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Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

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Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#201

Post by bogomipz »

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…

>"As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual."

You realize that a "large corporation" employes lots of local people to maintain and operate that hotel right?

Those same local people who are employed by that "large corporation" all contribute a portion of their paycheck to local and state tax coffers.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#202

Post by mschuster91 »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #190
mschuster91 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A squatter pays his/her share of taxes: VAT on everything he/she buys, income tax on any kind of employment or other income sources. The only tax that a squatter does not pay in contrast to an owner or renter (indirect there) is "ground tax", which is a negligible amount anyway.

There is also the opportunity cost of the owner not living in the domicile and not paying those same taxes, at probably higher amounts than the squatter. The owner is probably wealthier than the squatter and thus will pay more taxes.

Squats usually end up in houses where no one cared in any way for years and some times, like the recent short-term squat in Munich, for decades.

And the only interest which the "owners", mostly in form of offshore companies, have is to make huge amounts of money at the cost of the city, so I don't have a single tear left for them.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#203

Post by coldtea »

user5994461 wrote: post #119
learc83 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be more lucrative, because as this article said, Airbnb is dominated by professional landlords. If it wasn't more lucrative, those profession landlords would still be renting out long term instead of migrating to Airbnb.

"Professional landlords" doesn't even mean anything. The landlords on AirBnb are a small fraction of all the landlords in the rental market. It's entirely possible that there is a massive churn of properties. Landlord try AirBnb a few months and revert back to long term renting because it was much hassle and not as much profitable. I for one, have noticed that.

>"Professional landlords" doesn't even mean anything.

It means people who rent whole units as a business, as opposed to persons renting a room in their house, or renting their home while they are away.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#204

Post by jaclaz »

komaromy wrote: post #188
jaclaz wrote: post #184

Let us try to look at the matter in another way. Take a city/place. Calculate how many people visited it before AirBNB. Let's say 1,000,000 stays per year, with an average expense of US$ 180 each, including night at US$ 120 at the hotel and some drinks/meals/souvenirs/whatever another 60 US$ . The city/place (globally) has had an "income" of 180,000,000. How many more people visited the city place after AirBNB became…

It seems like you should take into account the cut that a hotel chain extracts from each franchise to make a fair comparison. I don't have a good sense of how much that is.

Yes, I was hypothizing local owned (not chain) hotels, but you are right, anyway nowadays there will be the 15 % or higher fee that booking.com or similar charge, at least for the bookings that went through them.

If you reduce the "before" of (let's say that the chain/franchise fee is lower and that not all bookings (thankfully) go through booking.com or similar, by 10% of 120,000,000 in the "before" i.e. 12,000,000 and reduce by the same amount 10% of 99,000,000, 9,900,000, you get to a "before" of 168,000,000 and an "after" of 170,400,000, so you have a slight increase in "income" :

2,400,000/168,000,000=1,4%

But anyway the "unit prices" were arbitrary and just for the sake of the reasoning.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#205

Post by gordaco »

closeparen wrote: post #174
bradleyjg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. ... The level of myopia here is staggering. It is indeed. You, the host, and AirBnB are splitting the gains from ignoring laws designed to internalize externalities. Instead you celebrate privatizing benefits and pushing costs onto others. Yes, it benefits you in the short run. Most anti-social behavior does. Do you teach your childre…

The externalities are... what exactly? Too much foot traffic to your door? That's hardly analogous to toxic waste dumping. (Assuming you are talking about single room rather than whole home rentals. Whole home rentals certainly do have the toxic effect of lowering housing supply in cities starved for rentals).

The main externality is driving the price up and shrinking the pool of homes for actual residents who need to rent a place to live. This is already happening in some parts of the world. For example, people from Barcelona are starting to protest (see [1], and [2] by the way. In Spanish, sorry!). In my city, Málaga, it's starting to happen as well. I personally know a person who had to move out because the landlord wanted to use their flat for Airbnb.

[1] https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2017/08/03/companias/...

[2] http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20170626/4237071...

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#206

Post by user5994461 »

amarkov wrote: post #127
ricardobeat wrote: post #27

'Our members own seven apartments on average, they are not big companies' Amazing how people live in distorted realities. To the vast majority of the population, owning seven apartments definitely puts you into 'big company' territory. Plus not being 'big' doesn't mean you get any exemptions.

If you own seven apartments with an average rent of $1k, your yearly revenue (not profit!) is $84,000. That's microscopic by any reasonable standard of company size.

Depends where you are located and what kind of apartments it is.

The average rent in whatever is somewhere around 50% of the income, so if you own 3, you don't need to work.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#207

Post by IanDrake »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #170
IanDrake wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds terrible, but would it be less terrible if your loud and obnoxious neighbors were long term renters? My vacation rentals have rules, especially about noise. If you break the rules I can literally force you to leave right then, as in, collect your stuff and go right now. You have no recourse. The police will help me toss you if you don't go willingly. If I rented to you long term, I don't have that luxury.…

>That sounds terrible, but would it be less terrible if your loud and obnoxious neighbors were long term renters? The rate of loud and obnoxious long term renters is lower, due to the risk of people going to your landlord and forcing your eviction. This can only be done if your behavior is chronic and long standing as an individual. There is no local law I am aware of allowing action against a cycle of short term ten…

>The rate of loud and obnoxious long term renters is lower, due to the risk of people going to your landlord and forcing your eviction.

I agree that the rate is higher, but not the reason. Most bad renters know it's almost impossible to get evicted from a long term rental. You must not know anyone who is a long term landlord, because you throw around the word eviction like it's nothing. It's a long and expensive process at the end of which you'll most likely have extensive property damage on top of lost rent.

Frankly, you're overestimating the importance of a negative review. If we ever had to kick someone out it would be for a good reason. If you had a party at the house, that would be against our contract and you'd get tossed. I'd then get a bad review, mixed in with all my other 5 star reviews. To that one review I would simply respond "Visitor threw a party with 20 people which was in violation of our contract. This is not a party house and we're upfront about that. Anyone who thinks they can rent my property under false pretenses should heed this review and not rent from me."

Now I'm better off on airbnb. My average review is still high and now prospective visitors know I won't put up with shit.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#208

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyjg wrote: post #163
santoshalper wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. ... The level of myopia here is staggering. It is indeed. You, the host, and AirBnB are splitting the gains from ignoring laws designed to internalize externalities. Instead you celebrate privatizing benefits and pushing costs onto others. Yes, it benefits you in the short run. Most anti-social behavior does. Do you teach your childre…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#209

Post by crdoconnor »

jseliger wrote: post #192
mschuster91 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city. lol tourists and rich investors/other rich undesirables are ALWAYS going to outprice the lower and middle tiers, you need massive amounts of regulation to prevent rich-people-only city areas.

lol tourists and rich investors/other rich undesirables are ALWAYS going to outprice the lower and middle tiers, you need massive amounts of regulation to prevent rich-people-only city areas. Really? Was that true in the 1970s or 80s? https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-... If not, what might have changed between then and now?

* Taxes on property reduced, turning it into a more desirable asset to hoard.

* Wealth inequality went through the wealth meaning more wealth seeking hoardable assets (bitcoin is also part of this phenomena, imo).

* Governments stopped building social housing, cutting off supply of new apartments.

Airbnb squeezing people out and low interest rates are symptoms of this phenomenon.

Cutting zoning restrictions is just what property developers like to blame it on because it acts as an impediment to them building more profitable luxury developments. For some reason people listen to them.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#210

Post by gordon_freeman »

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…

> "I have no issue with cities imposing a 30% tax on AirBnbs and using the income to build up the housing stock for locals. They should do this, it makes perfect sense."

The problem is that USA is a capitalist country and allows markets to dictate the supply and demand in housing. Look at San Francisco -- the locals have been displaced by techies who can pay as much rent as landlords demand (sometimes even 50% increase in rent over a couple of years). do we have any solution for this kind of problem? I don't think so.

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