areas of the city are most affected by seasonal price spikes?

Looking at the graph, I wondered if this is the case for all the different areas in Seattle or if there are differences due to there being more and less popular places to live in Seattle.

To investigate this, I calculated this effect for the different areas in Seattle. I defined the effect in this case as the highest average price of the area in the summer months divided by the average price in that area over the whole year.

While all places are more expensive in the summer months, the area most affected by the price spikes is Downtown Seattle with a 13.6% price increase compared to the average for the whole year.

This result is shown in the graph below for Downtown Seattle only.

Part III: Which attributes have the biggest impact on prices?

At this point we found out, that the season plays an important role for the prices of apartments in Seattle. Furthermore this effect is most prominent with apartments in Downtown Seattle.

However, for visitors and also apartment owners it would be interesting to know which attributes have the biggest impact on prices for living places in Seattle.

To examine this I conducted a linear regression with normalized variables to predict the prices of Airbnb apartments.

With an R² of 55% the variables with the biggest impact on high prices came out as

and the variables with the most negative impact on prices as the following

The attribute with the highest impact on the price in general appeared to be the location of the living space. The most valuable location for a living space is Downtown Seattle followed by Magnolia neighbourhood while the cheapest areas seem to be Northgate and Delridge.

For the property type, a living space is most valuable for visitors if it is a loft apartment whereas houses have a negative impact on the price.

Furthermore, the more bathrooms and bedrooms an apartment has, the more expensive it will be (what was to be expected).

Interestingly the fact that the host is a superhost appears to lead to a premium in price due to its positive coefficient.

Conclusion

Consequently, in order to save money one should look for an house apartment not hosted by a superhost in Northgate or Delridge in winter season and — avoid loft apartments at summer time in Downtown Seattle!

I’m sure the next time you’re planning a trip to Seattle, you’ll remember this blog post and consider the relevant aspects when looking for an apartment.

If you want to check out the code, feel free to do that following the link to the respective repository on GitHub.