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Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

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Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#91

Post by praneshp »

santoshalper wrote: post #75
exogeny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits by a large margin. And when you add on the unregulated latent racism (multiple reports, too lazy to cite) and the fact that there's next to zero safety checks in place for things like smoke detectors and so on, it's really sort of surprising that so many peopl…

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia he…

Looking only from a customer's perspective and ignoring everything else is the only myopic statement I've seen in this discussion so far.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#92

Post by SimonPStevens »

pmiller2 wrote: post #59
jmcgough wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it further reduces the number of homes available for people to actually live (which is why we have zoning laws), which inflates rent/housing prices. This forces the bottom rung out of the city, because they can't afford to live there, and now minimum wage jobs (which we need to run the services people want) can't be filled, artists and musicians disappear, and the city becomes a place only for tourists and th…

Not only that, but AirBnB prices for "whole apartment/house" listings are often not less than the price of a decent hotel room in the area! This makes them worse than useless in my view, except possibly for getting a last-minute accommodation.

I don't use either hotels or AirBnB very often, but I have young kids, so when we do travel whole house is significantly preferable to a hotel. Kitchen facilities, washing machine, fridge, freezer are all things that are indispensable with young children and not that common in hotels. Hence AirBnB is usually what we end up with, even if it's more expensive.

Also, 2 bedrooms. 1 single shared family room for 4 means we have to go to bed with the kids at 7pm. Yeah some hotels have those interconnected room things, but until you see it for yourself it's hard to know things like is the door handle in the second room high enough that the kids can't reach it and get out into the hall in the middle of the night.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#93

Post by wcummings »

BMorearty wrote: post #81
pmiller2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but AirBnB prices for "whole apartment/house" listings are often not less than the price of a decent hotel room in the area! This makes them worse than useless in my view, except possibly for getting a last-minute accommodation.

A whole apartment/house does have some amenities that aren't in a decent hotel, though. Like a kitchen. Or enough beds for a group of 5. I appreciate those when traveling on a budget and/or with my family. - Airbnb employee.

Extended stay hotels will offer rooms with a kitchens, and can accommodate a family of 5, maybe just not for a price you like.

Just be honest and say you like it cause its cheaper and you think your vacation is more important than the needs of residents.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#94

Post by jseliger »

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…

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.

The real problem here is not Airbnb, which is a symptom; it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city.

For more on this, see e.g. Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B... .

When we have sane zoning, we'll have sane prices. Today there was an NYT opinion piece that comes at the issue from a racial angle: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/sunday/zoning-law... but I don't think we even need the racial angle; we can come at it from a position of fundamental justice and human flourishing.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#95

Post by jacquesm »

santoshalper wrote: post #75
exogeny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits by a large margin. And when you add on the unregulated latent racism (multiple reports, too lazy to cite) and the fact that there's next to zero safety checks in place for things like smoke detectors and so on, it's really sort of surprising that so many peopl…

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia he…

> The level of myopia here is staggering.

Yes, it really is. /s

And what will you do to stop that individual from spending their 'saved' money on big corporations?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#96

Post by jseliger »

reza_n wrote: post #55
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.

It converts long term housing stock into short term housing, which benefits tourists with cheaper prices and increases the price for residents since both are competing for the same units. Basically, tourists are getting a free ride on the backs of residents. Its always been the other way around, tourists pay extra taxes and fees which go back to the city (and residents) and entrepreneurs build hotels which once again…

The big problem here is really market distortions caused by zoning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942019

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#97

Post by jseliger »

OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #78
3pt14159 wrote: post #51

Look, we have a couple problems: low interest rates, large variance in productivity / earnings, really shitty hotels because they're operating on old-world assumptions. One under appreciated thing about apps like Uber and AirBnb is the star rating system. I know I'm a five star tenant. I know I never shit in the sink. I know I never leave a bunch of condoms or cigar butts all over the balcony or hotel room. But the h…

Speaking as someone who is experiencing the implications of a super low rental vacancy rate, I think most people in my situation are with me when we say shut it down, entirely, in any city with a low tenancy vacancy rate. It's hurting society at large to the benefit of a precious few.

I think most people in my situation are with me when we say shut it down, entirely, in any city with a low tenancy vacancy rate. It's hurting society at large to the benefit of a precious few.

You know, I've heard about some crazy cutting-edge technologies like steel frames and elevators that can allow us to raise the vacancy rate by increasing the total number of usable units in a given metro area.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#98

Post by zyx321 »

coldtea wrote: post #43
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?

Uncapped rent will lead to people getting priced out of their homes by the first person willing to outbid them. Nothing unforeseen about that.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#99

Post by idrios »

hendzen wrote: post #13
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.

It's a problem for people looking for long term rentals as landlords can make more profit by listing a unit on AirBnB.

My own personal anecdote:

I moved to San Jose last year and could not find an affordable place to live long term. I got incredibly lucky finding a place on craigslist for $600/mo but discovered one month later that it was because the landlord was kicking everyone out in another 2 months so he could give the house to his mother.

There was so much competition for places to live that I couldn't find another apartment for under $1000.

I ended up moving to an Airbnb that was $25/d. At any time I was living with 6-12 other people, host included. 14 beds total -- 4 bedrooms with 1 or 2 bunkbeds in each room and the host's (and gf's) room with a double bed, which he would occasionally share with a guest. I would have never expected that to be a good experience and would not have signed up for long-term housing like that, but I actually loved it and stayed for a year.

Point is, Airbnb lets you cram more people into a small living space than someone renting might be willing to do, so in big cities you can make the argument that though Airbnb reduces supply of housing, it also reduces demand for housing so there might be a total sum of more housing available

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