San Francisco’s Airbnb market is shrinking overall, but the city’s remaining short-term rentals are becoming more concentrated in and around downtown, marking a notable shift from the pattern that defined much of the last decade. The largest share of Airbnb listings is now clustered in the city’s core, including downtown, Lower Nob Hill and the Tenderloin, rather than the Mission District, which had long held the top spot.
An analysis of city listings found that San Francisco had about 7,500 Airbnb listings in January 2026, though only around 4,500 of them, or about 60%, had been recently reviewed, meaning they had received at least one customer review in the previous year. Among those active listings, the downtown and Civic Center area accounted for nearly 10% of the city’s Airbnb supply, up from 5.4% in 2017. The Mission still had the second-highest number of listings at 338, but its share has fallen over that same period.
Other neighborhoods with relatively high shares of listings include South of Market, the Western Addition and the Outer Sunset. By contrast, Diamond Heights, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff have among the fewest listings. The Presidio stands apart because short-term rentals are banned there.
The broader shift reflects two changes happening at once. First, San Francisco has fewer short-term rentals than it did about a decade ago. Second, a larger share of the remaining listings appears to be handled by hosts with multiple properties, suggesting a growing role for management companies, timeshare operators and commercial-style hosts rather than one-off home sharers.
City officials have also seen changes in how these rentals are being used. San Francisco Planning has observed a decline in stays of less than 30 nights over the last decade, a trend that aligns with both local restrictions on short-term rentals and the broader contraction that followed the pandemic. At the same time, city officials have reported a more recent move toward intermediate-length stays ranging from 30 days to one year. Data cited in the source material shows those intermediate-length listings rose 600% between 2017 and 2019 and have mostly clustered in the Mission and Western Addition.
The increase in multi-listing hosts is especially notable in the city’s core. Over the last 10 years, the number of hosts with more than one listing nearly tripled in the downtown and Civic Center area. The Outer Sunset also saw that figure double since 2017. Meanwhile, the Mission, South of Market and Western Addition saw declines in the number of hosts managing multiple listings.
Some of that concentration may be tied to hotel and timeshare inventory rather than traditional home sharing. The source material identifies one host, based in Canada, as managing 61 recently reviewed San Francisco listings classified as serviced apartments. Those listings were connected to timeshare-style rooms in areas including downtown, Civic Center, the Financial District, Chinatown and Nob Hill. Because tourist hotels and timeshare hotels already pay the city’s transient occupancy tax, they are exempt from the short-term rental registration rules that apply to many other listings.
San Francisco’s hotel rules add another layer. Under the city’s Hotel Conversion Ordinance, certain residential hotels can rent rooms to tourists during the tourist season from May to September without going through the same short-term rental registration process. The rise of hotel inventory on booking platforms has also been influenced by the growing overlap between hotel distribution and short-term rental platforms.
The result is an Airbnb market that looks different from the one San Franciscans became familiar with during the platform’s earlier growth. Listings are more concentrated near transit, hotels and tourist destinations. The total number of short-term rentals has declined, but the remaining inventory appears increasingly shaped by larger operators and longer-stay offerings. For a city that helped give rise to Airbnb, the latest shift suggests the platform is becoming less neighborhood-scattered and more concentrated in the commercial heart of San Francisco.
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