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Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

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Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#91

Post by null_object »

gerikson wrote: post #18
jikbd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah… who are the owners of a flat to decide what to do with it, eh?

A flat owner is not an atomic actor. If you purchase a flat, it's under the implicit assumption that you or your family will be the only ones occupying it. I live in Sweden and most "condo" associations (bostadsrätt) have rules regarding short-term hires and subletting. I imagine it is the same in the Netherlands.

> I live in Sweden and most "condo" associations (bostadsrätt) have rules regarding short-term hires and subletting.

I don't know why you're using Sweden as a 'good' example of democratic control of Airbnb: the opposite is actually true, where the authorities are very well-disposed to people hiring-out their apartments, and see it as an opportunity to get more tourists visiting locations in Sweden[0] From the article in the citation:

"Politicians in Copenhagen want to introduce a maximum limit of 60 rental days per year via Airbnb - but Stockholm is choosing a different path and continues to welcome private rentals via the US giant. According to statistics from Airbnb, there are now over 3,600 listed homes actively offered as tourist accommodation in Stockholm."

In that article there are officials saying the same as you - that local restrictions put some sort of 'natural' limit on the number of Airbnb apartments - but the reality is that for people working here in Stockholm and trying to find an apartment to rent, the only option has now become Airbnb or the black-market in rented accommodation - effectively pricing normal people out of the market altogether.

As for these supposed restrictions on hiring-out apartments that are in the 'rulebook' of a house, it's perfectly easy to circumvent them. In my house in central Stockholm it's forbidden, but I often meet small groups of Italians, Spaniards or other obvious tourists coming and going in the communal areas of the house, and looking very sheepish at being seen - very obviously hiring an apartment illegally.

[0] In swedish: https://www.svd.se/stockholm-gar-emot-airbnb-trenden-inget-p...

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#92

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

dorchadas wrote: post #86
scrose wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago when Airbnb was picking up steam and I was in college I got a gig building a tool to automate cross-referencing Airbnb listings with housing records so the city could request the optional tourism tax. What we found surprised all of them. A handful of people were listing sometimes over a dozen properties and avoiding the larger, but not optional, hotel tax. The 80% figure doesn’t surprise me much now just kn…

> how a few individuals can flood the short-term rental market in an area. And, if it's like some cities (Dublin, Galway), they do this at the expense of the long-term rental market.

Yeah, but at least the Irish regulations are now involving Revenue, which means they'll be implemented.

A common strategy in Irish government is if there's a problem, and you don't really want to do anything but want to make it look like you're doing something, then you give it to local government to implement, as they won't have the resources to do it.

As a bonus, you get to point to the law, secure in the knowledge that it won't be implemented.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#93

Post by Freak_NL »

dorchadas wrote: post #86
scrose wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago when Airbnb was picking up steam and I was in college I got a gig building a tool to automate cross-referencing Airbnb listings with housing records so the city could request the optional tourism tax. What we found surprised all of them. A handful of people were listing sometimes over a dozen properties and avoiding the larger, but not optional, hotel tax. The 80% figure doesn’t surprise me much now just kn…

> how a few individuals can flood the short-term rental market in an area. And, if it's like some cities (Dublin, Galway), they do this at the expense of the long-term rental market.

That is one of the given reasons the municipality pursues this. There is a housing crisis in the Netherlands, so that gives some context to this.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#94

Post by mrep »

dagw wrote: post #73
gerikson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A flat owner is not an atomic actor. If you purchase a flat, it's under the implicit assumption that you or your family will be the only ones occupying it. I live in Sweden and most "condo" associations (bostadsrätt) have rules regarding short-term hires and subletting. I imagine it is the same in the Netherlands.

If you purchase a flat, it's under the implicit assumption that you or your family will be the only ones occupying it I also live in Sweden and that is a very Sweden specific assumption. Even just across the border in Norway that assumption doesn't hold. Sweden on the whole is very anti small private landlords and have lots of laws making it basically impossible to make money by buying a few flats and renting them ou…

So how is there housing for people to rent? Does the government build and maintain all rental property?

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#95

Post by wccrawford »

amelius wrote: post #89
em500 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overthink it. The article was probably translated from Dutch, or done by a Dutch person, and there isn't direct equivalent for "listings" in Dutch.

If there isn't a distinction between ads and listings in some language, isn't that more evidence that both are actually the same thing?

Some cultures don't distinguish between green and blue and don't have a word for blue. That doesn't mean that blue is the same as green.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#96

Post by mrep »

zhdc1 wrote: post #68
Ekaros wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really see no issues with buy to let if supply is sufficiently high. Sad reality is that building new units is too expensive. Realistically, real estate should not be very good investment. Maybe it should generate 1-2% a net per year and in 50-100 year timeframe depreciate to zero.

> Realistically, real estate should not be very good investment. Real estate isn't a particularly attractive investment, even in the best of times. Single family homes net around 8%, which is 2-4% less per year than what you would expect to get with an index fund. This is with leverage. It only becomes lucrative when you have a change in interest rates (lower mortgage payments leads to higher cash returns), demand (w…

There is actually less than a 1% difference and residential real estate is far far less volatile and that is for post 1950. Before 1950, real estate did better than equities [0].

[0] Table on page 15 from the pdf: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817584

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#97

Post by the-dude »

nikanj wrote: post #9

So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.

'Social housing' normally forbids subletting. It can get you evicted.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#98

Post by wccrawford »

saiya-jin wrote: post #72
philliphaydon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I needed a serviced apartment, and decided to use Airbnb because between Agoda and Airbnb, it was ever-so-slightly cheaper. When I searched it said the 100% refundable cancellation policy. So I made the booking, I adjusted the dates to 30 days, it didn't tell me that changing the date range to > 28 days changes the cancellation policy to an entirelly different policy that is dictated by the host. So when the Taiwan b…

So you agreed to a contract, didn't bother to read the fine print, this fired back and so your emotional response is schadenfreude... I believe you can do better than that

It's not always available to the user. We recently did AirBNB for the first time, and nothing was said about the checkout process until after about a day before our stay.

In that process, we were expected to do (light) housework to help prepare the house for the next guests.

We did it, but it really left a negative feeling for us to have to do housework on vacation when it wasn't expected.

The owner left us a slightly negative review saying that perhaps we weren't the right kind of customers for AirBNB and that we'd be more comfortable with all the amenities of a hotel instead. True, but a nasty thing to leave in a review.

There were other problems with the house that prevented my wife from sleeping well there that the owner gave half-assed suggestions for, and left negative comments about in the review, too.

Obviously we won't be using AirBNB again and won't be recommending it.

Anyhow, with the lack of regulations, there's no guarantee that you know what you're actually signing up for on AirBNB, especially with policies stating that the cancellation policy changes to whatever the owner says. Had we known that, we probably wouldn't have stayed there at all. Luckily it didn't affect us like it did the other poster above.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#99

Post by gerikson »

mrep wrote: post #94
dagw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you purchase a flat, it's under the implicit assumption that you or your family will be the only ones occupying it I also live in Sweden and that is a very Sweden specific assumption. Even just across the border in Norway that assumption doesn't hold. Sweden on the whole is very anti small private landlords and have lots of laws making it basically impossible to make money by buying a few flats and renting them ou…

So how is there housing for people to rent? Does the government build and maintain all rental property?

No, there are private and council-owned landlords.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#100

Post by mandmandam »

dorchadas wrote: post #86
scrose wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago when Airbnb was picking up steam and I was in college I got a gig building a tool to automate cross-referencing Airbnb listings with housing records so the city could request the optional tourism tax. What we found surprised all of them. A handful of people were listing sometimes over a dozen properties and avoiding the larger, but not optional, hotel tax. The 80% figure doesn’t surprise me much now just kn…

> how a few individuals can flood the short-term rental market in an area. And, if it's like some cities (Dublin, Galway), they do this at the expense of the long-term rental market.

Poor Galway. The rental situation there is utterly bananas; while buildings are lying vacant for years in the heart of the city.

Yes, the rest of the country is like this too, but for whatever reason Galway seems to have it extra bad; I know families that have split up over it.

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