Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

euronews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 162 posts

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#11

Post by bsoql »

rdtsc wrote: post #10
probably_wrong wrote: post #5

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they…

> I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. I am totally unfamiliar with Spain, but wondering what would government have to do to improve the situation? They wouldn’t build government ow…

https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg

How much effect will 65000 flats have on this?

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#12

Post by friendzis »

boblawbomb wrote: post #7

[flagged]

> Perhaps this is me being an ignorant American, but the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well.

Yes, it's you being both ignorant and american. This argument quite directly, without any slopes (slippery or not), extends to for example acquiring a piece of land, building some housing at premium costs and then slapping a factory (and waste landifill, for a good measure) on the rest of the lot.

Housing regulations exists for many abundant reasons. Living quarters vs short-time rentals drastically change requirements for and load on surrounding infrastructure, which is built out based on established zoning.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#13

Post by maeln »

probably_wrong wrote: post #5

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they…

> Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments.

This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city.

Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but this creates challenges with public transportation and other public services. And it can be slow since it means having to expel industry and agriculture further to rezone area into constructible home/office area. So the other option is to build up, which means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint. This would be bad for tourism (and people who live here might not like it either), since this is a big reason why people even come to visit.

In the past, cities had simple way to deal with this. With zoning and hotel licences, the city could have a real urban plan on how it wanted to evolve and how much space it wanted to dedicate to tourism vs industry vs offices vs homes. But AirBnb came and just said "fuck that" and bypass complitely the licence système and or building and operating permit usually needed for tourism. Greed and capitalism took advantage of that and the number of place to rent or buy descreased significantly in favour of short term tourism rental, making living in the city slowly unaffordable.

Building more is not that simple. AirBnb respecting the law is a simple solution. It won't complitely solve the issue of the availaibility of affordable home, but it sures as hell help.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#14

Post by dazc »

boblawbomb wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Housing used to be relatively cheap in Spain which has resulted in huge swathes of the main cities and tourist resorts becoming almost entirely airbnbs. The social/economic implications could have been predicted long ago.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#15

Post by pezgrande »

probably_wrong wrote: post #5

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they…

Did Airbnb really affect house market that much? Hotels got wayyy more expensive now there so I expect less tourism in the future, wonder if it was a good trade off.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#16

Post by KeplerBoy »

daedrdev wrote: post #9

The main issue with going after airbnb is that its a true bandaid fix: the gains in supply are often offset by just a few years or months progression of the underbuilding of supply

Still necessary though.

If the economics work out for landlords, a city can lose a lot of apartments to short term rentals way faster than it could increase supply. Especially in central districts where significant new construction is barely possible.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#17

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

I distincly recall many articles stating that for ridiculous EUR like 50k you could buy housing in spain right after 2007 the crisis, for many years afterward. Because it was so overbuilt , at least outside of the big metros) that the builders and sellers were desperate to move.

I wonder if they all wiped out by the crisis (subprime really hit spain hard), and what we are seeing now is the consequence of that wipeout, and bankruptcies.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#19

Post by igtztorrero »

bsoql wrote: post #11
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. I am totally unfamiliar with Spain, but wondering what would government have to do to improve the situation? They wouldn’t build government ow…

https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg How much effect will 65000 flats have on this?

Everyone likes the warmth of Spain in winter

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#20

Post by namdnay »

maeln wrote: post #13
probably_wrong wrote: post #5

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they…

> Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city. Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but th…

if building up is bad for tourism, it kills two birds with one stone: more housing and less tourists who want airbnbs. so slowly build up until you stabilise the tourism at the level you want!
Post reply on HN