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Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

bbc.co.uk

11–20 of 214 posts

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#11
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

In a healthy housing market like the one I own a rental property in, long-term rental is a margin business while you have mortgage and taking to account wear and tear etc and encourages properties being kept in family friendly sizes and year round accommodation for people who need to live and work locally.

The airbnb model allows you to have much larger margins while the property empty for periods of time, promotes splitting properties into multiple smaller units to extract higher margin per sq ft and removes property from the market for locals.

Airbnb is a cancer frankly

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#12
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

I was briefly in Amsterdam renting in an old wooden building (it was a nice place).

Anyway, the noise from surrounding Airbnb rentals just ended up wrecking it for me and I left the city as it was a city wide problem. Summer was just...noisy.

All night tourists were loudly coming and going, it really sucked and at the time it was a huge problem for Amsterdam residents.

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#13
post #6
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

It’s not just housing prices. It’s community and neighborhood. People want to live in a neighborhood with actual people, not a decentralized hotel. I say this as someone who has done short term rentals in Paris—it was nice for me, but I can see how annoying it must be for residents.

Exactly.

I live in a small five apartment building. Two flats were remodelled at the beginning of 2020 for airbnb. That did not work out because of covid. The owner of one flat then decided to live there herself and she is a nice neighbor (the other flat is still empty).

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#14
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

Let me tldr; it for you. AirBnB enables companies or individuals to buy up or lease small apartments in nice neighborhoods or building and turn it into a hotel. That pushes out people who actually need or want to live in that neighborhood. In addition, the AirBnB "guests" are quite frequently exhibit awful boorish behavior . I know of apartment buildings in downtown Toronto which became unsafe for families thanks to AirBnB guests. I would not have a problem if the AirBnB host lived in the same apartment as the one they are listing on AirBnB but that is not what is happening. Instead AirBnb enable unscrupulous people to set up hotels in residential neighborhoods without shouldering any responsibilities of a hotel. AirBnB is fucking cancer!

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#15
Rents in Paris approach Bay Area level, see per m2 rent or real state prices in common rental sites:

www.pap.fr

https://www.seloger.com/

Government regulations protecting small group of people and vested interests at costs to most other residents have contributed to this.

The government is omnipresent. It restricts the supply through various mechanisms among which are these regulations, and subsidizes the demand. The result is skyrocketing rents and prices.

With Bay Area rents and low wages, I asked colleagues how people afford their lives in Paris. Apparently, people share, have inherited apartments, use government assigned buildings etc.

French might benefit from a healthier more rational (rather than idiological) look at the market economy vs central planning.

Note: I know this view is not politically correct and popular in EU, but I thought I would mention it nevertheless. Replacing textbook economy with ideology won’t be beneficial for French. At least listen to what your Nobel prize winners in economy and experts in policy are saying (Tirole etc).

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#16
post #6
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

It’s not just housing prices. It’s community and neighborhood. People want to live in a neighborhood with actual people, not a decentralized hotel. I say this as someone who has done short term rentals in Paris—it was nice for me, but I can see how annoying it must be for residents.

Exactly. The apartment complex I'm in rents out some apartments on AirBnB, including the one directly above me. The direct impact is only that it gets vacuumed far more often than a normal tenant would (between each AirBnB usage, about twice a week), increasing the noise. The indirect impact is that I do not have an opportunity to say hello to neighbors, ask how they are doing, send excess baked goods, etc. If a long-term neighbor is being loud, you can rely on that relationship to ask for quiet. If a short-term neighbor is being loud, you have no relationship with them, so you need to instead escalate to the management, who may or may not enforce noise limits at all.

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#17
post #9

I wonder if this has a positive or negative effect on tourism within Paris?

I feel like someone first decides on a destination and then decides on where to stay. I don't think a sizable portion of travelers prioritize staying in an apartment or private home over visiting Paris.

While true, one thing to consider is that, if renting an apartment that sleeps 4 is cheaper than renting two otherwise similar hotel rooms that sleep 2, that means the travelers have more money to spend while they're there.

Is this significant to matter to the other tourism industries in Paris? That I don't know... Does it outweigh the issues people have with AirBNB? Probably not...

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#18
Airbnb listings are associated with a fairly small but noticeable increase in rents: https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-c...

But the question I always wonder is what's so special about hotels that they get to build dozens or hundreds of apartments but don't have to put them on the market? It seems like there is a lot of problems baked into zoning, and it doesn't seem fair to punish Airbnb owners who are playing arbitrage.

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#19
post #11
post #3

I don't fall strongly on either side of these debates, but I'm kind of against the debate as a whole. I just don't think that trade offs between short stay rentals, even airbnb hotels, and rental housing has much of a win in it for renters even if advocates get everything they want. It seems like a marginal, symbolic issue that sucks up a lot of attention without the potential for meaningful results. Are bans on shor…

In a healthy housing market like the one I own a rental property in, long-term rental is a margin business while you have mortgage and taking to account wear and tear etc and encourages properties being kept in family friendly sizes and year round accommodation for people who need to live and work locally. The airbnb model allows you to have much larger margins while the property empty for periods of time, promotes s…

I would support Airbnb if it encouraged the couch-surfing model more. As in, the owners live on the property full time and have an extra room or couch they'll willing to lend out, with extra amenities to make it worth some amount of money. Deviating from this quickly devolves into the current situation.

Re: Paris hails victory over short-stay rents

#20
I understand that this definitely helps some vested interests (hotel industry, for instance), but the issue transcends a discussion of hotels vs. Airbnb and the cost of housing.

I've had the displeasure of living in an apartment building that was used partially for long-term tenants (of which I was one) and short-term Airbnb guests. The experience was terrible. Constant noise, incredibly inconsiderate people leaving trash everywhere, etc. The interesting thing is the short-term units weren't cheap; they were actually rather expensive. So it wasn't as though we were getting a bunch of college partier types; they were typically young professionals. Given how unpleasant it was, I can't imagine how bad it would be if the quality of guests had been different.

The building was a large house that had been divided into a number of units. I spoke to some of our neighbors (who owned their homes, they were not renting units like we were) and they expressed the difficulty they'd had with the short-term guests in our building. It had been years of calling the police, legal action, etc. The people I spoke with seemed pretty reasonable; they wanted a quiet neighborhood where their kids could play. They didn't enjoy finding drugs in the drive way and urine all over their property.

Airbnb, in my opinion, definitely has a detrimental effect on communities. Even if the guests are nice, if some large fraction of the population is turning over daily, that necessarily takes away from the community.

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