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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

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Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#101

Post by davidw »

chongli wrote: post #74
davidw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply Demand for tourist housing is probably a bit more elastic than for residential housing, so it'll probably help a bit, but in general, I agree that growing the pie is better than bitter fights over how to cut the pie up.

Elasticity of demand is the elephant in the room for build-more-housing advocates. Let's say NYC's mayor rubbed a genie's lamp and wished to double the city's housing supply overnight. Yes, rental and real estate prices would crash through the floor due to the glut of supply. But then millions of people would move to the city and buy up all that supply. This would rapidly double the population of the city which would…

The elephant in the room for people who are against building enough housing is that they're all convinced that everyone would move to their particular locale.

I have heard that "everyone" would move to

* San Francisco

* Bend, Oregon

* Boulder, Colorado

* Seattle

* Austin, Texas

* New York City

* Santa Barbara, California

* Hawaii

* Montana

* and on and on and on

You know what? No, not everyone is going to move to New York or Bend or San Francisco. Building more housing keeps rents in check. And if some more people get to live in a place they want to be, that is a good thing.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#102

Post by credit_guy »

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.

> Genuinely curious about others’ takes on this

My take is that real estate sold to foreigners is the best kind of export. You sell the good to the foreign investor, but the good stays in place. From time to time that investor visits and drops money in the local economy. Most of the time the guy is not there, but pays taxes. Pays taxes but does not consume government services.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#103

Post by km3r »

38 wrote: post #66
pupperino wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That being said, in the US you can and should absolutely should build more, and basically get rid of most zoning regulations. You'd have a hard time finding anything as touristic and dense as Barcelona in the US.

> get rid of most zoning regulations "most" is doing a lot of work here. don't forget you probably don't want to live next to an airport, railroad, chemical plant

No one is suggesting getting rid of industrial zoning. "getting rid of zoning" for the vast majority of people saying it means removing density restrictions and mixed use (business + residential) restrictions.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#104

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

lostlogin wrote: post #69
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…

For what it’s worth, it’s a little closer than your numbers imply. The city averages 2.51 people per household, so now they just need 75k more houses. https://www.barcelona.cat/infobarcelona/en/tema/city-council...

It still doesn't exactly look great that they "just" need ~45 years of house production to have happened yesterday.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#105

Post by popcalc »

mattlondon wrote: post #43
popcalc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Is renting from the landlord precisely what the problem is? Middleman or not, it is an apartment that a normal local person can't use.

You can't stop the free market. Once it's out of the bag, given a long enough time-frame without volatility (technological innovation/political turbulence/labor/etc.) it always returns to feudalism. Sand aggregates into the form of a pyramid in the absence of winds. So do societies.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#106

Post by dindobre »

currymj wrote: post #62

being a tourist destination seems to me almost like a resource curse, like oil wealth can be in certain countries. tourism can be so lucrative that it is actually profitable to force out normal people and completely reorient the economy away from all other productive activities. eventually large parts of the city will become totally stagnant, but this doesn't seem to stop tourists from coming. there's often a constit…

You nailed it with the resource curse.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#107

Post by stavros »

mattrighetti wrote: post #48
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.

> Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. What if we let people decide what they should/n't do with their own property instead?

I see you've never lived next to an Airbnb.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#108

Post by phyllistine »

popcalc wrote: post #41
lostlogin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you think is going to do the work every facet of your life requires?

Go to Kuwait, everyone, even commoners host their maids and cooks in their main residences. Maybe we'll see a mainstream return to these arrangements in the States.

That is a worse system, and this public policy change is preferable to poor people having to be live in workers.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#109

Post by dubcanada »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #50
lostlogin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So prices have been inflated by people living in them? Is that artificial?

It is when the government, not the tenants, pay the rent

How so? What about if the government pays 50% and the tenant pays 50%? Where exactly is this line drawn?

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#110

Post by shermantanktop »

francisofascii wrote: post #39
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.

Less housing for tourists, prices of remaining hotels goes up, less people visit, tourism economy takes a hit, existing residents not tied to tourism benefit.

Having seen what excess tourism can do - yeah, sounds right. But the tourism economy is very likely much more elastic than the non-tourist businesses that have already left town. Reversing the damage may take a long time or may never happen.
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