Airbnb dominated by professional landlords • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#271

Post by tedmiston » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:25 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #224

dabei wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

In big cities it seems like there are more full-time drivers, but my experience out here in Cincinnati, Ohio (with a population of ~300k in the city and 2.2M in the metropolitan area) we have mostly part-time drivers.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#272

Post by saimiam » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #206

amarkov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's assume average income = x

So, rental income from 3 houses = 1.5x

Even if we assumed that all three homes were owned outright, you'd be on the hook for property taxes, maintenance, and utilities for each house. About half of my monthly expense minus mortgage is on these three line items.

Therefore, 1/2 of 1.5x goes straight to property taxes, maint, utilities leaving your income at 0.75x. You have to pay your own rent/expenses out of this.

Living off renting isn't foolproof at the levels you suggested.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#273

Post by DanBC » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

gist wrote: post #80

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…

> 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…

> Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities.

They're in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

> > Article 13.

> > (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

> > (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

> > Article 24.

> > Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

> > Article 27.

> (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

> (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#274

Post by Houshalter » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

Yes we do, it's called building denser.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#275

Post by robocat » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

return0 wrote: post #250

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.

Learning the knick-knacks of strangers you dont know in the slightest FOR A PRICE is a weird feeling i have with airbnb. It feels intrusive, and it's creepy, but we don't admit it because it's convenient. This is the wrong way to satisfy our need for intimacy.

> It feels intrusive, and it's creepy

To you.

AirBnB hosts tend to be open and gregarious in my experience. The hosts who are not (e.g. just need the money) you just change your behaviour to suit (or avoid due to signals in their listing).

As a guest, if I don't want to interact with the host, I get a hotel instead.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#276

Post by tedmiston » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

anindha wrote: post #71

reza_n wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is spot on. Also having a hotel next door is easy to spot when you are looking for a new place. I think Airbnb is a good idea with regulation that limits the number of weeks you can rent out your place.

I believe this is how it works in SF already, something like one can host up to 90 days per year with them not present. I don't think there's a limit if they are present.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#277

Post by schrodinger » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

brookside wrote: post #246

tptacek wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should your neighbors help shoulder the cost of your financing your vacations with short-term renters?

How would they be?

By bearing the negative externalities of your short term rental? I lived above an NYC airbnb for a while, and of course it was always a noisy partying crew. Which of course makes sense because it's people on holiday/vacation renting on airbnb! But it's pretty disruptive to someone renting the next apartment who isn't on vacation.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#278

Post by wpietri » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

zyx321 wrote: post #98

coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are others, though. For example, there are a couple of basic asymmetries that advantage landlords.

One is that they generally have multiple units, whereas renters generally have only one. So the end of a lease is a bigger deal to the renter than the landlord. Another is that the costs (in time and money) of a tenant move are much higher for the renter than the landlord.

This means that a greedy landlord can jack the rent well above market price because renters are eager to avoid the expense and disruption of moving.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#279

Post by tragic » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

brookside wrote: post #246

tptacek wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should your neighbors help shoulder the cost of your financing your vacations with short-term renters?

How would they be?

By paying higher rents because short term lets (at least on the airbnb model) inflate the rental market?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#280

Post by IanDrake » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 9:37 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #218

IanDrake wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can only speak for myself and the 5-6 people I know who rent their properties on these platforms; we don't rent to new profiles.

Clearly some people do rent to new profiles. There are fools everywhere, but they won't be fools for long. It will only take a few bad experiences, and then they'll learn.