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Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

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Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#261

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

The real problem is those concerns are orthogonal. One should not think of the market as the best answer to every human endeavour - but it's also important to recognize just how powerful a force it is. Managing the market is hard - most of the time too hard for even most wealthy and powerful people.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#262

Post by irq11 »

archagon wrote: post #77
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…

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…

Your segment of the market is almost certainly a small one. In many cities where I've stayed in AirBnBs, whole-unit rentals dominated the listings, and these were always in touristy parts of town. As you'd expect, the "professionals" optimize by putting their listings in the parts of town with the heaviest tourist traffic.

AirBnB is one of those ideas that works fine at a small scale, but becomes pathological as it grows. There's no inconsistency in this observation. The backpacker tail of the market is small, and by definition, broke. As the idea pushes into the middle of the bell curve to reach scale, the offerings will become more like hotels.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#263

Post by jgalt212 »

legulere wrote: post #260
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…

The problem is that there are already regulations, but AirBnBs are skirting them.

Right and Obama's DOJ doesn't prosecute racketeers, they promote them.

WHITE HOUSE APPOINTS BRIAN CHESKY AS PRESIDENTIAL AMBASSADOR FOR GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

http://blog.atairbnb.com/white-house-appoints-ceo-brian-ches...

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#264

Post by wpietri »

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?

I think the 70s and 80s were anomalous. White flight caused many major US cities to take a big dip in population and wealth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#265

Post by tedmiston »

spamizbad wrote: post #258
jliptzin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait... AirBnB hosts can require guests to "refresh" their own bedding before they leave?

Yes, I've seen before "please put sheets and towels in the washer and start before you leave" (as a tradeoff you get a reduced cleaning fee).

It's similar to what some hostels ask guests to do.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#266

Post by realityking »

quuquuquu wrote: post #111
gist wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb. > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying t…

>re: travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities neither are steak, chicken, lobster, toilet paper, SUVs, TVs, rockets to space, streaming movies, fireworks... and yet the production and consumption of these things carry personal and societal risks. who are we to judge, unfortunately? >re: have not received any value from a large corporation? I think what the poster is saying there is that he receives v…

> toilet paper

I'd like to dispute that one. Hygiene is certainly one of life's necessities if we want to share this planet with 7 billion other people.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#267

Post by [deleted] »

Jabanga wrote: post #102
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. 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…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#268

Post by wpietri »

zimablue wrote: post #254
gordaco wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

I don't think that you can actually call increasing property prices a negative externality. It's a natural consequence of making that tourism more efficient. It's like someone invented a way to turn fruit into gold and you're complaining that it drives the price of fruit up. Well, OK that has some bad effects but they're almost by definition (like, how economics works) less than the positive effects of now having mor…

That is very much a rich person's answer. It's certainly "more efficient" for the wealthy if they can drive poorer people from their homes when the rich find it convenient. But that's not what it feels like if you're on the other end of it.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#269

Post by jtolmar »

zimablue wrote: post #254
gordaco wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

I don't think that you can actually call increasing property prices a negative externality. It's a natural consequence of making that tourism more efficient. It's like someone invented a way to turn fruit into gold and you're complaining that it drives the price of fruit up. Well, OK that has some bad effects but they're almost by definition (like, how economics works) less than the positive effects of now having mor…

That only works if everyone has equal bargaining power. In the fruit-gold machine world, sure the price of gold tanks, but as long as there are people willing to pay more for gold than others are able to pay for fruit, the poor can't eat fruit anymore. That's bad for them.

The free market doesn't do what's best for everyone, it weighs people by their ability to pay.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#270

Post by laingc »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #210
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% increa…

This sort of sentiment is just absolutely outrageously incorrect. Go and look at any proper study or report on house prices, and you will find who it exception that it is land use regulations that are responsible. Sam Francisco is a prime example, though I could just as easily cite London or Auckland. The supply of housing is restricted by tight land use regulations, and so of course the prices go up. Anybody who wants to blame free markets for the obvious, foreseeable effects of regulation is clearly blinded by ideology.
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