Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2025/12/15/spain-fines-airbnb-65-million-why-the-government-is-cracking-down-on-illegal-rentals

by robtherobber • 7 months ago

121 145 7 months ago

euronews.com

probably_wrong• 7 months ago

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices.

I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments.

[1] https://www.leonidasmartin.net/artes/no-vas-a-tener-una-casa... (in Spanish)

dazc• 7 months ago

They don't want to upset the high number of middle-class Spaniards who have all of their money invested in airbnbs.

rdtsc• 7 months ago

I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments.

I am totally unfamiliar with Spain, but wondering what would government have to do to improve the situation? They wouldn’t build government owned and operated houses? Or is it that they do not issue permits for builders, or tax incentives are all wrong?

bsoql2• 7 months ago

https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg

How much effect will 65000 flats have on this?

dylan604• 7 months ago

Typically, government can step in by changing zoning ordinances that would allow for larger multi-family buildings. At least from my US perspective and assuming other countries would have something similar. There's a city near me that has an ordinance stating no buildings taller than four stories are allowed. If that was modified to allow up to ten story buildings, you could drastically increase number of units available.

jillesvangurp• 7 months ago

All of that probably. Also not that familiar with Spain. But the same issue is visible all over Europe. Basically apartments in nice areas are rented out to tourists for much more than would be affordable for locals. The advantage for the property owner is that these are short term rentals that are very lucrative. With long term renters, they basically the rental prices are highly regulated and in many countries it's very hard to terminate rental contracts. In some places renting out property is now so unattractive that landlords just sell off the property which removes it from the market entirely. That's what happened in the Netherlands in recent years.

And meanwhile, getting any kind of building permits is super hard so there's only a trickle of new property being built that lags behind demand.

There's a real estate bubble where real estate value outgrows inflation structurally. So housing is getting more and more expensive. To the point where a normal person with a normal income has basically no chance at all at finding anything decent on the market.

The solution of building more housing and making it easier for property owners to rent out their property are consistently not happening. The Netherlands actually has large amounts of empty property where the owners prefer to not rent it out and keep their investment liquid because it's such a PITA to get out of an agreement. There's also a history of privatized housing corporations selling off their property to make some quick money for the share holders. The net result is a huge mess of private property that is either not rented out or rented out at extortion prices. At the same time there's also growing amount of empty commercial real estate. Because people work from home now. Converting that for housing is another regulation challenge.

The problem isn't greed but broken policy. The reflex of "protecting" renters has had the opposite negative effects on the rental market. Things like Airbnb are more like a symptom than the cause of this.

The way I see it, house construction should not be expensive. It's artificial scarcity. A 50K camper can be pretty comfortable. But forget about having the right to use that as a place to live. You are instead expected to pay extortion rents or buy your own 500K piece of shit tiny apartment that is actually smaller and less comfortable than the bloody camper. A camper is just a house with wheels. Those are mass produced in factories. Houses without wheels should be much simpler to make. This never was a technical problem. Prefab housing is kind of a solved problem. It's not that hard. Any idiot can construct a garden shed in an afternoon. If the rules were different, most big cities would have huge slums with campers and other improvised housing. Regulation is what keeps this under control. But when policy breaks down, slums like that become the next logical level of this crisis.

A good example of exemptions in the Netherlands are so-called holiday homes where people live permanently; despite this clearly being illegal. Evicting people would create an unsolvable problem for bureaucrats. So, a lot of people that live like that got their situation legalized. And of course recreational units tend to be in nice places too. So, it's a popular thing. If tens of thousands of people start parking their campers on the edge of town bureaucrats would struggle to address the issue without creating a bigger crisis.

Probably something like this will force a solution eventually.

yardie• 7 months ago

The Spanish financial crisis in 2009 was an overabundance of private debt. Developers used that debt to build lots of flats, too many in all the wrong places. Those developers then went out of business and construction has been moribund since then.

A lot of other European governments took on too much public debt and had to enforce austerity measures. This proved very unpopular.

Unlike the US, the Spanish government did not bail out private industry debt. And so 15 years later here we are. Not enough housing stock and not enough private builders to carryon building more.

maeln2• 7 months ago

Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments.

This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city.

Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but this creates challenges with public transportation and other public services. And it can be slow since it means having to expel industry and agriculture further to rezone area into constructible home/office area. So the other option is to build up, which means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint. This would be bad for tourism (and people who live here might not like it either), since this is a big reason why people even come to visit.

In the past, cities had simple way to deal with this. With zoning and hotel licences, the city could have a real urban plan on how it wanted to evolve and how much space it wanted to dedicate to tourism vs industry vs offices vs homes. But AirBnb came and just said "fuck that" and bypass complitely the licence système and or building and operating permit usually needed for tourism. Greed and capitalism took advantage of that and the number of place to rent or buy descreased significantly in favour of short term tourism rental, making living in the city slowly unaffordable.

Building more is not that simple. AirBnb respecting the law is a simple solution. It won't complitely solve the issue of the availaibility of affordable home, but it sures as hell help.

namdnay• 7 months ago

if building up is bad for tourism, it kills two birds with one stone: more housing and less tourists who want airbnbs. so slowly build up until you stabilise the tourism at the level you want!

CalRobert2• 7 months ago

The Netherlands has lots of land dedicated to meat production that could be repurposed for housing. It’s also surprisingly low-rise, with rowhouses the norm.

bluGill• 7 months ago

means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint

Get over it! Seriously, most buildings are not historic. By trying to make them all historic you ensure they are all lost and the few that really are historic can't stand out for the history they represent. Save what is really history, but not everything.

Similarly, the skyline will change. That is life. Accept it. You do not own the view, it is the combination of everyone, and not everyone agrees with you so why are you forcing your preferred view on others?

jpalawaga• 7 months ago

except your argument as to why "build moar" isn't an option is basically "we acknowledge the population is booming, however, the vibes are more important than providing housing."

Sure, everyone wants their particular city to be frozen in time for cuteness and nostalgia reasons. However, it sort of assumes that the sociopolitical environment is also frozen (it isn't).

so instead you end up with voters voting against densification because, essentially, "I got mine."

p.s. i'm not sure that places that banned/heavily restricted airbnb experienced a meaningful decline in rental prices (e.g. new york, san francisco, vancouver, etc). it's basically a distraction from failed policy.

p.p.s. new york is one of the most popular tourist destinations and incredibly built up, and doesn't seem to have issues with tourists wanting to visit. tokyo too. and these also still have their quintessential historic/preserved areas, too.

pezgrande• 7 months ago

Did Airbnb really affect house market that much? Hotels got wayyy more expensive now there so I expect less tourism in the future, wonder if it was a good trade off.

sct202• 7 months ago

They've been expanding their airports over those 20 years; Barcelona's passenger air arrivals has doubled in that time and there is another expansion being planned. Barcelona is not a large city and they should really be coupling every airport capacity increase with an equal increase in tourist accommodations or they end up in an even worse situation.

embedding-shape12• 7 months ago

Barcelona is not a large city

By what measure? Granted, I now live outside of Barcelona after moving here from an island with ~700 people on it, so for me pretty much any city is big, but I'm fairly sure Barcelona is within top 100 worldwide in terms of population living in it, so I'm guessing you're saying "not a large city" by some other metric?

everfrustrated• 7 months ago

Spain's airports are quite interesting. They're all owned by a monopoly which sets the same landing fee to land at any airport. So high volume airports are effectively cross subsiding building very good airports in the smaller regional areas.

Not great for prices (Ryanair is complaining about high landing fees) but it does mean tourists have a good job being dispersed into the countryside and having a good experience.

blitzar• 7 months ago

Another senseless EU attack on the greatest nation on earth (/s?)

daedrdev3• 7 months ago

The main issue with going after airbnb is that its a true bandaid fix: the gains in supply are often offset by just a few years or months progression of the underbuilding of supply

KeplerBoy• 7 months ago

Still necessary though.

If the economics work out for landlords, a city can lose a lot of apartments to short term rentals way faster than it could increase supply. Especially in central districts where significant new construction is barely possible.

worksonmime• 7 months ago

in this case tourist-driven demand is a completely different beast than local housing needs, and no city can (or should) build enough to satisfy global tourism. Regulation may be the only realistic lever

embedding-shape12• 7 months ago

Sure, but the article is specifically about that subject, while the government been working and continues to work on many other fixes too. Limiting rent increases, among other things, is constantly being talked and enacted right now, so at least it's going in the right direction.

Airbnb is one of many problems, and all of them require something done about it. But one does not exclude the other, if you look up the "Spain" tag on your favorite international news source I'm sure you can dig out the other measures being taken currently.

socalgal22• 7 months ago

How does limiting rent increases help the issue? all that does is reduce the incentive to build more housing. It’s also a bandaid fix that sounds good today but in the end makes things worse.

advisedwang• 7 months ago

If there is a high-demand tourist location (like many parts of Spain) and tourists are more wealthy than locals (like many parts of Spain) then new housing stock will also be soaked up by AirBnBs. In this situation the "just build" argument means you have to build enough housing to house every single wealthy tourist that wants to come before you start seeing any relief to local housing issues. Not only does that mean locals have to wait thought, say, 10 years of construction before their issues are addressed, but in the mean time the tourism sector will have dominated the economy, which is not healty either.

friendzis2• 7 months ago

The tourists do not have to be particularly wealthy. All they need is to afford a per-night/week fee that is a bit higher than average equivalent local long-term rent.

At 100€ per night, at 70% occupancy the equivalent monthly rent is ~2000€.

IG_Semmelweiss• 7 months ago

I distincly recall many articles stating that for ridiculous EUR like 50k you could buy housing in spain right after 2007 the crisis, for many years afterward. Because it was so overbuilt , at least outside of the big metros) that the builders and sellers were desperate to move.

I wonder if they all wiped out by the crisis (subprime really hit spain hard), and what we are seeing now is the consequence of that wipeout, and bankruptcies.

tokai• 7 months ago

You can get houses even cheaper now. The two things are not related though. Huge areas of Spain are barren empty places, with no jobs, transport, or anything. Nobody really can or want to live these places. Thats why the houses are so cheap.

embedding-shape12• 7 months ago

In large parts of Spain, that is still true. Entire rural villages for sale in some cases even.

Problem is that it's in areas where people don't want to live. In the areas people want to live, the problem is the opposite, there isn't nearly enough housing, so you end up with some of the highest population densities in EU (#2 and #3 are both in Spain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... in "density per km2" for example, 50% of top 10 on that list is in Spain!) and prices keep going up.

Add in that salaries are pretty low so cost of living is subsequently low, so you end up with a ton of "expats" and other fun folks like "foreign investors" who purchase up all the livable/rentable properties with their "higher value" money, because everything is so cheap for them.

Owners realize this, and while the government is (now at least) trying to put a stop to all of this with limiting rent increases and more, owners still try to take advantage of it as much as they can.

Personally, I think we need to temporarily put a complete halt to non-residents buying any sort of properties or even land here, at least for a short period of time so the people who actually live and work here can recover from the situation.

For the average person with a normal job here and not working for foreign companies with a higher salary, it's short of impossible to be able to afford to eventually buy a house.

lithocarpus• 7 months ago

More fundamentally, the trend of the world economy is toward turning everything anywhere in the world into either a resource to be exploited or a playground for the rich.

This is a big generalization but I think it's broadly true.

If you are in a "resource" area you'll get pollution and often instability and war.

If you are in a "playground" area you get massive cost increases and are eventually forced out.

As the trend is toward concentrating more and more wealth at the top, the slice of rich who can afford to enjoy the playgrounds becomes smaller and the number of refugees, homeless, and poor becomes larger and poorer.

bonzini2• 7 months ago

(#2 and #3 are both in Spain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... in "density per km2" for example, 50% of top 10 on that list is in Spain!)

That list does not make much sense, because it mostly consists of small municipalities that have been engulfed by growing metropolitan areas. Four of the five Spanish entries are like that, three in Valencia and one in Barcelona; and most other entries in the top 20 are suburbs of Paris, Athens or Naples.

toomuchtodo2• 7 months ago

Major population center rent trends will tell this story (STRs crowding out long term rentals), look at rent pricing in Barcelona for example.

(own property in Spain)

tedggh• 7 months ago

I got myself a pretty little condo in Asturias for a steal, at least compared to US prices. I tried first just outside Madrid but it’s crazy expensive there, I saw a small and modern condo and they wanted more of what I paid for a brand new large home in the US very close to a big city, massive in size by European standards. If you want a modern tiny condo in Madrid city center you are looking at over a million euros for sure. Almost NYC prices. But Asturias is so freaking beautiful, and people are sooo laid back and kind, the best! There’s also a train that takes just over 3 hours to Madrid.

leobg• 7 months ago

Where did you find it? Any website you can recommend?

dvt3• 7 months ago

This is not just a problem in Spain. Affordable housing is a problem in almost every Western metro, both in the US and in Europe. The problem is caused by the financialization of real estate.

I know it's always been a bit of a financial asset, but the past 40 years have really seen this accelerate to pretty crazy levels. The issue, when you boil it down to the basics is: wealthy folks, development companies, overseas oligarchs, hedge funds, etc. owning many properties where they try to extract as much value as possible. This means that rents go up and short-term-rentals become more viable. This also means that young middle-class families can't afford to purchase or to live there, so it pushes out locals (this is especially bad in Lisbon).

The solution seems to be government telling you what you can or you can't do with your private property, which does not sit well with me, but it's becoming more and more clear that this can't go on forever.

reed12344• 7 months ago

Is it not a supply and demand problem? Then the only rational solution to get prices down is to build more housing.

nemomarx• 7 months ago

More supply is crucial but efforts to reduce demand in the mean time probably won't hurt either. If tourists can stay in hotels and hostels that take up less housing that seems good?

But you still need to build more housing obviously

earthnail• 7 months ago

I’d argue it’s not as simple as that. A city like Lisbon with a sudden influx of expats risks moving to a very unhealthy economic environment.

Expats come, locals are pushed out, existing business is replaced by business catering towards expats. But an economy built on being a trendy expat location is not sustainable. Expats will leave to a new place eventually, and then the city is dead. This dynamic is accelerated by the fact that locals are forced out when expacts come, but the city was attractive in the first place because of how charming locals made it.

If you run the city - and imagine it’s a company, and you’re the CEO - you can see that your city is falling for a hype train that will eventually kill it. The smart thing is to not let that hype train happen.

Because expat purchase power is a mutliple of your locals, you need to find other levers. Every company would do the same thing.

vvpan• 7 months ago

Some places derive their identity and tourism income largely from how they look. Building could be slaying the goose that lays the golden egg.

mrtksn• 7 months ago

It's not that more houses are needed, its that more houses are needed at specific location and the people in that specific location don't like the idea of demolishing houses and make them taller or turn a city park into housing.

There are so many empty and decaying homes all over Europe, in Italy they sell houses for 1 Euro. Yes there's a catch but that catch is that you are supposed to renovate the house for a cost that ranges from 20K euros to 100K euros and this is still quite cheap considering that you end up with a proper house at a picturesque location.

em500• 7 months ago

Almost everywhere the issues with housing boil down to 1) location constitute a large part of the value and desirability, 2) substitutability between houses in different locations is limited, 3) the most desirable locations will have the strongest opposition from local residents to increase supply.

IncreasePosts3• 7 months ago

The problem is people don't "just" want cheap housing - they want the character of the area to remain the same. But, those two things are frequently incompatible.

CalRobert2• 7 months ago

Taxes, too. At the end of 2024 I had ~€200k or so saved up and was renting, so I got hit with box 3 tax. Now in 2025 that money is in my house which I just bought, and taxes are close to nothing. So my incentive is for house prices to go up.

reed12344• 7 months ago

Also, are you aware your personal site has a malicious captcha? It looks like cloudflare but has instructions to press windows-R and paste the auto-copied text which runs a malicious msi.

I was surprised since you are such a prolific commentator. Almost fell for it. Hope it’s not social engineering.

dvt3• 7 months ago

Thanks for the heads up, I think my WP got hacked somehow. Will take it offline and investigate.

seer• 7 months ago

I don’t think that is the only solution.

I like what Singapore is doing - having a government built “base level” of housing that is both abundant and readily available - it can anchor the price where deep excesses are harder to end up with.

It’s like a market where a very significant player keeps the price law, because of its own reasons.

In such a scenario the price will not go up as sharply, so there would be less incentive for people to buy real estate just as a financial vehicle.

And the government can also prioritise who it sells the units it builds to - e.g. not investors.

I honestly am surprised why western governments are not trying this.

FuriouslyAdrift• 7 months ago

Singapore is very special in that 80% of the population lives in "public" housing.

somewhereoutth• 7 months ago

Yes - in the UK we had a strong social housing sector, with award winning architecture (and some terrible mistakes too).

Then along came 'right-to-buy', allowing tenants to buy their social housing for knock down prices (and so become a natural Tory [right of centre party] voter).

If councils had been allowed to use the money to build more social housing, then maybe this was fine. But they were not. So now we have affordability issues in the UK too.

socalgal22• 7 months ago

That is not the issue. The issue is supply. People keep blocking construction of new housing and so prices go up and therefore it becomes an investments. increase the supply and it would no longer be an investment and you could not charge high rents

dvt3• 7 months ago

This is a very "Econ 101" way of looking at the problem. If you've ever been to Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, London, Barcelona, you quickly realize you can't "build more," as the desirable city locations are saturated.

The problem is that the supply/demand curves are being manipulated by, as mentioned, property owners which are destroying the fabric of their respective city via short-term rentals (or, by just owning an appreciating empty property), which, in turn, increases rents and prices for housing en masse. All of a sudden, a "boring" property becomes an investment that generates revenue. All of a sudden, hedge funds, banks, etc. want in on the action. There's money to be made, after all!

While this used to be the case in the past (if you bought, for example, farmland, or a factory, or something), the financialization of housing is a relatively new phenomenon.

Expats and global financial markets further complicate this: how can an average Spaniard that makes $50k compete with a California "digital nomad" that makes $150k? Obviously, we need to have some sensible rules that protect the citizens with heritage and history there.

exabrial3• 7 months ago

__thats it__??? it's missing like 5 zeros on the righthand side of that number.

lefstathiou• 7 months ago

65,000,000.00000

exabrial3• 7 months ago

Well played

embedding-shape12• 7 months ago

The fine is equal to six times the profits Airbnb made while the properties were still listed despite being in breach of the rules.

As long as it wasn't profitable for them to do bad stuff (which it wasn't, since the fine is 6 times the size of their profits from that period of time), I'm happy enough about. You win some, you lose some, this is closer to winning than loosing so thank you Ministerio de Consumo.

jackliuhahaha• 7 months ago

that's delusional: 65M * 10,000 = 100 times ABNB's market cap

sallveburrpi• 7 months ago

They should fine them 6.5 trillion? I’m in favour of the fine but that seems a bit much

exabrial3• 7 months ago

Sometimes jokes don’t come out well over the internet.

MisterTea• 7 months ago

I was in Spain this past summer and it certainly seems they are experiencing tourist burnout. I saw anti tourist messages on banners hung on buildings, graffiti, posters and stickers in Madrid and Barcelona. Some of it was a bit threatening but I had zero issues.

The issue of airbnb is a sticky one. On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place. Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels. On the other hand, these rentals drive up real estate prices and drives out locals. And often these rentals are in run-down low-income turning affordable yet poor quality housing into high quality temporary rentals. This drives out low income residents deepening income inequality issues while subjecting them to the threat of homelessness.

As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity we won't resolve any of these issues. In a better world we would think about others and realize that easy access to shelter is foundational to stabilizing people to enable them to succeed in life. It's not hard, we have an abundance of materials and labor yet we have built a culture where helping others is some form of weakness for both parties.

showsover2• 7 months ago

On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place.

Yes, if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays. Having an airbnb in your building is terrible as you don't know the people and they don't care about getting to know you.

Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels.

The great thing about hotels is that they can be planned for and zoned correctly for. Even so, I've had a hotel go up 100m from my apartment and had to invest in blackout blinds since they chose for a modern design with glass all over (and the lights are bright at night).

The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

thayne• 7 months ago

if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays

I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

I certainly don't do that when I stay in Airbnbs.

The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

Sure, the problem is balancing that with the desire of tourists that want something better than a hotel.

subpixel3• 7 months ago

The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

This problem exists regardless of who does the buying. Where I live the locals got into the market first. Still, it's a zero-sum game, every short-term rental is a house a family cannot live in and probably cannot afford to buy.

On my street 30% of the houses are short-term rentals. Some rent out for $10k/week just 8 weeks a year and are closed up the rest of the time. My daughter is currently the only kid on the street, which has over 100 houses.

Not only are all the houses now priced as income-producing investments, they are killing the community that used to exist here.

HDThoreaun• 7 months ago

Spains problem is that their economy is terrible. Tourism is almost 15% of barcelona's economy so the tourism sector has political power but all the people who dont benefit from it are pissed. They cant afford to piss off the tourists but tourism has a lot of negative externalities.

embedding-shape12• 7 months ago

As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity we won't resolve any of these issues.

That's exactly what we're not tolerating here in Spain. We have guaranteed right to "decent and adequate housing" enshrined in the constitution, which is why you're seeing these aggressive moves against companies that actively work against us having that.

I guess we in Spain are a bit of guinea pigs regarding this, as we've been hit hard by Airbnb et al, but we also have strong social movements trying to fight back, and right now being a bit successful. Gonna be interesting to see how it looks like in 5-10 years again, once we start to see the effect of the new laws passed these last few years.

givemeethekeys4• 7 months ago

If there is such a burnout, then why doesn’t the government just stop letting so many people in? This feels more like a scapegoat situation.

tverbeure2• 7 months ago

“just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

izacus• 7 months ago

Whenever you use the phrase "why don't you just", you're almost certainly about to say something utterly dumb and poorly thought out.

Stop and think a bit more instead.

lm284693• 7 months ago

The people profiting from the situation aren't the people dealing with the side effects, it really isn't that hard to understand... if you own a club or a building it's a gold mine. If you're just an average citizen everything is now more expensive, it's harder to find a place, you have to deal with rude people every fucking day, &c.

QGQBGdeZREunxLe5• 7 months ago

Since Spain is in Schengen they won't be able to easily block tourists getting visas. Plus the visa waiver programs are usually reciprocal.

Best way to reduce tourism is to levy taxes on tourist activities.

nradov2• 7 months ago

The weird thing is that in many cities there is a persistent and ongoing market failure where legitimate hotels in tourist areas often don't offer accommodations suitable for families with multiple children. There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette: it's not that they're more expensive, they simply don't exist at any price. So despite the social problems that Airbnb causes they do address a real market demand. Why aren't the hotel chains doing more to compete? What am I missing here?

ryan_lane6• 7 months ago

There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette

There are very few hotels with kitchenettes. Most people don't cook (and don't want to cook) on vacation. Most hotels also don't cater to the low-income, and folks who cook on travel tend to be low-income. There's business rentals that offer this, but they're often not bookable for short-terms (usually 2+ weeks minimum).

Most hotels can accommodate 5+ people in a room, if you call them. Though no rooms (except suites) will have more than 2 beds, hotels will provide cots. In general, though, rooms aren't expected to host any more than that, and if you have more people than that, the expectation is that you'd book more than one room. Plenty of hotels have adjoining rooms for this purpose.

Again, though, hotels aren't really targeting low-income folks. Airbnbs can be cheaper in this regard, but most rentals on Airbnb charge by the person, so in some cases can be as expensive or more expensive than getting 2 rooms.

In either case, I think the issue is your needs are uncommon for vacation travel.

tpm• 7 months ago

Can you name such a city? Even though I'm looking for a queen-bed hotel room I also always get suggested apartment style rooms in hotels (booking.com and similar) that would seem to be suitable in your case, both in Europe and in Asia. Actually in Asia it's more common to have some sort of basic kitchen corner even in small rooms than here in Europe.

lm284693• 7 months ago

you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place.

Like a local with your fellow thousands of other tourists doing the same things, going to the same places, taking the same pictures? Traveling became the most abject consumeristic activity, there is nothing "local" left in these holiday hubs

QGQBGdeZREunxLe5• 7 months ago

I’ve always thought a solution would be to allow Airbnb but cap the amount you can earn per property to the equivalent of an average annual rent.

This wouldn’t outright ban short-term rentals, but it would reduce the largest financial incentive.

I say this selfishly, as someone who wants to use the platform while still occupying my own place. Something that offering it as a full-time rental doesn’t allow.

6510• 7 months ago

The most obvious solution is never going to happen. Just have a tax and pay the natives for being a tourist attraction.

danielscrubs• 7 months ago

This burden is on politicians. If you can extract enough value from tourism you both lessen the tourism and get people more happy about tourists.

The monetary value has to match the damage it does to have people caring less about the “environment” they are in (gossip puts pressure on people to behave, just like renting puts less pressure on people to take care of their apartment).

thefz• 7 months ago

As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity

Wow, it looks like unbridled capitalism isn't the answer after all.

Stevvo2• 7 months ago

Georgism is the only long-term solution to this problem. It's not like there is even disagreement on that; any economist would tell you so. However, the Landed gentry have no interest in solutions.

dzhiurgis3• 7 months ago

Which problem and which economists?

QGQBGdeZREunxLe5• 7 months ago

You can definitely find household named economists that don't agree with Land Value Taxes. Hell there's a grassroots push in the US to eliminate property taxes.

alfyboy2• 7 months ago

I was recently evicted from my apartment in a city in Norway experiencing similar growth in short-term rentals. The rental on that apartment was around €750 (same for my roommate). Apparently, during high season in the winter similar apartments goes for ~€830 a night. High season is 3 months in the winter, but seemingly that is enough to outcompete longterm tenants.

Ekaros2• 7 months ago

There is 12 months in a year. So that can be covered in 12 days... So even half a month would be more... Seems broken...

I have nothing against short or medium term rentals. If they are limited percentage of housing as total. This percentage is rather low.

neom• 7 months ago

You have no protections against this where you live? That would be near impossible where I live (Ontario).

alfyboy2• 7 months ago

Unfortunately not due to co-living with the landlord.

dariosalvi783• 7 months ago

The main issue with Airbnb is that a few companies own a huge percentage of the flats. It's a big, unregulated, industry without any responsibility that is driving regular hotels out of business and locals out of their neighbouhoods. Of course it has to end at some point.

subpixel3• 7 months ago

See my other comment. When 30% of the housing stock is short-term rentals that families cannot buy, it doesn't matter at all who owns them. Where I live, they are all owned by locals, but that doesn't remediate any of the issues short-term rentals cause.

dariosalvi783• 7 months ago

Local, middle class owners can own how many empty flats? 1%? 10%? Of course I don't have a number, but I'd bet that if you remove the mega-owners, that 30% would drop significantly.

Airbnb was not a bad idea, but it has been perverted. It's time to regulate it and probably break it too.

mistrial9• 7 months ago

no it does not have to end. I mean to say, it is foolish to think you know how systems will play out over time. If the game rules are imbalanced then no one knows.

dariosalvi783• 7 months ago

Sure, let it expand infinitely until it owns all real estate on earth

NotGMan• 7 months ago

AirBnB should be banned, and I say that as a very pro-capitalist guy.

In an economy where there is a housing shortage local population needs affordable and long-term (6-months+) rental contracts or they don't have stability.

Capitalism is great in general, but some things, such as healthcare, housing, electricity,... needs to have a stronger regulatory framework then eg TVs since the collapse of basic human necessities creates chaos and eventually becomes the foothold of extreme socialist/communist political parties which then finish the job of destroying the economy.

miguelxt2• 7 months ago

Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next?

Housing and rent are already heavily regulated in Spain. Some regulations and side effects of those regulations:

  * Minimum contract length of 5 years. 
  * Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years).
  * It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. 
  * Even if the tenant is not paying, you, the landlord, have to keep paying the utilities, because if you stop paying, you'll be charged with "coacciones".
  * If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. 
  * In some cities like Barcelona, regulation goes beyond. Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated.
  * And all that is not going into detail of the "Okupa" problem.

ryan_lane6• 7 months ago

Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next?

New York, as expensive as it is, is still considerably cheaper than cities like SF. Part of this is that they build more, part of it is that they have a usable train system, which allows people to live more spread out across the city, but part of it as well, is that they've banned airbnb. It would be ideal to also see empty unit taxes on units >$10m (inflation adjusted). It would also be good to see high taxes on sales of units >$10m (inflation adjusted).

Minimum contract length of 5 years.

This is good, assuming it's one sided (the tenant can choose to move out, but the landlord can't break the lease). People need stability in housing more than landlords need to be able to end leases.

Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years)

Sure, it should be generally tied to inflation, but what other investment exists where you're guaranteed yearly increases? Why are people so adamant that landlords need to be guaranteed minimal increases in their profits?

Housing is a natural monopoly, and allowing businesses to maximize their profits, unchecked, isn't capitalism.

It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder.

This is often brought out as a massive negative of regulations, but let's be honest, this is an outlier. Without tenant protections, however, it's common for landlords to evict tenants to increase rents. Even with protections, landlords still take illegal measures to try to evict tenants to increase rents, like doing constant construction at night, or refusing to do maintenance.

This is basically the same complaint about welfare programs. We have to accept some percentage of fraud to serve the greater good.

It's completely normal for most businesses to take a risk based approach to fraud, to maximize profits. Retail businesses, for example, will try to maximize their credit card auth rates, even though that may increase their fraud rate, if the increases in auth rate outweigh the cost of the fraud.

A stable society is worth a small percentage of fraud.

If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder.

Good. I don't see how this is a downside.

Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated.

Again, this is good. If there's a housing crunch, then residents should be prioritized over tourists.

throw_m239339• 7 months ago

Good. How could these "disruptive" american companies get away with violating local laws that long remains a mystery to me. If I started running an illegal hotel in Barcelona, or a website advertising for illegal rentals in the same city, myself, from Spain, I'd be quickly arrested and thrown in jail as an individual...

asdfsfds2• 7 months ago

I live in Spain. I'll give you an interesting example I've witnessed. Two of my neighbors rent seasonally on airbnb. Middle class women, one of them a widow. I assume they used to make a tidy profit. I believe they worked quite hard on making those houses pretty, and I've seen they had good reviews. Just now their license to operate has been denied, apparently without much explanation (I believe the Property Registry is making the decision, this is a bureaucratic body of state employees, not democratically elected).

Across the street lies a hotel, a true tourist trap. They have a 6/10 rating on booking and rely on scamming British tourists, whom you can see balancing drunk on their balconies daily. It's owned by a national conglomerate. As you may guess, as of now the airbnbs are closed and the hotel is thriving despite only bringing the worst kind of tourist to the community. An astute observer will note that the hotel industry is one of the biggest lobbyists supporting the current government at a national level. I am not one to defend big companies, but for some people here Airbnb was freedom. Now they have to go work cleaning rooms or just collect retirement checks, as obtaining a license to run a hotel is impossible without political connections / corruption. My point is, not everywhere are laws as fair as in the United States. Before someone talks about housing pressure, this is a relatively out of the way area where 40% of houses sit empty most of the year.

foogazi• 7 months ago

Can those drunk tourists not rent Airbnb's too ?

How is it not better for them to stay across the street at the hotel than on a flat next to a family home ?

asdfsfds2• 7 months ago

The Airbnbs mentioned rented throughout the year in monthly periods, so they fill a different niche. The new law kills not only short term stays but everything that goes through an online provider (except multi-year contracts).

When I first arrived here I relied on these long stay airbnbs until I could find a way through the byzantine Spanish rental process. Now this option will no longer exist.

Again, you are not familiar with Spanish politics if you think this is by accident. I have myself given up on any attempts of doing business here after I spent 1 year waiting for a certain business license and could only obtain it (in a week) after a chance friendship with a local notary. :)

alexandrerond• 7 months ago

I have legal holiday rentals on two properties in Spain, but they are managed by an specialized company:

* The regional administration handed out licenses without problems until a year ago, even when everyone was complaining already about these rentals. It was just paperwork + fee to get the license. They did for years and now they wonder why there are so many flats: they allowed it.

* The main issue these rentals cause to the neighbors is people partying, being noisy, inconsiderate. Rentals have rules against these behaviors yet they happen frequently. I wish we or the police had tools to legally kick people out in the middle of the night for this behavior.

* Apart from legal rentals, which are being limited now, there are a lot of illegal rentals. They are only starting to crack down on them. AirBNB and others have not complied with the law and this should not come as surprise. They have actively enabled illegal businesses for years. People go to jail for that and they should shut them down.

* There is no affordable housing in the city-center. Rental flats make it worse but in many places the issue will not be fixed if they disappeared. The causes are deeper and a nice flat is not going to become "cheap" to rent in any case.

* Holiday rentals are a bit more profitable that long-term rentals, but not crazy unless you are doing it at scale and they come with their own problems. Many are switching now to "seasonal" rentals, which are rentals for a period less than a year and the tenants need to go then. They forgot to handle these in the new regulations. Long-term rental is problematic because you can't use your flat when you need it. i.e. if you have a flat that you come to spend your own holidays. So people in that situation have limited alternatives.

* I am personally not against switching to long term rentals, but the current situation wrt. licenses etc. puts me in a "wait and see" mode. My flat is legal, so they might make it more profitable by cracking down on illegal ones. Once I put a long-term rental I cannot ever go back to vacation rental either. There is little incentive to switch right now, but I will of course do it if I'm legally required to do so. For all the talk, they haven't taken that step, which is a testament to how politicians can say one thing and then do close to nothing in the end.

johndoh42• 7 months ago

... because the government is in the pocket of the big hotel chains, which are ruining the country.

Airbnb: World travelers who try to blend in. Hotel: Drunk Brits who puke all over the place.

We have 3 Airbnb flats in our house for 2 years now. Never had an issue with any of the renters; But, the lights in the stairwell are working now, the door locks work, electricity is stable, and I haven't seen a cockroach in a long time.

Meanwhile the guests from the hotel across the street keep us awake every freakin' night.

Bonus: Those 3 flats had been sitting empty for nearly 10 years, just like the other ~30 thousand flats sitting empty in the city.

rkomorn• 7 months ago

My anecdata is different: the Airbnb one floor above us in our last place earned us a visit from the cops (due to a misunderstanding about the definition of "bottom floor") due to how frequently they were occupied by people either having parties there or coming back from parties very loudly at all times of night.

The same floor/direction misunderstanding also got us so many incorrect doorbell rings that we ended up muting it at the cost of risking missed deliveries.

Whatever magical behavior these AirBnB guests have, they can still take it to a hotel.

Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

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