Turns out claims Airbnb was taking houses out of the rental market were right

https://twitter.com/whimsley/status/1241425945686429699

by doener • 6 years ago

241 185 6 years ago

jgwil22• 6 years ago

Was this ever seriously debated? As far as I know the only question ever was the size of the effect, not whether there was any effect at all.

claudeganon3• 6 years ago

Go read any of the old HN threads on AirBNB. Saying this had these kind of effects was decried as “hotel industry propaganda.”

omnimus3• 6 years ago

I've never seen "hotel industry propaganda" but the effects on market were debated and often very doubted.

Now it seems there is evidence.

smabie4• 6 years ago

I mean unless the houses were going to sit empty otherwise, then of course there would be an affect. Not really sure what the article is trying to say.

umeshunni2• 6 years ago

It's not an article. It's a tweet by some rando who just learned about demand and supply.

cardiffspaceman• 6 years ago

It's tweets about a report, not just some data-free rant.

https://www.daft.ie/blog/the-covid-19-crisis-is-already-affe...

joejohnson• 6 years ago

Good to see hard data supporting this, but this was always obviously the case. Only reason there was even a conversation was because Airbnb lobbied and placed ads in specific markets to mislead renters about their economic impact.

hocuspocus3• 6 years ago

I honestly don't understand why European cities don't go nuclear against AirBnB. There's so much money to be made in fines and instant political approval from virtually every tenant.

smabie4• 6 years ago

I mean, just stay one day at the airbnb and then negotiate with the landlord for a month or two. I've done this multiple times and gotten very good prices. So It's not like airbnb properties are deadweight, they can (and do) get converted to medium or long-term rentals all the time.

hocuspocus3• 6 years ago

If you're a resident looking for a proper long-term lease, this is just not how things work.

umeshunni2• 6 years ago

Most European cities are heavily dependent on tourism and tourism directly and indirectly contributes >5% of GDP of many countries[1]

A large part of the growth in tourism over the last 15 years can be attributed to cheap flights and cheap housing, via Airbnb and the likes (I.e hotels have not added the number of rooms needed to support this tourism boom).

Given the tepid economic growth in the Euro-zone over that period, I doubt they want to kill the golden goose.

[1] https://tcdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/tnt.tot.contrib.g...

hocuspocus3• 6 years ago

When I lived in Berlin, there were 5 apartments in my building on AirBnB, owned by a single landlord. Within 2 minutes of my place there were 3 hotels and 2 serviced apartments complexes. Maybe some cities lack hotel rooms, but in most cases it's just taking advantage of tourists trying to save a couple bucks.

dahauns• 6 years ago

A large part of the growth in tourism over the last 15 years can be attributed to cheap flights and cheap housing, via Airbnb and the likes (I.e hotels have not added the number of rooms needed to support this tourism boom).

Quite a bold claim, care to back that up?

DeonPenny4• 6 years ago

Because renters vote, and create an unfair environment for those people would make them go nuclear not even including cleaving into the tourist dollars of European cities which thrive on luxury goods by a lot. Making people in the tourist industry unhappy.

And for what so poor renters who might not go out and vote for said issues when push comes to shove.

quotemstr4• 6 years ago

If Airbnb operators bid higher than long-term renters, why shouldn't they get the apartments? This animus against Airbnb seems irrational to me. Property should go to its most productive use, and the most productive use is the one for which someone is willing to pay the most money.

harimau7772• 6 years ago

I don't think that how much someone is willing to pay is a good way to measure what something's most productive use is. For one thing, it fails to account for the degree to which people have differences in what they are able to pay.

quotemstr4• 6 years ago

We use prices to ration access to scarce resources. What's the alternative? A command economy. Tons of historical experiments show that it doesn't work. And why shouldn't ability to pay affect the ability to access resources? What would be the point of money otherwise?

How do you know that the most productive user a resource is something other than the highest bidder? On what basis can you make that determination? Prices are universal.

jacquesm4• 6 years ago

Because people being born in some place need somewhere to live without being displaced by hordes of locusts looking to see the sights.

quotemstr4• 6 years ago

You can purchase or inherit property. Nobody forces you to turn that property into an Airbnb. You have no particular right to some other property, one to which you have no ownership claim, in the city in which you happen to be born. That's not how property works.

If you think property is too expensive in your city, consider building more of it instead of imposing arbitrary restrictions on demand.

DoreenMichele8• 6 years ago

We have lots of policies with adverse incentives and terrible outcomes. We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free because homeless individuals wind up a lot sicker, etc.

It's not sufficient to show that this makes more money for the owner. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it costs the rest of the world too much, no, it isn't the highest and best use by any stretch of the imagination.

Edit:

See for example this hospital decided to just house a few people to lower its expenses:

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-n...

Please note that I am not actually for "housing first models" or free housing. I'm for market-based housing that makes sense. It's just a nutshell description of the problem space to note that just giving people housing can be cheaper than leaving them to fend for themselves.

Dylan168072• 6 years ago

So just to counteract the dead account arguing with you:

"The original study that generated so much headlines in the press said this was true for _temporarily_ homeless -- it would, in fact, be exorbitantly expensive to house _all_ homeless people."

Nonsense. Over 80% of homeless people on a given night are temporarily homeless. There's less than a hundred thousand chronic homeless in the entire country. $100 a week would be enough funding for a hotel, but let's drill in the point by doing the math for $200 a week. 90 thousand homeless * $200 * 52 / 320 million people. Final cost: $3 per capita per year to house every single chronically homeless person.

And that's not even getting into the strawman they made about forcing landlords to do anything.

nikanj2• 6 years ago

I agree with you, with the massive caveat that we should also stop with the zoning and permitting shenanigans and let supply rise to meet the demand. Artificially scarce supply + bid-based pricing makes for horrible times for the average tenant.

II2II• 6 years ago

There are reasons other than zoning affecting supply. Regulations exist for a reason. While some of those reasons are of debatable merit, some are good.

You probably don't want to place housing in an industrial area. There are environmental implications that can affect public health. Likewise, you probably don't want to place a ten story apartment block in a neighborhood filled with single family housing since it is going to interfere with other property owners enjoyment of their own land.

Yet there is more than zoning to consider. Building codes raise the cost of construction, and ultimately cost of housing. Historically, parts of cities have been lost to flames because of how building were constructed (among other reasons).

Now I am not saying that all of the regulations are good. On the contrary, I believe that they are too restrictive to meet housing needs. On the other hand, you will always have someone calling shenanigans based upon the philosophy behind those regulations and how the community views that philosophy.

jrd259• 6 years ago

Why should property go to the most (fiscally) productive use? Is this simply an axiom? I assert that it has bad consequences. In my city (Toronto) the tax rate is set on the assumption that land is put the "most productive use". This forces out non-profits, artists, theatres, dancers and in general everything that makes a city worth living in in favour of chain restaurants and condos.

quotemstr4• 6 years ago

How do you know those artists and theaters are better than the restaurants and condos? Dollars reveal true preferences, and it appears that people don't actually prefer artists, theaters, and dancers like you'd prefer. Who are you to override the preferences of the public?

tempsy• 6 years ago

It always bothered me how Airbnb never addressed its impact on the residential housing market. Between the safety issues, Covid, stories on scams, and the greater awareness around its impact on housing I hope local governments really start regulating them more.

jacquesm4• 6 years ago

Did anybody even doubt this? In cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Berlin this was blatantly obvious.

acdha• 6 years ago

There are plenty of people who have financial incentives to doubt it since it’s more profitable. Any time some city tries to restrict it you’ll reliably see people dismissing it as a minor non-issue.

jacquesm4• 6 years ago

"And nobody was really poor. At least, nobody worth speaking of".

ahupp• 6 years ago

Note that 64% of new listings is very different than 64% of all properties. e.g, last I looked 1.5% of SF properties were on AirBnB (down from 3% before the recent regulations), though unclear what fraction were available for rent full-time. So at least in SF I don't think removing AirBnB would really change supply in a meaningful way.

as-j2• 6 years ago

It would make a big difference to me. :) But it would not change supply.

I have an airbnb off my garage. It's a granny flat, a bed, a small bathroom and a kitchenette. A sink, but just a hot plate a fridge and no oven. It's not somewhere you'd want to live for a long time, in my opinion. But it's a great place to crash for a few days, have a cold breakfast, some oatmeal, reheat left overs, etc.

There's people like me who it helps live in SF and offset property taxes, price of the house, etc. Bad actors/bad markets/etc certainly do exist, but like all things it's complicated.

claudeganon3• 6 years ago

It’s not really though. SF has a housing crisis. We would all be better off if an unhoused person was living there or someone with lower paid but necessary job (e.g. caretaker at a nursing home).

Making money off people on vacations is worse than providing stable housing for people in the city.

djannzjkzxn3• 6 years ago

If we restricted the manufacturing of cars, soon there would be articles about how car rental services are taking cars out of the car market.

burkaman• 6 years ago

Yes? What's your point?

lend0002• 6 years ago

Instead of worrying about how people choose to rent their properties, they should instead look to the source of high rental prices, which is bad zoning laws and insufficient total units.

Meanwhile Airbnb creates a level of convenience and affordability that makes travel accessible to the masses. I'm sure the software engineers down-voting wouldn't be significantly affected if Airbnb was forced out of operation. Just another version of NIMBYism.

djannzjkzxn3• 6 years ago

The cause of high housing prices are low supply and high demand. Housing supply is growing at a slower rate than demand. There are two ways to solve this:

1) build a ton of housing to catch up with demand

2) shrink your local economy to decrease demand

If a lawmaker isn’t working on one of these two options, they do not actually support a platform of low housing prices.

Airbnb is only a small slice of housing demand. It’s an ugly slice, which makes the company a convenient punching bag for politicians who want to act like they are trying to make housing affordable. But the economy in high-demand cities will keep growing regardless of whether you kill Airbnb.

lykr0n• 6 years ago

Ok? Doesn't make it right.

And your example is incorrect. You can buy or lease a car just as you can with a house/apartment.

sk5t• 6 years ago

Cars are not supply-limited.

jdminhbg• 6 years ago

That's the point.

secondbreakfast2• 6 years ago

Yes I like that visualization.

One consequence of Uber is more cars on the road.

If only one consequence of Airbnb could be YIMBY...

notRobot• 6 years ago

One consequence of Uber is more cars on the road.

How does this work out? I know so many people who just take cabs now and haven't purchased a car in a long time because of how easy Uber has made cabs and ride-sharing. Surely this means a lesser number of cars on the road?

gamblor9564• 6 years ago

Car rental companies purchase large numbers of cars each year (look up "fleet cars"). They are generally automakers' biggest, best, and most reliable customers.

If you restricted car rental services from buying cars, you might very well cause the collapse of the automobile industry.

In contrast, killing AirBnB does not negatively effect the housing market, because people still need places to live. AirBnB generally increases the cost of housing in every housing market in which it operates because it reduces the number of housing units available. (Example: once LA and Santa Monica cracked down on AirBnB and began regulating short-term pseudo-hotel stays, rents plateaued and began dropping, benefiting thousands of people in the LA area. The only people harmed were the investors who bought multiple residential properties and illegally converted them to unregistered hotels.)

leereeves• 6 years ago

Why kill Airbnb instead of simply building more housing?

Cities should allow enough housing to meet demand for both short term and long term rentals.

dehrmann• 6 years ago

This doesn't prove it at all. There's an increase in available hotel rooms, too.

That doesn't mean there aren't Airbnbs that would otherwise be longer-term rentals. Of course there are, the logic is just bad. This also doesn't necessarily mean rentals used for Airbnbs are inherently "bad," either. It's complicated.

Jommi• 6 years ago

Yeah, lots of people have been forced to prematurely leave to go back to their home country.

cletus3• 6 years ago

Can we change the submitted post? I didn't see any sources quoted on that Tweet, just an animation. Side note: please stop submitting or otherwise citing "Twitter threads". They're terrible.

But there does seem to be some basis for this eg [1] [2]. And I can believe it.

I've long since held the opinion that Airbnb is a cancer on society. While Uber allows you to get value from a vehicle you may already own (at the cost of wear and tear, mind you) and there are many, particularly those in the US, who seem to hold this view that "it's my home, I can do what I want with it", the reality is that neighbours of that Airbnb bear the externalities and the cost of your listing and it's not easy for most people to up and move.

Another way of putting this is that it is a tragedy of the commons as Airbnb "hosts" extract value from a community that bears the cost with little choice in the matter.

This lazy (and typically selfish) twisted version of "free market" thinking quickly erodes when, for example, I propose using my house that's next to yours as a tannery or a toxic waste storage site.

My only complaint about jurisdictions trying to crack down on this is that their efforts have been too slow and anaemic. NYC is plagued with what are essentially illegal hotels. There are a reason that hotels exist in the current form and place. It's for the safety of guests (eg compliance with fire codes) and the benefit of residents (ie zoning).

[1] https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/homes-for-...

[2] https://www.balls.ie/the-rewind-news/something-interesting-h...

secondbreakfast2• 6 years ago

There are negative externalities to Uber too, such as Traffic and pollution.

koolba2• 6 years ago

That’s not so clear cut. The alternative to Uber is not just staying home or riding a bike, at times it’s driving your own car and circling for 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot.

JMTQp8lwXL2• 6 years ago

Free markets are a good thing. We can see the prevention of a truly free market through onerous zoning policies that prevent new housing starts in high-demand areas. Preventing people from building, or hosting short-term housing, is all impedance on free markets and their distortionary effects are worse than a VRBO guest that forgets to move the trash can to the end of the driveway. To counter your point, it's equally possible can have a long-term terrible neighbor -- maybe they are loud, or don't maintain their property and it's lowering your property value, and there isn't much you can do about it.

amelius• 6 years ago

Free markets are a good thing.

Out of curiosity, what do you think of net neutrality?

heavyset_go• 6 years ago

Free markets are a good thing.

And yet a free market has never existed.

bradleyjg2• 6 years ago

NYC is plagued with what are essentially illegal hotels.

There’s a reason my building is currently half full, and it isn’t because everyone is out of town. If there’s any silver lining to this whole terrible pandemic maybe all the crooked rent-to-airbnb people will go bankrupt.

golergka2• 6 years ago

the reality is that neighbours of that Airbnb bear the externalities

What toxic waste, exactly, do Airbnb listing dump on their neighbours?

Professional Airbnb investors buy up whole properties, renovate them, run them as a hotel with regular cleaning and services provided. Their shot-term residents use the same amout of public transit, water and utilities services as long-term renters next door.

The only real inconvenience is that it's driving property prices up - but that's not an externality. That's just a reality of a market where some type of customers agree to pay a higher price for something, and it's price goes up for everybody. I don't see any reason why market should be artificially tilted towards long-term renters as opposed to short-term.

kelnos2• 6 years ago

The issue is that of trust; if you have a full-time neighbor (renting or owning), you generally trust that they will respect the building/neighborhood, and over time will grow to trust them as people. They're more accountable. When you have random people flowing in and out every few days, that trust is not there. For example, Airbnb guests won't go out of their way to be sure to honor quiet hours... why bother if they're just there for a few days and don't have to deal with the neighbors on an ongoing basis?

I absolutely love using Airbnb and prefer it over hotels in nearly every place I visit, but I won't pretend it's somehow good for the neighborhood or neighbors.

bradleyjg2• 6 years ago

Professional Airbnb investors buy up whole properties

Not in NYC. Here they violate both the law and leases/condo rules to Airbnb units they bought or rented under false pretenses. Airbnb knows this and doesn’t care. It’s not about the free market, it’s just another swindle.

ourlordcaffeine• 6 years ago

run them as a hotel

Unlicensed hotels, mind you.

What toxic waste, exactly, do Airbnb listing dump on their neighbours?

There was a massive issue in my town where students would rent airbnbs and party, keeping neighbors up when they had to go to work the next day. Police were having to attend to more and more incidents.

mytherin• 6 years ago

Sorry but you are dead wrong. AirBnBs have a significant negative effect on the neighborhood, especially in highly touristic cities. People renting AirBnBs are much likely to be louder and less respecting than long-term neighbors because they don't have any incentive to care - they are just staying there short term and then leaving again. Making too much noise at night is illegal, but it is much harder to enforce that against tourists that spent a few nights somewhere than against a long-term resident of their own house.

In Amsterdam we saw this a lot, with "party tourists" staying in AirBnBs, getting home at 4 AM and then shouting and making noise constantly, effectively ruining the lives of the next-door neighbors. This is a huge problem, especially since Amsterdam has many old houses that do not block much noise. Imagine waking up three times per week at 4AM because your neighbors' AirBnB guests are shouting after coming home drunk/drugged from a party again. I bet you would not be very happy either.

Unlike in the US, though, thankfully the government has cracked down very hard on AirBnBs. It is now illegal to rent out your house/apartment on AirBnB for more than 30 days a year, and people renting our their apartments on AirBnB must pay high tourism taxes to pay for externalities. It is also only allowed to rent out your primary residence, you cannot rent out a second apartment or house. People trying to circumvent these laws are cracked down on hard and have to pay extremely high fines (more than €10K). Home owner's associations and rental contracts now also typically have clauses that explicitly forbid AirBnBs. Still, many people want to introduce more rules or even ban AirBnB entirely.

14• 6 years ago

I am unsure what to think about your free market comment. I think you should be able to do what you want in your own home as long as it is within the bylaws and zoning laws of your area. My property was bought as agricultural zoning. It means I can have pigs, chickens, cows, all sorts of things residential properties can not do. My neighbor is residential. I bought my property agricultural so I could potentially do all those things. When my neighbor bought his property if he was informed he would look at the zoning in the neighborhood and factor that into his purchase just like anyone else would. If he doesn't want a pig farm in his neighborhood he should not move next to an agricultural property because that is always a possibility. If you are zoned for a tannery why shouldn't you be able to do it they have to go somewhere?

jbay808• 6 years ago

I think the issue comes up when someone proposes a zoning bylaw that prohibits AirBnB and other short term rentals. Objections to this might hinge on the "it's my property, I should be able to do what I want" thinking.

cletus3• 6 years ago

The issue is how pro-Airbnb people rationalize it with trivially debunked arguments about "free markets" and "it's my house, I can do what I want".

Your case is different. Zoning allows agricultural where you are. Really no one has any cause to complain about that.

As an aside, people do complain about this sort of thing. For example, people will move to where an airport is proposed to be (eg Badgerys Creek, Sydney) or where an existing airport is (eg LAX) and then complain about the potential or actual noise to get restrictions on flights (or on building it at all). I don't have any time for these shenanigans.

clairity2• 6 years ago

"This lazy (and typically selfish) twisted version of "free market" thinking quickly erodes when, for example, I propose using my house that's next to yours as a tannery or a toxic waste storage site."

i'm down for a good "free market" critique, but this veers hyperbolically into nimbyism. everyone agrees that a tannery or toxic waste dump is inappropriate near residences. but having people stay, eat, shower, and sleep in a home is literally what houses are designed for. if you don't own the home, you don't get to choose who stays there (obviously if the renters are breaking the law, that's a problem, and you can report them to the police).

i'm also super-sympathetic to the need for (affordable) housing in most cities, but banning airbnb has a relatively negligible effect on that ginormous problem.

cletus3• 6 years ago

everyone agrees that a tannery or toxic waste dump is inappropriate near residences

I think you'll find that's trivially untrue. It's fair to say the vast majority of people agree or even almost everyone. But to find one counterexample? I bet I could do that.

My point here is that the argument of "it's my home I can do what I want" is fundamentally flawed and all it takes is a trivial extreme case to debunk it. So when you move on to what's allowed and what isn't, what's good for the community, what isn't and so on, which is essentially what zoning is.

but having people stay, eat, shower, and sleep in a home is literally what houses are designed for

So I'm supportive of people hosting other people in their homes, which, incidentally, NYC allows (as one example). Why? Because then the host is invested in that community and can police bad behaviour. When hosts aren't present, they have no such incentive.

In years passed, having long and short term boarders was commonplace. Many cities in the post-WWII era however essentially dismantled boarding houses and SROs (which were once where a significant number of people lived) and in some cases outlawed multi-family residences.

There are extreme examples of what can happen in an Airbnb [1] [2] [3]. There are countless stories of guests being stranded when hosts canceled at the last minute and scams such as bait-and-switch.

[1] https://10daily.com.au/shows/10-news-first/a190520wykmx/poli...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-03/airbnb-bans-party-hou...

[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7818881/Airbnb-host...

poulsbohemian5• 6 years ago

I live in a place with a lot of tourists and second homes. AirBnB was beginning to reduce the lack of supply in the local hotel market, which caused the hotels to petition the city council to put an end to non-owner occupied short-term housing. This was done under the guise of improving the (admittedly) tight rental market.

The problem is, the following things happened as a result:

-- Existing short-term rental properties were grandfathered, which artificially has made those properties more valuable.

-- A lot of properties that might have previously been purchased and renovated by investors sit idle because the investors can't turn them into short-term rentals.

-- We have a lot of cottages / really small properties here, that are good short-term rentals but not great regular rentals. so basically a lot of garbage rentals came available that did nothing to actually help our rental market.

-- The hotels knew they now had a more captive market than previously.

So while I appreciate the sentiments of those who wanted to end short-terms rentals in the name of affordable housing, at least in our local market it has not been a good thing.

llukas• 6 years ago

Good for the owners to be precise.

gamblor9564• 6 years ago

* A lot of properties that might have previously been purchased and renovated by investors sit idle because the investors can't turn them into short-term rentals.*

This is a good thing. Because it means that the properties can be occupied by people actually living there.

We have a lot of cottages / really small properties here, that are good short-term rentals but not great regular rentals. so basically a lot of garbage rentals came available that did nothing to actually help our rental market.

Cottages are great rentals. They may not fit your needs, but in large cities, there will definitely be thousands or hundreds of people for who cottages are the perfect fit.

Most of what you describe is actually good for the rental market for the people actually living and working in the community.

The hotels knew they now had a more captive market than previously.

Hotels cannot "capture" the market. They are dependent on tourists coming in to the town, and that means that other parts of the town must provide a reason to visit. Right now, hotels are bleeding money.

poulsbohemian5• 6 years ago

You took my comments about my local market and twisted them to fit your argument about other markets. I assure you, the reduction in short-term rentals in my local market has not had the expected outcome. Source: I am both a landlord and a real estate agent in my local market. Likewise, look up the term “regulatory capture” if you want to understand what the hotels did here. Making a corona virus argument at this moment in time does not justify the actions taken by those hotels and city council 18 months ago.

kortilla2• 6 years ago

Hotels cannot "capture" the market.

This happens all of the time. They frequently lobby cities to push out other short term rental options that they have difficulty competing with, which leads to regulatory capture.

ferzul• 6 years ago

solution: a recently renoed house can be airbnb'ed, but after two years it has to be rented?

capableweb2• 6 years ago

On the other hand, Barcelona has suffered from tourism for a long time. Barceloneta (neighborhood right next to the beach) is a famous example of this where families who lived there for a very long time been driven out of their neighborhood, solely because of AirBnb and their like. Hotels were already regulated but when AirBnb appeared, regular folks started kicking people by raising the rents, then converting it to short-term rentals.

So, while AirBnb is both good and bad, I prefer to value native peoples ability to live in their places, rather than helping the rental market, that was just already stretched when AirBnb arrived.

kortilla2• 6 years ago

So what’s the criteria for getting to live by the beach then? Is “I was here for a long time but didn’t want to buy anything” a valid reason?

ipodopt• 6 years ago

I get the sense that a better solution would be to make home ownership as simple as renting. A few ideas:

- One page contract

- Ban loans for private home ownership (or socialize them but you would have to do that in a a very particular manner)

- No property taxes for up to two homes

willio58• 6 years ago

I think the first idea alone would be highly beneficial. If someone could read one page and actually understand what they are getting into.

Maybe an additional required indicator on that page of “is purchasing this home a good financial decision for the purchaser given their income” on a scale from 0-10.

Just a month ago I saw a coworker get screwed financially on a home purchase. And now with a recession knocking on the door, oof.

poulsbohemian5• 6 years ago

I am genuinely curious to understand what you mean by “make home ownership as simple as renting” as I can see both ways that it is, and I can see ways that it is far more complex with good reasons, so I’m curious to understand your perspective here. I’m also curious your reasoning for banning loans for private home ownership and how you would make up the difference in services in the absence of property tax revenue (as in my area, property taxes pretty much go directly to schools, police, and fire).

rsynnott• 6 years ago

An important caveat here is that it’s from a low base; Dublin has a massive property crisis and there are typically very few rentals on the market.

seisvelas4• 6 years ago

Good. Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb. It's the only place I can find housing that doesn't do that BS.

That's here in Merida, at least. I wish the rental market would crumble. It's absurdly difficult for a normal person to rent a decent dwelling. The hostel I rent at is full of people in a similar situation. The more conventional rentals get replaced with airbnb's that allow monthly stays, the better.

The supposed legal protections of conventional renting don't exist, and airbnb is actually a better enforcer of agreements than my government.

koolba2• 6 years ago

Good. Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb. It's the only place I can find housing that doesn't do that BS.

Security deposits and upfront rent address the problem of deadbeat tenants who may destroy the property or simply not pay the rent. It’s skin in the game to show you’re responsible.

seisvelas4• 6 years ago

Upfront rent is totally fine, Airbnb itself charges upfront. But 3 upfront rents? Ive never gotten a deposit or the extra rent back at the end. Airbnb isnt a real solution but i dont think landlords ever were either

fsdfagrwetwerwt• 6 years ago

I'm sympathetic to your plight. That's a shitty situation to be in. But AirBnB is not the answer - short term rentals cost more, long term, than a traditional rental unit. You're paying a premium to not be locked into a contract.

I'm sorry to hear that your government is not protecting tenants rights. In other parts of the world, you do have more rights as a long term tenant than as an AirBnB user. And AirBnB's enforcement of their own policies is a joke, considering all the scams and fraud people get away with on the platform.

In other words, if AirBnB is somehow preferable to renting... you've got bigger problems to worry about.

seisvelas4• 6 years ago

I appreciate your balanced take on this - but i disagree. Airbnbs discounts for long stays make it pretty competitive here. I pay 3500 pesos a month for a room. That includes power, internet, Netflix, toilet paper, all kinds of other amenities.

It's not ideal, but the barrier to entry is way lower for a premium that is not really high imo.

Out of curiosity, where are you from?

culturestate• 6 years ago

Rentals charge 2 months rent and a deposit. The only reason I can afford housing is because of airbnb

There are some interesting models around the world for alleviating this specific burden that don't involve corporations being everyone's landlord.

My favorite is one I learned about relatively recently: rental deposit guarantees[1] in Switzerland. The renter pays a small premium to e.g. Swiss Post, which will issue a certificate guaranteeing the amount of the deposit. The landlord accepts that certificate in lieu of cash.

1. https://www.post.ch/en/locations/rental-deposit-guarantee

ghouse• 6 years ago

Firsthand experience: My family was evicted from a two unit home in SF. We lived in one unit, the owner in the other unit. One unit is now listed on Airbnb.

rahimnathwani• 6 years ago

IANAL.

What grounds did the landlord use to evict you? How long between you guys leaving and the Airbnb business starting.

Did you receive any and all relocation payments required by law, and has the landlord continued to file the required annual paperwork with SFRB?

If the eviction reason was either 'owner move-in' or 'relative move-in' then, if the landlord subsequently decided to rent out the unit again with the next few years, they are required by law to first offer the unit to you at the original rent. If you decline, they can rent to someone else, but again only at the original rent (plus the city-mandated max annual increase %). (And, no, the landlord can't get around this by airbnb'ing the other unit, and moving in to your unit.)

I'm less familiar with Ellis Act evictions, but my understanding is that these also prevent the landlord from re-renting the property for a significant period of time.

wolco• 6 years ago

Anyone think Airbnb will take a hit after people become more concerned with covid? Creating a less travel friendly society and if they have to travel for business they will demand a properly cleaned hotel room?

jzl• 6 years ago

Take a hit after? Heck, let's talk about right this second. It's already happening: https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-racks-up-hundreds-of-mil...

Paywall, but even just the headline and first paragraph tell you what you need to know.

And yeah, I don't see how this doesn't completely decimate their business model. The likely coming worldwide recession will see far less spending on travel, not even counting residual behavioral changes re: covid as you mention.

UPDATE: Non-paywalled article: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/airbnb-mulls-cash-infusion-in...

blackrock4• 6 years ago

I’m rather torn about the Airbnb model.

One, hotels charge way too much money. When a hotel room costs $300 to $500 per night, then this will quickly burn your travel budget.

Two, Airbnb hosts are often, rather dishonest with their listings.

But, Airbnb is the only way to rent someone’s house in a distant location, where your family and extended family can stay together to get away. It’s impossible to do this with a hotel, and very expensive too.

Initially, some people got enterprising, and rented out their homes to help pay their mortgages. And they charged a modest fee for it. For a while, this seemed ok, as you were helping out someone to pay off their expensive mortgage. Like, Yeah! Stick it to the rich bankers, and all the jackasses that contribute to expensive housing.

But then, soon others, turned it into a hotel operation, where investors would team up to buy houses and apartments, only to rent it out on Airbnb. And when this happened, everyone else started doing it, and so the initial Airbnb business model was no longer socially or morally acceptable.

You and I, as an individual, cannot compete against a team of 5 investors that buys the property outright. Our individual goal, is to put down roots, build a family, and contribute to the community so our children can have a stable place to live.

Their goal, is to make a profit, and later flip the house for an even larger profit.

For better or worse, maybe this coronavirus will destroy the Airbnb business model. Its initial thesis, is no longer socially acceptable.

rahilb• 6 years ago

Before AirBnB, you just had BnBs. In England at least they were often farmhouses, and the owner literally makes you breakfast if you were staying in their main house (this was a large part of it). I’m not sure what if any regulation applies if you are a BnB like that. In fact, it’s such a part of British culture, there is a game show where 5 BnB owners stay at each other’s places and see who is ranked best. The show airs every week. AirBNB are parasites.

pas2• 6 years ago

It's not AirBnB. It's again society kicking down. Many more people now travel and use AirBnB, because it made travel cheaper. The downside is that housing got even more complicated.

However, building new supply is very much demand driven. And AirBnB pushed up demand, which lead to more units built. (Probably some hotels were not built, etc.)

This "parasite" thinking is just impotent rage. The real problem is the lack of housing supply. City dwellers are rather resistant to change. Development is noisy, draws more traffic, casts a shadow, etc. Yet most of them are also renters.

It's the classic participation asymmetry. The vocal minority trumps the silent majority.

torgian• 6 years ago

I’ve always stayed at Airbnb’s for my short term stays, simply because they were cheaper than hotels.

Hotels cost so much for a place that doesn’t even have a hot plate.

PeterStuer• 6 years ago

If anything good comes of this crisis I hope it is the dismissal of the 'gig' economy's nefarious cancerous business-models that rely on regulation dodging, negative externality dumping and worker exploitation.

If we have to reboot the economy, let's get rid of the vilest anarcho-capitalist and environmental destructive cruft we have allowed to fester over the years.

ornornor• 6 years ago

To be fair, only Airbnb and Airbnb landlords were thinking that Airbnb didn’t hurt the local rental market. The rest of us knew.

DoreenMichele8• 6 years ago

To be fair, it started out more like paid couch surfing and then pivoted. The original idea was sharing your home part-time, not dedicating a private residence to short term rental use, which is what it has mostly become.

This is probably not where the founders really meant for it to go.

omnimus3• 6 years ago

Market in Prague has been flooded with new cheap offers. The catch - It is always just for maximum 6 months.

I doubt this will change anything longterm unless it becomes proof for policy makers to ban airbnb.

Bombthecat• 6 years ago

On a side note : airbnb must be really happy to have all the profit, but no risk right now.

Udik• 6 years ago

As someone observed in the Twitter thread, +64% only means a handful (about 150) new flats on the market, since there's so few at the moment. They are now on offer for long term rental, so once they'll be taken they'll be out of the market possibly for years.

This is why comparing long term rentals and airbnb makes little sense: yes, half of the flats for rent at any given moment are for short term. But they're always the same ones, over and over again. They could increase the long term offer only for a few days before disappearing for good.

Turns out claims Airbnb was taking houses out of the rental market were right

Related Stories