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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

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Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#361

Post by noduerme »

ErneX wrote: post #342
noduerme wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no. Airbnb rentals don't go for 3-6 months. (So what I was doing wouldn't have even been possible via their website). I wasn't "living like a hipster", I wasn't on a work-vacation. There was no "cheating" involved, since all the people who post on Airbnb also post on other websites, local and international. Airbnb just had a nicer map. It ain't cheating Airbnb if the landlord is happy to cut out the middleman. An…

3-6 months rentals are not what people usually lease for, at least here it's 3 to 5 years contracts and then keep extending for one year periods. Any flat here rented for 3 to 6 months is a holiday rental and besides being more expensive it's one flat less available for the people that actually want to live in the city.

Typically I was only paying about 20% more than unfurnished neighboring apartments per month, which is fair since utilities were included. There will always be furnished apartments with shorter leases for business travelers. I think I provided a good case for why it's better to accept a reasonable, lower rate to have long-term, stable tenants. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to freely travel, but hotels are for weekends and vacations. "Holiday apartment" is somewhere in the middle. Those will always exist, too. It's fine as long as they don't eviscerate the city. There is a balance.

One of the most successful pushes against Airbnb taking over whole neighborhoods has been in cities which set a floor on the minimum number of nights. This at least changes the economic calculus enough to persuade landlords to consider long term local renters a little bit more.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#362

Post by ajsnigrutin »

lultimouomo wrote: post #268
Hedepig wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this is an primarily caused by Airbnb?

I live in a city that is a major tourist destination worldwide. Tourism has always been a blessing and a curse; shops always suffered a pressure to become tourist oriented; some big buildings were converted to hotels. With AirBnB the problem has expanded massively. I cannot find a 3-room office that is not miles away from the city center because everything that size is an AirBnB. An employee I just hired that moved h…

Yep, i live in a country with massive housing issues in our cities (well... like most other countries), and banning airbnb is mentioned a couple of times a week now in mainstream media.

And if the large cities are a problem, there still are some new building projects done here, if you want to massively overpay an apartment,... the rural areas near tourist areas are even worse... 20km from the mountains and 20km from the seaside, almost nothing new is being built ("preserving the heritage" ... after being a communust country for 50 years, and most of the "heritage" was built in the 1970s in 80s), and anything already built being sold is massively overpriced (literally not worth it unless you're lending it out via airbnb).

I'm usually against banning stuff, but if airbnb was banned, it would be a good thing. Tourist belong in hotels, hostels, etc. and apartment buildings are for people who actually live there. And lets not forget the additional problems airbnb brings to an otherwise residential apartment building (parties (=noise), drunk tourists, destroyed shared property, etc.).

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#363

Post by JCharante »

tayo42 wrote: post #114
bradlys wrote: post #17

Sounds nice in some ways. The stickler here is the focus on working in PST still. You’re not gonna get to travel to the EU and work async it sounds like. Which - while making sense - isn’t going to make a good portion of people who want this particularly happy. After all - remote but stuck in one time zone for working hours isn’t really a huge win. It’s dangling a carrot. In other news - sounds like comp is going dow…

I really liked working from Hawaii. I kept pt hours. I woke up at 6 with the roosters crowing. I felt a like code farmer. Then I'd be done by 2 and felt like I had a whole day to enjoy. It was awesome. I'm actually a night owl in my pacific tz non traveling life

I've been considering this. I like to get up early anyways, so being up and it immediately being core hours sounds good. Get to enjoy the afternoon at the beach etc.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#364

Post by noduerme »

4ad wrote: post #350
noduerme wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I did. The whole point is that I wasn't just a one-or-two-day ghost. I lived in these places for as I said 3-6 months (in one case almost a year). So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. [edit] I should just add that I'm as embarrassed to make noise or screw with anyone's living space as a homeowner as I was as a tenant. I could make $400…

> So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular tenant. Tangential, but I have lived for 10 years in the same apartment and I have never interacted with my neighbours. Not even once.

Elevators. I talk a lot and only about 50% of people seem to mind.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#365

Post by vladvasiliu »

joshvm wrote: post #255
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can work in another one of those countries for up to 90 days (and sometimes upto 183) without paying tax there or getting a work visa - as long as you're still resident and being paid in your home country under the Visa Waiver program. I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (admittedly a while…

You can visit for 90 days but what you're allowed to do is restricted to tourism and "temporary business". The US substantial presence test is actually something like 31 days in the current year, and ~180 calculated as a weighted sum of presence over all visits in the preceeding few years. That's just to determine if you should pay tax, and note that vacations to the US contribute. Whether you can legally work in the…

> Most Europeans have access to things like cross border permits e.g. Switzerland/Germany and within the EU freedom of movement means it doesn't really matter much. You just register with the City Hall or wherever in your target country.

This isn't as easy as it seems, even inside the EU. There are talks going on about laws regarding what constitutes "local hiring".

Basically, the issue is that some companies hire people from Eastern Europe, and pay them EE salaries there. But those people are then physically working from Western Europe, where they are "visiting workers" (don't know the exact term). This allows the companies to, among others, 1. pay lower salaries than the local going rate and 2. avoid paying payroll taxes locally.

I don't know how this works when applied to freelancing or remote working, but, as others have said, it's probably best to ask a lawyer or two.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#366

Post by talldan »

kccqzy wrote: post #248
baskethead wrote: post #141

I work at a fully remote company. To be honest, I don't like it very much. I like that I don't have to commute, but I pay for it in lost productivity waiting to hear back from my coworkers when I have questions. What would normally be a 5 mins conversation turns into pinging on chat, setting up a meeting, and then chatting at a further time. Collaboration is much harder and the rate of doing work is much slower. If c…

Exactly. Just today in the office there was a coworker who was unfamiliar with a particular internal tool. He asked me, I walked to his desk, and pointed out the couple of buttons he needed to click in that internal tool. The whole exchange finished in one minute. After that minute I went back to coding. I stayed in my flow. But if this request for help arrived via group chat, I wouldn't have bothered to help. It was…

Sounds like something that could be solved by better documentation.

I work for a fully remote company, and better documentation is definitely something I've noticed here compared to on-site roles.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#367

Post by JCharante »

bradlys wrote: post #154
tdfx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually pretty economical to have a second home in Latin America, with copies of all your creature comforts there. Kids get multicultural friends, new language, and much wider perspective on the world.

Are you speaking from experience or just making shit up? I can’t imagine this going well for some of the kids I know personally. (And kids that I do know who have done this have been “problematic” during these things)

I've studied abroad in SEA and I've met plenty of families with kids. A good friend is an American who grew up in Shenzhen. International schools have awesome communities of expat families or private schools to also interact with locals.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#368

Post by noduerme »

amelius wrote: post #352
noduerme wrote: post #307

Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article about us in 2008 living in a solar van when that was, like, unheard of. It seems like every few years a new batch of people want to try this approach, and it's always popular with the press to write about it. Sometimes it works out. I think it's a great way to live, and it teaches you a lot…

Solar van sounds nice, except if you're well over 6ft tall :/

Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things for love ;)

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#369

Post by varnaud »

imiric wrote: post #279
berkes wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the entire city. In e.g. Amsterdam (a relatively tiny area, high tourism density) or Venice, in areas things have been pushed over. It's a spiral. E.g. something simple as "pharmacies" or "supermarkets". They leave/close because of less demand. Which decreases liveability, causing more locals to move out, causing more such businesses to close etc. These effects come next to "increasing house prices". It reall…

> You are certainly no longer allowed to have AirBnBs for the sole purpose of renting out to AirBnb. That's a ridiculous requirement. Owning real estate for the sole purpose of renting has been an income source for ever. Just because Airbnb exploded this practice in popularity doesn't give governments the right to say what purpose owners can use their property for. If Airbnb is causing issues, then address those spec…

That's a great requirement imo. For short term stay, we already have hotels, hostels and regular BnBs. Apartments and houses should be reserved for long term stay and regulated accordingly.

The original idea of AirBnB was to easily rent your couch or guest room for a few nights and I think regulations should be made to keep it this way.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#370

Post by maxlamb »

oxfordmale wrote: post #309
umutseven92 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not. No work visa = no work.

This is a legal loophole for digital nomads. If I am connected to my work via a VPN, I am technically still working in the country of employment. I am not producing any commercial output in the country I am staying that I or my employer benefits from beneficially. I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight.

I believe that’s not what government laws says (for any country). Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but pretty much all countries/states consider you working there if you are physically present there. Your VPN or where your “commercial output” is, is not considered a factor at all by governments.
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