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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

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Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#211

Post by syspec »

kranke155 wrote: post #180
jll29 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only hope this does not replace one problem with another: Because Spain's high unemployment, in particular youth unemployment and the construction sector, actions that reduce tourism lead to fewer jobs and less income flowing into the city. I'm not against the measure (last time in Barcelona I was in a hotel and my friends rented an AirBnB apartment instead; they had fun and I had to move hotel rooms because the gu…

Tourism is a shit industry. You could mostly annihilate it and replace it with productive things most of the time.

I know your comment is a "hot take", but the thing is about Tourism as an industry, is that the places where that /is/ the industry end up not gaining any other industries. So they become stuck as a "tourism" industry place

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#212

Post by kjkjadksj »

ethbr1 wrote: post #148
dnissley wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses are unable to plan around seasonality? What's up with that? In the US, businesses in touristy areas often will shut down for the slow season.

It's difficult to make work economically, other than shuttering for part of the year. Which is why tourist resort towns and stadium areas tend to have a lot of closed shops when they're not "on". Which in turn makes them less attractive for year-round residents, which spirals into intensifying seasonality.

When I think of places dominated by tourism its not the tourism that did it. Its that the tourism is what is left after little other job growth in any other sector after whatever impetus that triggered building the town in the first places ceased to exist.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#213

Post by zrn900 »

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.

It would work, but it also requires curbing the extra demand that is generated by foreigners moving into the city and scooping up the housing from the locals.

> 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?

Spain is not the US. Neither Spain nor any other Mediterranean country has large surface area that could accommodate housing demand at such high levels - there is already scarce land that you can build on across the Mediterranean as there are limited shorelines and deltas that were created by rivers etc, and the rest is immediately mountainous or hilly landscape that is very difficult to build on.

These countries could easily cope with their local demand, but allowing foreigners to buy housing caused a large influx of foreigners exacerbating the demand for housing and crowding out these places way beyond their capacity. The investment funds that scoop up housing to profit worsen the situation.

Maybe the US could handle such a demand with its gigantic surface area - solely Texas is larger than ENTIRE Western Europe, mind that. Or Russia. Or China. But other countries in the world, especially the Mediterranean ones, don't have the space to even start comparing with those.

The only solution is to limit the demand to the carrying capacity of each locale, province and country.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#214

Post by dmurray »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #205
dmurray wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, people who own multiple homes, and people who are in the biggest house they are likely to own and expect to downsize.

> people who are in the biggest house they are likely to own and expect to downsize That's covered by the case of "property values go down everywhere "; you only have a problem if your property value goes down but the value of property you want to buy doesn't.

No, if you have a $1m house and you're intending to downsize to a $500k house, and they both lose half their value, that's $250k less in your pocket for retirement.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#215

Post by notacoward »

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.

I don't know if you meant specifically in Barcelona, but I'm in just such a unit in Montreal as I type this. Physically it's a 2BR apartment, with its own washer/dryer and full (though small) kitchen, but it's booked and run as a hotel. There's hotel-like housekeeping, not a note hidden somewhere that says I have to clean up myself before leaving or incur a hefty extra cleaning fee (on top of the one that's already buried elsewhere in the fine print). There's not much of a lobby, no concierge, no room-service menu, so it's not a four star hotel, but I'd still say it's a hotel that feels like an AirBnB and I think places like this are rapidly taking over that part of the market.

The move that Barcelona just made might actually be kind of like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Good political theater, I guess, but not really moving things in a direction they weren't already going.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#216

Post by FactKnower69 »

credit_guy wrote: post #102
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.

Absolutely baffling that you could come to the conclusion that houses being kept empty for the benefit of speculators while citizens sleep on the street is somehow the best outcome

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#217

Post by fh973 »

distances wrote: post #184
JackYoustra wrote: post #19

People will do literally anything over building enough housing to make everyone happy

Helsinki is currently an interesting case, technically having oversupply of apartments. It's because the rising interest rates cratered the buyers' budgets -- the result is a mild downward trend in prices, definitely no crash. Building companies sit on a large supply on finished unsold apartments but steadfastly refuse to lower prices even a bit. New construction has halted completely. Seems like the construction sec…

Building companies don't own the apartments, banks do. Lower effective prices means writing off debt.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#218

Post by zrn900 »

mattrighetti wrote: post #128
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're adults that realize garbage dumps shouldn't be next to schools. And sometimes as society we make decisions that are good for the majority of people. I'm sure you'd love it if someone poisoned your ground water, but they did it by burying toxic materials on their property.

When Airbnb landlords won't rent to locals at all because it's not convenient enough for them do so what will you do for the good of the majority of the people? Forcefully seize their apartment because people need it?

No. You just tax the living daylights out of the empty houses so that they will have to utilize or rent them. That is ALREADY the law in Spain, by the way.

> Forcefully seize their apartment because people need it?

The needs of the many come before the needs of the few. Someone said it somewhere across the ocean. But the country where it was said does not heed it at all. The rest of the world does.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#219

Post by FactKnower69 »

mattrighetti wrote: post #128
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're adults that realize garbage dumps shouldn't be next to schools. And sometimes as society we make decisions that are good for the majority of people. I'm sure you'd love it if someone poisoned your ground water, but they did it by burying toxic materials on their property.

When Airbnb landlords won't rent to locals at all because it's not convenient enough for them do so what will you do for the good of the majority of the people? Forcefully seize their apartment because people need it?

:)

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#220

Post by zrn900 »

isaacremuant wrote: post #51
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!

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

Yes and its a major problem. Some locations are already acting out.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/portugal-ends-golden-...

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

Its not a distraction - its just a start. And hotel quality is still what it was before Airbnb and it will stay like that after airbnb goes away. The standards that national and international tourism institutions apply to the hotels has not changed one iota because of airbnb.

> But hey, instead of fixing the real problems

This is the real problem.

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/travel/2023/10/09/fed-u...

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