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Airbnb's impact on cities

theguardian.com

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Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#51

Post by EugeneOZ »

RobertoG wrote: post #41
EugeneOZ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catalonia is not only Barcelona. In Barcelona tourism is about third of city's income, so protests like this are ridiculous. Noisy tourists are usually in hotels/hostels. And I have to say locals sometimes are more noisy than tourists.

" In Barcelona tourism is about third of city's income, so protests like this are ridiculous. " I think that the debate in Barcelona (and other cities) is a little more sophisticate of what your are implying. There is a balance somewhere that cities have to find and this is what they are trying to do. Another consideration is that excessive tourism will kill what makes the city interesting.

I'm not trying to say it's simple issue. But if you hate tourists - don't invite them to take their money. If money of tourists are interesting - use police to control drunk tourists and don't call all tourists "pain". After 2 visits to Barcelona and about $15k spent there, I feel cheated if I was actually not welcomed there.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#52

Post by emerongi »

khattam wrote: post #33

So the argument is that since Airbnb makes travel cheaper, it is ruining the cities? Suggesting that hotels were keeping the prices artificially high to limit tourists and hence conserve the cities? Try harder next time.

The argument is that there's less hotels (and that nobody has noticed that the demand is higher).

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#53

Post by yummyfajitas »

Tourists are human beings, same as residents. Tourists value the opportunity to visit for 2 weeks more than residents value the opportunity to live there for 2 weeks (as evidenced by their willingness to pay more).

Why do you believe tourists deserve fewer rights than residents?

I realize that in terms of blatant power struggles to control the means of violence, tourists will lose. But lets not pretend that's anything other than the strong exploiting the weak.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#54

Post by trusche »

arethuza wrote: post #48
abalone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macroeconomics is more complicated than that. Basically the property market overheated and crashed in a big way less than a decade ago, with lingering industry-wide effects.[1] Additionally lots of crappy houses were built so they added a bunch of quality regulations that have driven up the cost.[2] [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/ireland-economy-housing-idUSL... [2] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15bb4d40-4714-11e5-b3…

That first article says that the Irish government has introduced rent controls. Hardly surprising if there are controls over what people can charge that there is a lack of properties to rent?

It was actually the other way round. The very modest rent controls, hardly deserving that name, were introcuded after the lack of properties led to the rent explosion.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#55

Post by trusche »

apsec112 wrote: post #22
trusche wrote: post #7

Here in Dublin, Ireland, rents are exploding, mostly because of a severe shortage in apartments, and it's a fair question to ask if AirBnB is partially to blame. From [1]: > The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000 per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb. > Investors have confirmed that if correct…

I can't speak to Ireland, but here in the US, there's an extremely strong relationship between expensive apartments and a lack of new construction. Here's the graph: http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/asking.price... How difficult is it to build new housing in Dublin? Does the city allow new apartment buildings, or are most areas single family, detached residences only?

It's complicated. There are height limitations for residential buildings in the city (lower than those for commercial ones), and there's no culture of apartment living here comparable to other European capitals I know. Dublin is sprawling with single family homes. There's a debate going on right now about higher density zoning and the like, but it will take time. Regulations to improve building standards have added to cost, and most developers seem to be in it for the quick buck (my opinion only) and are holding back right now because that's no longer (or not yet again) an option after the crash.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/time-to-end-irela...

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#57

Post by icebraining »

personlurking wrote: post #25

It's not only Airbnb in Europe, but also Erasmus (twice a year they make finding housing very difficult), Uniplaces (like Airbnb but for EU students), local classifieds sites (which now just double as Airbnb and Uniplaces listings) and being known as an affordable city (like here, in Lisbon, which is being called "the new Berlin" as well as the new "startup capital city"). Over the past 3 years, rental prices here ha…

As someone who rents out rooms in Lisbon (not on AirBnB), I can assure you the minimum is not 300/month, nor are those rare. A five minute search finds multiple available rooms for I do agree there is cause for concern, but the knee-jerk attacks on AirBnB is silly. For example, there's not a single word in that article regarding the concerns of landlords in making long term rentals. When it takes two years, hundreds of euros and many lost working days to evict a non-paying tenant, is it any wonder that people prefer short term rentals? When you have a building falling to pieces after decades of rent-controlled tenants paying ridiculously low amounts (I know people paying 30€/m for a three bedroom apartment) and you can't afford to fix it, is it any wonder that you'll sell to foreign investors who can?

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#58

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #21
trusche wrote: post #7

Here in Dublin, Ireland, rents are exploding, mostly because of a severe shortage in apartments, and it's a fair question to ask if AirBnB is partially to blame. From [1]: > The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000 per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb. > Investors have confirmed that if correct…

The obvious solution to a severe shortage in apartments is to build more. Why doesn't Ireland do this? Pigeonhole principle: if K people want to be in Ireland at any one time, and there are N < K apartments, K - N people will have a problem. All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren't the ones who face the problem.

> to a severe shortage in apartments

You're looking at it wrong.

What AirBnB does is allow apartments to be rented as hotel rooms, at prices somewhere in-between.

Thus you get mostly empty hotels and lots of mostly empty apartments (1/3 or 1/4 use yields better money than full-time rent).

You've inverse-optimized resource usage.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#59

Post by zuzun »

rorykoehler wrote: post #49
zuzun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution is to understand how governments work. Residents are the voters, not the tourists. Blame the cities banning holiday rentals all day, in the end they are acting in the best interest of their citizens.

Apart from their citizens making a living through the platform. From my experience in Berlin they are acting in the best interests of the hotel lobby. The citizens were just a convenient foil.

The people it impacts negatively outnumber the people that benefit from it, it's as simple as that.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#60

Post by cauterized »

YokoZar wrote: post #44
Symbiote wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourists before AirBnB would simply not visit somewhere if the hotel price was beyond what they could afford. Is there any justification at all that could prioritise tourists over residents for living space?

Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring the sorts of costs in services that residents do. Similar motivations cause cities to build office buildings without corresponding homes. Empirically it seems like cities value tourists over residents -- if cities actually wanted residents, they'd approve construction of housing for them.

And in many cases they HAVE approved construction of housing for them but the new (very slight and only relative) market slack is being eaten up by commercial operators on Airbnb.
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