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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

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Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#301

Post by kranke155 »

dnissley wrote: post #296
kranke155 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly right. It is exactly like oil and “resource curse”, for many poor countries. The pay is generally minimum wage and the only ones who see big returns are the owners of capital. It’s not a distributive industry. If you have too much of your country’s economy invested, I’d say you’re almost always looking at an unhealthy economy.

I would argue that while there are some similarities, there are also many differences, and that claiming it's not distributive is incorrect. The number of workers I interact with (and to whom the money I spend flows) as a tourist is quite large compared to the number of people who benefit from use of an extracted natural resource.

It’s not as bad, but fundamentally the vast majority of tourism workers earn minimum wage.

So you can have some tourism to keep some people employed, sure. But if it’s +15-20% of your economy, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#302

Post by pezezin »

pelorat wrote: post #94
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…

Here in Europe building denser housing is extremely frowned upon by cultural conservatives, who unfortunately are in charge everywhere. That's why there's hardly any high-rises in Europe. Extreme height restrictions combined with extreme regulatory costs is what has lead to this issue. Show a European politician, especially a local one in charge of urban development, an image from Tokyo and they will recoil in horror…

As an Spanish guy living in Japan, let me tell you that Japanese urban planning and development is an utter disaster that we should not copy. Please find a better example.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#303

Post by HDThoreaun »

dubcanada wrote: post #109
readthenotes1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep, that would be artificial inflation too.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#304

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kranke155 wrote: post #288
mapcars wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tourism industry has a significant impact on Spain’s economy, generating over 70 billion euros in gross value added (GVA) in 2019. This represents a substantial contribution to the country’s GDP and employment, with over 2.5 million people employed in the tourism sector Well maybe you will just tell Spanish government how to replace that?

Im not saying one should ignore it. Just that it’s not a particularly good industry for a country, particularly poor countries. The pay in tourism is terrible, usually minimum wage, except for the owners of capital, who gain enormous returns on investing in hotels / airbnbs / tourist aimed businesses. That means it has an awful return for the ones most in need which are the poor. It’s not a distributive industry. On…

> Can tourism be A PART of a healthy economy ? Sure. But it shouldn’t be in charge of that economy

This is true of any sector. New York get volatile when over-reliant on FIRE; San Francisco goes into a depression when valuations dip.

Also, this is a story about Barcelona. An industrial city. Tourism is a minority.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#306

Post by senordevnyc »

kranke155 wrote: post #290
robocat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New Zealand, Tourism gross operating surplus (profit) looks to be about 20% from graph in https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/tourism-satel... As a share of the total number of people employed in New Zealand, direct tourism employment was 6.7 percent. I think the main problem with tourism is that it is a luxury service and tourism income shrinks when the world economy stinks. The other issue is that man…

The pay in tourism is terrible, usually minimum wage, except for the owners of capital, who gain enormous returns on investing in hotels / airbnbs / tourist aimed businesses. That means it has an awful return for the ones most in need which are the poor. It’s not a distributive industry. On top of that, it can cause a “resource curse” type phenomenon where great beaches or some other attraction causes enormous amount…

Tourist gives you such great returns on investment it doesn’t make sense to do anything else if you have capital

Yep, I'm considering buying a vacation home to Airbnb for this reason. I have mixed feelings about it though, because I don't want to be part of the problem. But I live in NYC and I can't move (shared custody), nor can I buy a suitable home in the city, meanwhile the national housing market is exploding. I need some way to hedge for real estate inflation, and vacation rentals have better ROI.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#308

Post by credit_guy »

AlexandrB wrote: post #137
credit_guy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This completely neglects the opportunity cost of the real estate being used for something else (like housing citizens) instead. Housing is also not fungible - so if you "export" your most desirable real-estate you can't just make more of it.

> you can't just make more of it.

Actually you can. It's called building.

Take NYC for example. My guess is that at least half of the housing stock in NYC is "pre-war". The "war" in that expression is World War 2. No washer-driers, no elevators, but a good number of mice and rats.

You could absolutely take these buildings down and build back something better. And that better could have more apartment units.

I live in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in NYC and in the world. All buildings are new (post 2000). If you replace the rest of the city with such buildings, you can certainly have enough housing for 30 million people.

But the foreign investors don't buy to come and live here. You can just build, sell, and not deal with the crowding.

And that could result in lower construction costs too. Why are new apartments so expensive? Because we don't know how to build anymore. We don't know because we don't build.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#309

Post by smsm42 »

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.

Would it reduce the number of tourists? Not likely, they'd just pay more to hotels (and thus have less money to spend on other things - vacation budget is usually limited, but it's distribution between various types of expense is not predetermined). Would it make Barcelona a less popular destination for non-natives? Not likely, unless it objectively becomes worse place for natives too.

NYC, Barcelona and any major city that hasn't gone the way of SF and Portland, have the same problem - a lot of people like to be there, either temporarily or permanently, but the number of accommodations, both temporary and permanent, is not infinitely scalable and runs out pretty fast, especially if the city managers aren't actively working on fixing that problem by increasing the supply - which they often don't.

Increasing the supply is hard and leads to a tangle of its own challenges. Blaming somebody else - especially somebody that doesn't even vote in the local elections - is much easier, and by the time it turns out it doesn't help - which will be some 10 years ago from now - the managers could fail upwards, retire or think about some other scapegoat to blame.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#310

Post by rightbyte »

jmyeet wrote: post #55

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…

> local government, which is democratic. HOAs are not.

What? Most HOAs seem to be one house one vote? Or what does not make them democratic. Should it be one vote per dweller?

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