The two-time defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs draw approximately 90,000 fans to Sanford Stadium for six or seven home games each fall, essentially covering a three-month period. It is creating an alternative market for short-term rentals. Real estate investors buy or build homes for fans, who pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for homes for weekend home games, and the impact is felt on local residents year-round. It’s having an impact. According to AirDNA, which tracks Airbnb and VRBO vacation rental performance data, there are currently 1,135 short-term rentals available in Athens, up from 865 in November 2022, and 88% of them are entire private homes. occupies .
Malcolm, who lives on Athens’ west side, runs a nonprofit called Farm to Neighborhoods and a food truck and catering company, Lacha’s Cuisine, on the city’s east side, not far from Sanford Stadium. “This area is a historically black area,” she said. “So when a football game is held, you start to see more non-Black people walking through the neighborhood to the liquor store for beer to put back on rent.”
Athens is no exception. Across the country, short-term rentals are destabilizing the housing market in small cities that rely on college sports to keep their economies humming. This is fueled by wealthy fans and investors who spend weeks outside universities converting single-family homes into de facto hotels. It is often left empty for the rest of the period.
“College athletics, especially college football, has gotten so big in this country, especially in the Southeast, that the phenomenon of short-term rentals has become so big,” said Adrian Boucher, director of the university’s DeVos Sports Business Management Program. “It’s causing this,” he said. of central Florida. “On the one hand it creates value, but on the other hand it definitely hurts people who have lived in and around the university for many years.”
Boucher pointed to similar market trends in southern college towns such as Auburn, Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Gainesville, Florida, and Oxford, Michigan, where football dominates the fall economy. Over the past year, the supply of short-term rentals has increased by 34 percent in Tuscaloosa (home of the University of Alabama), 33 percent in Columbia, Missouri (University of Missouri), and 11 percent in South Bend, Indiana. University of Notre Dame), according to AirDNA data. Usually bookings he peak in November.