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Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

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Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#291

Post by drewmol »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #92
pmiller2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but AirBnB prices for "whole apartment/house" listings are often not less than the price of a decent hotel room in the area! This makes them worse than useless in my view, except possibly for getting a last-minute accommodation.

I don't use either hotels or AirBnB very often, but I have young kids, so when we do travel whole house is significantly preferable to a hotel. Kitchen facilities, washing machine, fridge, freezer are all things that are indispensable with young children and not that common in hotels. Hence AirBnB is usually what we end up with, even if it's more expensive. Also, 2 bedrooms. 1 single shared family room for 4 means we…

Ever used RVShare? It's pretty cool to rent an RV at/near the destination, good combo of included amenities and mobility, don't have to be a neighborhood disrupter if you stay at a camp ground/state or national park, etc. Clearly not a viable alternative for all vacation lodgings, but a nice alternative where it suits you're needs.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#292

Post by Rjevski »

ricardobeat wrote: post #36
woah wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply is very fixed? Most of the cities that you read about having a "rent crisis" also have a very aggressive contingent of anti-housing construction folks.

And if you dig into the anti-housing discourse, you'll find there are also several good reasons for that.

Like what?

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#293

Post by tptacek »

IanDrake wrote: post #280
tptacek wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are not most people on Airbnb. I've rented pretty amazing places on fresh profiles. And really, it's not as if the idea that online rating systems are unhelpful is new to anyone.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#294

Post by FooHentai »

gordaco wrote: post #205
closeparen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

Hmm, can your example really be called an externality? Real estate price rises as a reaction to the economic activity in question?

I'd say it fails the definition "cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit", particularly at the part "party who did not choose to incur".

Finding prices higher in an area, when choosing to purchase or not purchase, doesn't match that IMO.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#295

Post by Sir_Substance »

IanDrake wrote: post #283
Sir_Substance wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

For the 336k people who live there I'm sure what you say is true. It's different for the 300+ million of us that live in the US (where this forum is based thus my reasonable presumption that we're not generally conversing about a small isolated island nation).

>where this forum is based thus my reasonable presumption

The 16th word in the post you responded to was "Reykjavik". Second line, first sentence. The post contains the word Iceland once and the word Reykjavik twice. There is only so much I can do to help you on this front.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#296

Post by FooHentai »

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…

>You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism.

Reducing something to a term doesn't negate it. There are many things which, if they start happening in your back yard, you would have valid reasons to object to and work against. Yet you could call all of them NIMBYism. So what? That's not shorthand for wrong.

The neighbourhood around you turning into a transient state where your neighbours change on a daily basis? To me that's a valid cause for concern. To others, young professionals renting in a busy city and moving every 6-12 months? Probably not so much.

Both positions are valid and deserving of consideration.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#297

Post by djf1 »

jseliger wrote: post #97
OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who is experiencing the implications of a super low rental vacancy rate, I think most people in my situation are with me when we say shut it down, entirely, in any city with a low tenancy vacancy rate. It's hurting society at large to the benefit of a precious few.

I think most people in my situation are with me when we say shut it down, entirely, in any city with a low tenancy vacancy rate. It's hurting society at large to the benefit of a precious few. You know, I've heard about some crazy cutting-edge technologies like steel frames and elevators that can allow us to raise the vacancy rate by increasing the total number of usable units in a given metro area.

Even steel frames are unnecessary in a lot of cities with a housing shortage. A cheaper wood frame can get you up to 5 stories at a fraction of the cost. I'd say a bigger problem is local low-density zoning restrictions, where it's legally prohibited to build more than one or two units per lot.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#298

Post by whytaka »

cabaalis wrote: post #74
sisyphusprotege wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the kind of pluck and industriousness that made this country great.

Thank you, somebody who gets it. "But my neighbors are complaining!" has somehow trumped "It's my property." in the modern age. If neighbors don't like what their neighborhood is becoming, they should move. Aside from homeowners group contracts, a person should be able to do as they wish with what they own. I'd bet that's the feeling of a good majority of people on this site regarding computer equipment and personal…

I think you could step back from some of these hardline conceptions of property. If you'll study the economics of externalities, you might come to a different conclusion about the limits of what one can do with their land,

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#299

Post by Jabanga »

AlexandrB wrote: post #256
Jabanga wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could apply to gender, race, age, and occupation groups. I don't think it's good policy to create laws based on generalisations.

Wow, this is the worst comment I've read on this so far. You're saying that differences in extrinsic incentives (tennant vs. resident) should be treated the same as biological differences when discriminating between good and bad neighbors. Are you kidding? The equivalent of your statement is saying that a licensed doctor and a stranger who claims to know what he's doing should both be able to perform surgery on you -…

>You're saying that differences in extrinsic incentives (tennant vs. resident) should be treated the same as biological differences when discriminating between good and bad neighbors. Are you kidding?

Legal discrimination based on inborn traits, like race, gender or place of birth, is probably worse, because the targeted group can't change those traits, but both are bad because they discriminate against people based on generalisations about the group they belong to rather than a harmful action they engage in.

>The equivalent of your statement is saying that a licensed doctor and a stranger who claims to know what he's doing should both be able to perform surgery on you - because we wouldn't want to discriminate.

Well, first of all, it shouldn't be illegal for an unlicensed person to perform surgery. It's none of anyone else's business what two consenting adults agree to do together. But that aside, it's not the equivalent at all. The licensed doctor has qualifications that attest their medical knowledge.

Re: Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

#300

Post by Jabanga »

FooHentai wrote: post #296
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. Reducing something to a term doesn't negate it. There are many things which, if they start happening in your back yard, you would have valid reasons to object to and work against. Yet you could call all of them NIMBYism. So what? That's not shorthand for wrong . The neighbourhood around you turning into a transient state where your neighbours change on a daily basis? To me that'…

If you appreciate Airbnb when out of your own city but oppose it when it's in your city, then your opposition is not grounded in an objective analysis of what is in the general public's interest, and should therefore be dismissed in my opinion.
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