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Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

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Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#11

Post by JoshTriplett »

timClicks wrote: post #2

As an outsider to the USA housing market (that seems to be very heavily regulated), could someone explain the significance of what is alleged here? More to the point, why are multi-listings of whole houses a bad thing?

(Note: not taking a position in this post, just describing both positions.)

Many people unhappy with AirBnB want to portray AirBnB as primarily a means for large-scale commercial landlords to circumvent regulations on hotels, renting, or subletting; such a depiction makes it easier to argue for more regulation. A large number of people posting multiple "entire home" listings would lend support to that depiction.

AirBnB wants to portray themselves as primarily letting individual people rent out their own property or rooms; such a depiction makes it easier to argue against existing or additional regulations. A large number of people posting only a single "entire home" listing, or listings of individual rooms in a home, would lend support to that depiction.

The site linked here claims that AirBnB removed many "entire home" listings from their site right before producing a report, and that the removed listings disproportionately reduced the number of listings by people with more than one "entire home" listing. The linked site further claims that those removals only occurred in NYC, and the graph suggests that the proportion immediately started growing again after the removals and subsequent report.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#12

Post by calbear81 »

brcs77 wrote: post #8
pmikesell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because it suggests that professional landlords / developers are using the platform to sidestep rent control laws, as opposed to regular people just renting out their homes while they are away on vacation.

And so what if they are? Have them pay the proper taxes then. Win-win for the property owner and the city.

Zoning laws are not simply about taxes. What if your neighbor decided to open a nightclub out of his garage one day, would it be okay as long as they paid taxes? The externalities imposed have to be accounted for.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#14

Post by sdoering »

brcs77 wrote: post #8
pmikesell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because it suggests that professional landlords / developers are using the platform to sidestep rent control laws, as opposed to regular people just renting out their homes while they are away on vacation.

And so what if they are? Have them pay the proper taxes then. Win-win for the property owner and the city.

So what?

Let the strongest do as they please - very democratic, indeed.

Just because you could tax them and the city might profit doesn't automatically invalidate the reasoning behind the current rules banning practices like this in the first place.

Maybe the reasoning is flawed. OK - then prove it, lobby for a change, but not just do as you wish and ignore the current laws because they are in the way of your business model.

This kind of disruptive thinking is a slippery slope imho. And I could argue lot's of evil with this line of thought.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#15

Post by meowface »

zzleeper wrote: post #6

Devils advocate: Suppose your stats are biased by a % of bad listings (fake, bad, etc.) that violate some rule. Would you want to include them in your numbers? If having the correct statistics (i.e. excluding these bad listings) was important for regulatory or marketing purposes, then fixing this before the report is part of the fiduciary duty of the firm with its shareholders, so no surprise here.

My thoughts, too.

Though the question is why haven't they removed these earlier? Were they waiting to do it? Or was this just a result of incompetence followed by a panicked response?

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#16

Post by rtpg »

zzleeper wrote: post #6

Devils advocate: Suppose your stats are biased by a % of bad listings (fake, bad, etc.) that violate some rule. Would you want to include them in your numbers? If having the correct statistics (i.e. excluding these bad listings) was important for regulatory or marketing purposes, then fixing this before the report is part of the fiduciary duty of the firm with its shareholders, so no surprise here.

Seems reasonable.

Does that mean that cleanup basically never happened beforehand though? Since they got rid of so many in one go over that one month.

I understand for smaller corps, this sort of cleanup doesn't exactly make money. A bit backseat CEO, but for a company where compliance is important for its continued survival, I feel like that should be the full-time jobs of many people at the company to make sure there isn't a bunch of terrible listings.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#17

Post by erdojo »

This report would seem more damning if the authors had at least attempted to keep their bias out of it. I found it significantly less credible because of it. I kept wondering what info they weren't sharing in their rush to paint Airbnb as liars and cheats. Or if their own data, which has no external validation either, is true.

Someone also made a good point here regarding Airbnb's motives. It is entirely feasible that Airbnb did a cleanup of bad/illegal listings before submitting data for government scrutiny.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#18

Post by Marazan »

dang wrote: post #13

That title puts a pretty heavy spin on the story, so we changed it to a factual, representative sentence from the article. If someone suggests a better title, we can change it again.

"AirBnB caught facilitating wide scale illegal activity"?

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#19

Post by ars »

meowface wrote: post #15
zzleeper wrote: post #6

Devils advocate: Suppose your stats are biased by a % of bad listings (fake, bad, etc.) that violate some rule. Would you want to include them in your numbers? If having the correct statistics (i.e. excluding these bad listings) was important for regulatory or marketing purposes, then fixing this before the report is part of the fiduciary duty of the firm with its shareholders, so no surprise here.

My thoughts, too. Though the question is why haven't they removed these earlier? Were they waiting to do it? Or was this just a result of incompetence followed by a panicked response?

Could be it never mattered before, because no one was looking, and now someone is looking.

Re: Airbnb purged 1,000 "entire home" listings days before preparing data snapshot

#20

Post by rrobukef »

zzleeper wrote: post #6

Devils advocate: Suppose your stats are biased by a % of bad listings (fake, bad, etc.) that violate some rule. Would you want to include them in your numbers? If having the correct statistics (i.e. excluding these bad listings) was important for regulatory or marketing purposes, then fixing this before the report is part of the fiduciary duty of the firm with its shareholders, so no surprise here.

There are better ways to exclude the bad listings from a report. The generally accepted way is to include them at the beginning and explicitly excluding them for a number of stated reasons.

This does however give an image that Airbnb is not perfect.

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