Airbnb dominated by professional landlords • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#221

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

pixelmonkey wrote: post #133

archagon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb is one of those rare products that cracked open an entire world of possibilities for me. For the first time, I've gotten the chance to live as a local all around the world, for even less money than at a hotel or sometimes even a hostel. Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past, getting to know distant cities right from the ground floor. Adjustments should be made on a city-to-city basis, but you…

> Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past, getting to know distant cities right from the ground floor. Not quite true. In 2005, I did a long road trip in Italy. In that year, in almost every gas station in Italy, you could buy books with listings of local B&B's and "agriturismo" locales, which were essentially B&B's that were on farms and usually included a farm dinner with the hosting family, in addi…

AirBnB is significantly different from those B&Bs in that with B&Bs, you had to interact with the family, that family may have scrutinized your coming and going, and you had to eat their food which may have been inferior to other local dining options. Now that AirBnB is dominated by people renting out a flat that they themselves don’t live in, your only interaction with the owner is just picking up the keys (and a lot of AirBnB hosts you never actually see, since they leave the keys somewhere for you to pick up).

I love staying in various cities for prolonged amounts of time and soaking up local culture, but I definitely don’t want to be forced to interact with the proprietors. I’d rather just get out into the city and interact with the people I choose. There is a lot more privacy and choice involved in AirBnB, which is essential to enjoyable travels.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#222

Post by VMG » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:02 PM UTC

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…

> I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the locals.

What about the visitors?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#223

Post by user5994461 » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

__strisk wrote: post #136

BMorearty wrote: post #70

Airbnb employee here. (Software engineer; I don't speak for the company.) Personally, I like staying in listings that are owned and operated by the resident. It's more personal and it lets me connect more with some locals. One of my favorite nights at an Airbnb was a dinner with the delightful couple who rented out a room in their Paris apartment. Much less enjoyable was a night in a Seattle room--it was very clean a…

God I hate those backyard cottages, did you label yours as a "casita" too? Some AirBnB hosts literally go to home depot, haul a shed, plant it, add crappy insulation and list it. I actually find that to be the worst aspect of AirBnB, if I go to a hotel and I do not like my room I can switch it. If I use AirBnB and the place sucks, well, I'm stuck. Unless I want to go through a lengthy customer service battle. Listing…

The disputes are usually quickly opened and resolved.

Just take pictures, explain the problem and open the dispute.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#224

Post by empath75 » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

dabei wrote: post #162

matt4077 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "sharing economy" anymore. The term was coined for what AirBnB and Uber may have originally been: lower transaction costs to capture the value of space/car seats that would otherwise go unused. That idea got a warm welcome because it's almost universally good; Not just for those buying and selling, but producing positive externalities along the way: more car sharing means less traffic and lower emissions e…

"But what these businesses have turned into are marketplaces for exactly what they were trying to replace" I suggest you actually go and talk to a few Uber/Lyft drivers. Most of the ones I talked to are not your usual taxi drivers. Many of them do it part time for the flexibility and have other interesting activities while not driving.

That's highly regional. Most of the time I've gotten uber in the city, they've been full time drivers.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#225

Post by matwood » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

Sir_Substance wrote: post #125

Jabanga wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism. You get to stay in one of the most geographically desirable locations in the world and in order to pay lower rent you want to prevent others who live in much less geographically desirable places from renting units in your locale so that they can get to enjo…

>You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism. I signed a 12 month rental agreement for an apartment in Reykjavik in 2015. About a month after I moved in, the apartment above me was sold to an ABnBer, and for the rest of the year I had a rotating troop of loud holidayers cycling through. I took to sleeping with earplugs every night, and still often was kept up until 1 or 2 on a weeknight. Needless to say, I moved the second…

Did/does your building have the equivalent of an HOA? I know my neighborhood has banned short term rentals.

The neighboring town zoned an area for short term rentals, forced registration with the city, and added some fees. It turned all of the legit short term rental owners effectively into enforcement of rentals outside the zone so they can control supply. It worked out pretty well and seemed to be a good balance of control and free market.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#226

Post by jaclaz » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #222

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…

> I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the locals. What about the visitors?

>What about the visitors?

That is in the eye of the beholder (i.e. the visitor). I was trying to give some possible reasons why a city (as many are doing lately) would want to limit - one way or the other - the amount of AirBNB's rentals through local Laws.

The (particularly strict) Berlin example:

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/12/berlin-has-the-worlds...

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#227

Post by user5994461 » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:11 PM UTC

brandur wrote: post #63

sisyphusprotege wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 strict…

Sure, AirBnB certainly isn't the only cause of rising rents in Berlin. The city's become an incredibly attractive place to be over the last decade, and that's almost certainly the foremost reason for rent increases. But AirBnB is contributing something to those rising rents, and unlike the desirability of your city, it's something that you can control for. I (along with probably most people that share a similar posit…

There are plenty of roofs for cheaper, just not in the same place everyone wants to be.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#228

Post by Applejinx » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:12 PM UTC

1_2__4 wrote: post #42

trevyn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, it's looking like we've got some experimental evidence that markets are a poor way to deal with some kinds of things.

Plus, they're hardly inevitable: they're created by humans along with whatever rules and mechanisms they operate by, and they're administered by humans. What self-organizing features markets have are confined to a subset of what they functionally mean: they scale because they semi-efficiently find optimal answers through working on populations rather than centralized control. What does 'optimal' mean? That's sometimes in open conflict with the very rules we want to see honored.

It's a neat hack, but horribly inappropriate to some aspects of life. And we get in real trouble when we start redefining everything in life circularly, as 'what is produced by markets is optimal'.

Human extinction is an optimal market solution to some things, including maximization of capital as an abstract measure.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#229

Post by jordonwii » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

andr wrote: post #31

If AirBnB gave me the option to filter actual lived-in apartments, as opposed to professional operations, I would definitely prioritize those. I miss the original feeling of booking someone's actual apartment, sharing their history, books, way of life, even weird knock-knacks. IKEA catalog living rooms get old quickly.

This would be great. I just stayed in about 10 or so Airbnbs on an extended trip. A number of them were run by someone who didn't live there, but would, for example, leave a lock box outside the door with the key, and tell us to put the key back when we left. The best stays by far were in the places where I was staying with someone who lived there. It added a lot to the experience staying there.

I doubt this will ever show up as a real filter, though. Maybe a "this is this host's only listing" badge or something could happen.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#230

Post by empath75 » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #222

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…

> I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the locals. What about the visitors?

What about them? They don't live there, they don't pay taxes there, they don't vote there.