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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

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Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#51

Post by isaacremuant »

deutschepost wrote: post #3

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

Lol. They foreigners are buying homes like mad because there's no protection.

This is a distraction for an easy target. It won't help and it will make the quality of hotels worse.

It will also have a lot of under the table deals.

But hey, instead of fixing the real problems, it's easy to attack things some people don't use. They do the same to electric bikes and scooters. Ban ban ban! Things will surely improve!

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#52

Post by xvaier »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #31
deutschepost wrote: post #3

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

It's interesting hotels that feel like an AirBnB don't really exist. Even though the professional AirBnB hosts are doing all the functions that hotels do. Why not the reverse.

They do exist and are increasingly common for new hotel builds, at least where I live. Here is an example of one in Montréal that I stayed in last autumn:

https://griffintownhotel.com/en-us/apartments/

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#53

Post by zamadatix »

deutschepost wrote: post #40
HDThoreaun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels suck. I want a hotel with no staff. Thats airbnb

If people would just rent out their flats when they are not living there that would be fine. But people and corporations buy up housing and put them on Airbnb for above market prices. Suddenly you have no more place to live for the locals who have to work in the city. And a very high priced hotel room for the tourists.

The locals problem seems easy to follow but why do tourists continue picking the airbnb style offers if they are so over priced?

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#55

Post by jmyeet »

I honestly think we need:

1. To outlaw AirBnB. Except if people are staying in your house while you're there. Other than that, it should be illegal;

2. 80% Capital Gains Tax on property sales other than your primary residence, withheld at source.

3. Withold 40% of rent income at source, which can only be credited against taxable income in the state and country; and

4. Tax non-primary residences at 2% of their market value every year in addition to any property taxes; and

5. If landlords want out, let the state buy them out and use those properties for affordable housing for all citizens. The UK previously came "dangerously" close to eliminating landlords this way last century [1].

EDIT: another big one:

6. Ban HOAs. Entirely. They are anachronism invented to enforce segregation. Any function they perform (eg picking up trash, tending communal parks) is and should be the function of local government, which is democratic. HOAs are not.

Lastly, the one exception I would carve out is for multi-families and ADUs (accessory dwelling units). These were once commonplace but are now prohibited in most of the US.

Just like renting out a room in your house while you're there, ADUs mean the landlord is also affected by any potential misdeeds or abuse by the tenant so is invested in that not happening.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-...

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#56

Post by isaacremuant »

ghaff wrote: post #42
HDThoreaun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels suck. I want a hotel with no staff. Thats airbnb

And for me, I value predictability and the availability of staff if I need them. I've certainly stayed at many B&Bs that didn't have a 24-hour desk but, by and large, I'm looking to stay at places where I can count on things going smoothly.

Great. Pick hotels. Why do you need to ban airbnbs? As a user of both the presence of airbnbs gives people a choice and sometimes one is clearly better than the other.

Problem is those who don't use certain services love banning them and pretend they're fixing some unrelated problem.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#57

Post by switch007 »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #25

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

Politicians being politicians. Seems like each Mayor recently likes to distract everyone and blame the city's housing problem mostly on tourism. Which is easy to do as the city gets a huge number of visitors

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#58

Post by twixfel »

popcalc wrote: post #34
utensil4778 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Poor people shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, that will fix our problems"

You're allowed to ruin your children's lives, no doubt about that.

Better to be alive, though, than simply never born in order to protect airbnb, as you would prefer.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#59

Post by hombre_fatal »

lbwtaylor wrote: post #29
hombre_fatal wrote: post #2

It's a short term authoritarian bandaid that doesn't even help that many people, all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future. We should go the asian route of increasing density and size. It's not like Barcelona is fully developed border to border.

It's just basic urban planning and zoning. You can't run a factory in your apartment and you can't run a hotel. Plenty of cities restrict where hotels can operate. This is nothing special and certainly not authoritarian. These measures are quite popular because, shocking, people in residential neighborhoods like have real neighbors rather than hotel guests.

Yes, obviously everyone wants to be the last person allowed to move in somewhere, that's why they support these sorts of policies that foment resentment. NIMBYism also stifles most development in the US. But I don't see how it's not authoritarian.

Giving these 10k flats to locals isn't going to put a dent in the housing economy.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#60

Post by _2d30 »

lucasfcosta wrote: post #5

Honest question: does this work? It seems to me that this change will have unintended effects and will fail to produce the desired results. AFAIK rent in NYC hasn’t gone down since they changed their short-term rental regulations. I might be naive, but I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply instead of curbing the demand? Genuinely curious about others’ takes on this.

You need to compare against the alternative, not just look at whether or not prices reduce YoY.

Objectively, this policy should be good for what it purports to do: reduce housing prices for permanent residents. This policy actually impacts both supply, forcing these 10k units to either languish unproductive or return to market as rental units or for sale, and demand, reducing sales demand for conversion to short term rentals.

Now, will this actually make a huge difference? Probably not. It’s only 10k units at most that return to the market in a city of 1.6M that likely has a lot of demand.

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