Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

dw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 362 posts

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#211

Post by mschuster91 »

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?

> If not, what might have changed between then and now?

I think that what we're seeing today is what happened back in '70, just in extreme overdrive.

Mainy caused, imho, by a massive explosion of the amount of money in circulation, which craves to be invested. Given that Yo could get 1.5M$ at 10M$ valuation, there's nothing better in the current ultra-low-interest environment than to invest the money in housing stock.

Also, the massive flow of capital from new-rich Chinese and Russians (which mainly affected London, but side flows also hit Berlin and Frankfurt) is a factor.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#212

Post by eropple »

BMorearty wrote: post #108
wcummings wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Extended stay hotels require an extended stay, don't they? It's been 45 years since I stayed in a single place for 30 days while on vacation. And please let's keep this civil.

To be frank, with the way that the company you choose to work for harms neighborhoods like mine, the level of civility he's extended you is probably more than you've earned. I wouldn't have been so kind.

And extended-stay hotels accept any length of reservation.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#213

Post by IanDrake »

tptacek wrote: post #183
IanDrake wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evicted being the key word. That is a very long process.

What's your point? Being evicted is a big deal. It's can be difficult to get a next nice apartment if you've been evicted before, especially if you were evicted from your immediate previous apartment. There is no deterrent whatsoever for Airbnb guests, who have no stake in the lease or the local market.

No, they have a public rating to maintain on airbnb. Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or keep looking for the next sucker on CL that is a newbie landlord.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#214

Post by closeparen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #67
rbehrends wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no rent cap in Germany. The article is wrong. Germany has only "soft" rent controls that limit YOY increases in rent and (selectively) increases in rents when changing tenants. German economic orthodoxy relies very much on the need to build housing in order to deal with housing shortages and with rising rents due to housing shortages. The "soft" rent controls simply buy time to get housing projects underway.…

> Berlin's currently problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1) from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already evolved to accommodate English speakers. No. Berlin problems mostly stem from the city government colluding with investor scum to build luxury apartments instead of actually affordable ones plus…

Are they luxury apartments because they're palatial or inherently high-cost, or because they're centrally located?

It's unlikely that there's any such thing as an actually affordable apartment in a major world city, unless we've moved the method of allocation to something like lottery or waiting list, in which case it's only affordable to a lucky few.

I would encourage anyone who thinks that luxury apartments are for the rich while single family houses are normal to consider the relative luxury of life in the actual structures (not location). You'll find that, as structures, luxury apartments are much less luxurious than lower-density uses of the same land.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#215

Post by hokkos »

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?

Massive transportation by cheap planes tickets, the internet with airbnb to list and rent the appartements, China tourism.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#216

Post by stale2002 »

coldtea wrote: post #47
j10t wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

"Well, unless people en masse are willing to go out there and build new houses"

They ARE! But the government won't let them.

Zoning and NIMBY laws are what causes the housing crisis.

It would be fixed in 5 years if the government removed building height limits in only a few square mile areas in all the major high rent cities.

The problem of high rent prices is solved by allowing people to build a couple hundred thousand apartments in every major city.

Apartments are extremely lucrative, so any developer at all would be willing to build them.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#217

Post by jaclaz »

samstave wrote: post #5

Was inevitable, what I would like to know from airbnb data is what % of properties are owned by or managed by the same accounts in a given area. "Show me all the properties owned/managed by user X" How many properties are owned by actual airbnb employees? Also, wouldn't this basically result in some sort of price fixing at least among the properties under a single owner/manager?

There was a "map" of Amsterdam somehow similar to what you asked posted a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253

it seems like in the meantime has been expanded to cover other cities:

http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/

Most probably using the same data source/API/whatever it would be possible to do the searches you wish for (not the one about AirBNB enployees, but I don't think they are that many).

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#218

Post by tptacek »

IanDrake wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Being evicted is a big deal. It's can be difficult to get a next nice apartment if you've been evicted before, especially if you were evicted from your immediate previous apartment. There is no deterrent whatsoever for Airbnb guests, who have no stake in the lease or the local market.

No, they have a public rating to maintain on airbnb. Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or keep looking for the next sucker on CL that is a newbie landlord.

That's silly, as anyone who has used Airbnb knows. Your renter rating on Airbnb is meaningless. If you somehow got a bad one, you'd just create a new profile. I've created new profiles for Airbnb rentals simply because I couldn't be arsed to remember which email address I'd used, and had no problems.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#219

Post by Sir_Substance »

IanDrake wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Being evicted is a big deal. It's can be difficult to get a next nice apartment if you've been evicted before, especially if you were evicted from your immediate previous apartment. There is no deterrent whatsoever for Airbnb guests, who have no stake in the lease or the local market.

No, they have a public rating to maintain on airbnb. Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or keep looking for the next sucker on CL that is a newbie landlord.

>Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or

That depends __entirely__ on where you live. In Iceland, your renting a building is registered with your kennitala (national identification number). Get evicted or damage the property, and all the real estate managers in the country know.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#220

Post by matwood »

jliptzin wrote: post #147
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…

Not really. I used to use AirBnB, but I went back to hotels. It's worth the extra money. Let me know how it works out for you and your family when you get there and the host is nowhere to be found and doesn't pick up his phone for 3 hours because he forgot, or you realize at 1am on a Saturday you forgot to take the key to the front door with you and there's nothing you can do about it until 10am, or afterwards when y…

AirBnb has pushed down hotel room prices which makes going back to hotel rooms easier.

I mostly use AirBnb in Europe, and have had good experiences. If I'm in a place < 2 nights though, I'll do a hotel.

Post reply on HN