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What Airbnb Did to New York City

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Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#51

Post by nugi »

JBReefer wrote: post #33
ordinaryperson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control yes but rent stabilized no. Something like 1 million units are rent stabilized: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/4/13/15264890/nyc-apartments-guid...

As someone that had a good one, you do anything you can to hold onto them. 1% yearly increases in a gentrifying neighborhood is awesome

And pushing up prices for the rest of the neighborhood. You have a good deal, but you are exactly the problem. Not sure you can complain about what you are bragging about contributing to.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#53

Post by phil21 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #43
humanrebar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to point out that expensive rent in a rural area is different than expensive rent in an urban one. In a rural area, if it really comes down to it, people buy or rent a plot of land and throw a prefab home or trailer on it. In an urban area, you don't have a lot of options when rent goes up other than moving to a dangerous neighborhood or commuting from an inhumane distance.

Nooo. Trailers are the country ghetto. Unlike houses they are depreciating assets. So if you are fortunate enough to own your land and dwelling, unlike a home the value curve trends towards zero. The land value is the only asset, and doesn’t build much wealth. Expensive rent in a rural area means people get pushed further away. In the medical practice that my mom worked at, employees commuted as far as 100 miles.

Housing structures don't (rarely) appreciate. In fact the opposite is true, as witnessed by my tax return each year.

The land as you state is a different story. I love the idea of a disposable trailer home I could replace every 20-30 years with new technology, unfortunately due to social attitudes prefab homes are almost exclusively marketed and built for lower incomes.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#54

Post by nugi »

techservative wrote: post #41

AirBNB and Uber are the least racist companies on the face of the earth. No other companies on earth have opened up the avenues for direct social interactions across race and class lines the way these two companies have. Before Uber and AirBNB, how many opportuinities could you name for white Americans to do the following: 1. Get in a car with a black person for an hour and have a conversation about the election 2. G…

All 4 happened with regularity before uber. Are you literally 12? And how did mentioning that minorities were disproportionately affected become calling either company racist? The only racisim i see is buried in the assumptions made in your comment.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#55

Post by ajmurmann »

teh_klev wrote: post #36
matte_black wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bah, UK is so small it’s easy to see how it can be a problem. America has so much land available out there, some of it is incredibly cheap the farther you are from civilization, even almost free. I think I could buy several rolling acres of land for a couple thousand bucks right now.

I can really only speak with experience with regards to Scotland here. The problem isn't that we don't have enough land to build on. The problem is that there are vast tracts of land owned by a few large estates (many of them owned by off-shored companies in the usual Caribbean tax havens) that will never normally be available for sale. The land is wasted and misused for the benefit of a few very rich folks who want…

Sounds like the situation is similar than to what a poster here is describing about NYC: AirBnB is taking away a tiny portion of housing, it matters a lot though because the government is making it hard to build because of zoning or similar constraints. We conclude it's easier to get rid of Airbnb than change what the government is doing although it's supposed to reorder us the people.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#56

Post by busterarm »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #6

Easy to blame lack of affordable housing on AirBnB and not, say, rent control laws or the difficulty of building new housing stock in the city. I get not throwing grandma out of the $250/month 4BR she’s been living in for 50 years, but it means something like 200,000 rent-controlled/rent-stabilized units are also raising everyone else’s rent by decreasing inventory. The endless red tape in new construction makes non-…

I love this lie that everyone believes about rent control in NY where everyone is getting huge posh apartments for cheap.

Almost all "rent stabilized" apartments in Manhattan are within spitting distance or throwing distance of market rate. Once a significant number of them cross the $2700/mo threshold in a building, the rent destabilizes.

"Rent controlled" units account for less than 30,000 units in all of NYC. That number is never going up and that number is half of what it was 15 years ago. They are not 4BR apartments for $250 a month. This is a wonderful lie that middle class people believe because they don't actually know anyone with a rent controlled apartment -- they're kind of unicorns in the city.

The rent control board in NYC has approved the maximum increase after every single 2 year freeze since about 1990. Then landlords do improvements to get MCI increases as well. The median rent controlled unit in NYC rents for $1040 and is a studio.

The rent controlled 1BR that I live in has not ever been $250/mo and hasn't been under $1000/mo since maybe 1992.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#57

Post by busterarm »

chrisseaton wrote: post #12
ordinaryperson wrote: post #6

Easy to blame lack of affordable housing on AirBnB and not, say, rent control laws or the difficulty of building new housing stock in the city. I get not throwing grandma out of the $250/month 4BR she’s been living in for 50 years, but it means something like 200,000 rent-controlled/rent-stabilized units are also raising everyone else’s rent by decreasing inventory. The endless red tape in new construction makes non-…

$250 a month must be getting to the point where the landlord is actively losing money through maintenance costs. How do they cope with that?

They don't. Nobody is paying $250/mo for a rent controlled apartment.

Multiply that number by at least 5.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#58

Post by randomdata »

Spooky23 wrote: post #43
humanrebar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to point out that expensive rent in a rural area is different than expensive rent in an urban one. In a rural area, if it really comes down to it, people buy or rent a plot of land and throw a prefab home or trailer on it. In an urban area, you don't have a lot of options when rent goes up other than moving to a dangerous neighborhood or commuting from an inhumane distance.

Nooo. Trailers are the country ghetto. Unlike houses they are depreciating assets. So if you are fortunate enough to own your land and dwelling, unlike a home the value curve trends towards zero. The land value is the only asset, and doesn’t build much wealth. Expensive rent in a rural area means people get pushed further away. In the medical practice that my mom worked at, employees commuted as far as 100 miles.

There are always exceptions, but houses generally do not appreciate. Much like a car, they become outdated and wear out. With enough time and use, they even become completely uninhabitable. Each passing day sees less and less value in the home as it requires more and more cost to bring back up to pristine condition and costs start to compete with the value of a brand new home.

Of course, if you keep your home in good repair and updated to modern standards, that will help retain value. But you're effectively selling a new home at that point, and the costs you have sunk into keeping in that way extend well beyond the original value.

Land value is where you normally find the appreciation. The trouble with trailers in a trailer park is that you do not own the land, so what you bear is entirely structure depreciation.

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#59

Post by wilde »

busterarm wrote: post #56
ordinaryperson wrote: post #6

Easy to blame lack of affordable housing on AirBnB and not, say, rent control laws or the difficulty of building new housing stock in the city. I get not throwing grandma out of the $250/month 4BR she’s been living in for 50 years, but it means something like 200,000 rent-controlled/rent-stabilized units are also raising everyone else’s rent by decreasing inventory. The endless red tape in new construction makes non-…

I love this lie that everyone believes about rent control in NY where everyone is getting huge posh apartments for cheap. Almost all "rent stabilized" apartments in Manhattan are within spitting distance or throwing distance of market rate. Once a significant number of them cross the $2700/mo threshold in a building, the rent destabilizes. "Rent controlled" units account for less than 30,000 units in all of NYC. That…

It’s nice that you’re benefiting, but rent control is relatively well studied and it doesn’t achieve its aims.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/e...

Re: What Airbnb Did to New York City

#60

Post by untog »

wilde wrote: post #59
busterarm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this lie that everyone believes about rent control in NY where everyone is getting huge posh apartments for cheap. Almost all "rent stabilized" apartments in Manhattan are within spitting distance or throwing distance of market rate. Once a significant number of them cross the $2700/mo threshold in a building, the rent destabilizes. "Rent controlled" units account for less than 30,000 units in all of NYC. That…

It’s nice that you’re benefiting, but rent control is relatively well studied and it doesn’t achieve its aims. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/e...

You're ignoring the OPs point. Rent controlled apartments are a rounding error in the grand scheme of making NYC apartments affordable. It's also been around for a very long time, so its effects are well known. As the article outlines, Airbnb is something new.
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