When will Airbnb IPO? Airbnb IPOed in 2020 and immediately rose to over a $100 billion market cap! This is astonishing since they raised $1 billion from Silverlake Partners in March 2020 at the pandemic low at a $18 billion valuation. Travel is back!
This article was written on June 19, 2019, before Airbnb went IPO. But here are some thoughts on Airbnb and what it may do to the SF Bay Area economy and the hospitality industry, which I'm a big fan of right now.
The Airbnb IPO
I think Airbnb will be the most anticipated IPO of the past 10 years. Unlike Uber, it doesn’t have a lot of baggage. We’ll get another 3,000+ liquid millionaires and multi-millionaires, and another 5,000+ hundrethousandaires, and of course several billionaires.
Good for Bay Area housing if you are long! Not so good if you are short by renting. You want to buy real estate in areas like Golden Gate Heights, where you can get panoramanic ocean view single family homes.
It’s the liquidity events that are most important for the Bay Area housing market and economy to grow, because most employees who work at tech startups are UNDERPAID versus market due to their equity.
Then again, some Airbnb employees brag to the world they earn $250,000 total compensation packages in their mid-20s. So maybe they aren’t so underpaid after all.
When the pending IPO of Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, Palantir, and many more companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's hard to see the real estate market cooling off too much. Population growth will continue to be pretty stronger, and unfortunately so will congestion in the Bay Area.
The Airbnb IPO is a watershed moment for the Bay Area. It has helped boost the SF real estate market as well. I'd be a buyer of San Francisco real estate all day long. People are way richer post pandemic and post Airbnb IPO.
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About the Author:
Sam began investing his own money ever since he opened an online brokerage account in 1995. Sam loved investing so much that he decided to make a career out of investing by spending the next 13 years after college working at two of the leading financial service firms in the world. During this time, Sam received his MBA from UC Berkeley with a focus on finance and real estate. He also became Series 7 and Series 63 registered. In 2012, Sam was able to retire at the age of 34 largely due to his investments that now generate roughly $200,000 a year in passive income. He spends time playing tennis, hanging out with family, consulting for leading fintech companies and writing online to help others achieve financial freedom.
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