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Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

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Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#41

Post by coldtea »

choxi wrote: post #26
cletus wrote: post #17

Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem. None of this is a surprise, so much so that AirBnB seems to be aware of this and is acting in a way that's, at best, ethically challenged and, at worst, illegal eg deleting listings before giving data to the state of NY that "shows" most hosts only have one unit [1]. If people wa…

Why is it a problem, or what problems has it been causing in NYC? I understand the legality is questionable but I don't know why the laws exist in the first place.

Don't know about NYC, but for one, it raises the rents, because hordes of tourists are more lucrative than locals renting long term.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#42

Post by 1_2__4 »

trevyn wrote: post #24
762236 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not a problem for people staying overnight, it is a problem for the people that live in the community, as it dilutes their community by taking housing units out of the rental market. The cities are popular for overnight stays because their communities made the cities attractive places. It is a negative feedback loop.

And industrialization diluted the agricultural way of life. The market will steamroll you one way or another.

According to neoliberalism yes. The rest of us don't believe that markets are both the best and inevitable answer to every human endeavor. Some of us even believe in weird stuff like human rights and self governance.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#43

Post by coldtea »

jonny_eh wrote: post #23

> Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap. Maybe that rent cap is why landlords prefer Airbnb. Rent caps are never a good idea, they have so many unforseen consequences.

>Rent caps are never a good idea, they have so many unforseen consequences.

Compared to uncapped rent that doesn't have any?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#44

Post by geebee »

Adam Smith wrote, in the Wealth of Nations in 1776: "Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit."

Airbnb is a remarkable innovation that allows landlords externalize those negatives, while keeping the profits.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#45

Post by evanlivingston »

trevyn wrote: post #24
762236 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not a problem for people staying overnight, it is a problem for the people that live in the community, as it dilutes their community by taking housing units out of the rental market. The cities are popular for overnight stays because their communities made the cities attractive places. It is a negative feedback loop.

And industrialization diluted the agricultural way of life. The market will steamroll you one way or another.

Is that a reason to give in to the market?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#46

Post by sisyphusprotege »

brandur wrote: post #22
trevyn wrote: post #4

This is not a problem. In my experience, professional landlords & managers offer clean, updated apartments that are a joy to check into and are a way better place to stay than hotels. I love using Airbnb for specifically this reason. It seems like in Europe, professional short-term apartment rental is a common thing anyway -- Airbnb just serves as a centralized listing platform. This is less common in the US.

I think it's stated quite clearly in the article, but although professional landlords might be fine for AirBnB tenants (and obviously good for the landlords themselves), they're bad for cities and their residents: > Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one o…

> Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments - many other European cities also have some kind of regulation.

From that quote I would say vacation rentals are being scapegoated. Rents are rising with one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments.

Affordable housing was a problem before AirBnB was ever conceived.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#47

Post by coldtea »

j10t wrote: post #39
brandur wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's stated quite clearly in the article, but although professional landlords might be fine for AirBnB tenants (and obviously good for the landlords themselves), they're bad for cities and their residents: > Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one o…

> The problem with housing is that the supply is very fixed. This claim seems to be the root of every anti-AirBnB argument: AirBnB rentals eat into the resident housing supply. But this is simply solved by zoning and regulation. In any given city there is some number of residents and some number of visitors, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing s…

>The problem with the anti-AirBnB argument is it always attacks from the angle of vacation rentals eating into the resident housing supply. That's nonsense.

Not for those that suffer from it.

>There is some number of residents and visitors in any given city, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor housing, but, that's really just a zoning and regulation problem, not a capacity issue.

Well, unless people en masse are willing to go out there and build new houses, and prefer to use them for resident renting instead of AirBnB, it is a capacity issue.

Capacity doesn't magically increase with demand in the real world. Especially if there's a big, more lucrative, sink for new capacity.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#48

Post by camus2 »

sisyphusprotege wrote: post #32

Person who bought an old triplex with a ton of deferred maintenance and has been running it as a vacation rental for a long time here. This is not an easy side gig. It's more than a full time job, and I have been living in one of the units and only renting two and my SO helps out a lot. Bringing on a third unit and I am about at the point of needing one full time employee. It is a never ending fight against entropy,…

> What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the subletting of places people rent from others.

Yet that's a minority of Airbnb's offers according to the article. The vast majority of rentals are operated by "professionals" who rent all year long, this is not like a "paid couchsurfing" service. People like you buy condos for the sole purpose of renting it on Airbnb, and that's fine, but let's not pretend like Airbnb is some grass-root charity.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#49

Post by user5994461 »

coldtea wrote: post #41
choxi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a problem, or what problems has it been causing in NYC? I understand the legality is questionable but I don't know why the laws exist in the first place.

Don't know about NYC, but for one, it raises the rents, because hordes of tourists are more lucrative than locals renting long term.

What makes you think that?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#50

Post by QAPereo »

cletus wrote: post #17

Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem. None of this is a surprise, so much so that AirBnB seems to be aware of this and is acting in a way that's, at best, ethically challenged and, at worst, illegal eg deleting listings before giving data to the state of NY that "shows" most hosts only have one unit [1]. If people wa…

As with Uber, what began as an interesting tool rapidly became another "death star" to be dreaded.
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