Earlier quoted context omitted.
Offer the renter a split in lawyer fees?
No, create an Airbnb-friendly lease boilerplate.
Is your insurance company (I assume you carry liability of some type) going to go for that?
NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
221–230 of 276 posts
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't, for example, run a tannery in your apartment. I would prefer that you could, in the (perhaps unlikely) scenario that it was allowed by the terms of your rental agreement. If it's your own property, go right ahead. > What's more, as a resident (and especially if I were an owner) I wouldn't want my building being a de facto hotel. Many residents would probably agree, and if enough agree, then there's no re…
You cannot be serious. Just because you happen to own the property does not give you absolute rights. What you are arguing against is called zoning and the legality of that is very well settled. The tannery example is pretty apt here - what right do you have to run a foul smelling eyesore right beside the property where I'm attempting to raise a family?
> What you are arguing against is called zoning and the legality of that is very well settled.
Indeed. I am seriously arguing against zoning, or rather, against the necessity and wisdom of government (i.e. violent, compulsory) action to solve this problem.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what right do you have to run a foul smelling eyesore right beside the property where I'm attempting to raise a family? He has every right to do this. Why do you assume that your family is more important than his tannery? The regulations against things like tannery in an apartment are only there so that you can, when e.g. choosing a place to raise your family, find a place that will suit your requirements. It's lik…
As HarryHirsch says, no he absolutely does not have that right. Zoning is far from a new invention, it's been around since the industrial revolution at least. I'm honestly shocked that people apparently would want to live in the kind of an environment where at any second the property next door could be turned into a tannery. How could anyone have confidence in their property's value in a society where that was allowe…
There is more than one to solve social problems. Centralized, violent, compulsory action (government) is one way, but there are others. Opposing "the government solution" is not the same thing as denying the problem or refusing to fix it.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point, the cost of adjusting for the externalities will erase the savings of AirBnB. Which would indicate that the much of the "benefit" of AirBnB simply comes from not paying for the externalities. Beyond the neighbors, there would also need to be city taxes to pay for the regulation and oversight of the rental (and fire inspections, etc), and the use of city services by visitors (who probably don't pay inco…
I recently stayed for a few days in an AirBnB room while my wife and I were in New York. A comparably nice hotel room in the same neighborhood would have run us a minimum of $350 a night; the AirBnB room was $110. While I certainly believe that some of the "benefit" of AirBnB comes from not paying for externalities, it stretches logic to believe that those externalities account for $240 a day for two people in one ro…
That assumes that the hotel room and the AirBnB room were comparable in terms of amenities and services, which they probably weren't. (Room service? Daily cleaning? Gym? Doormen/porters?) You can get a pretty nice hotel in NY for $350 a night -- the W hotel downtown has rooms for $359 this weekend.
I'm not saying there aren't great deals out there on AirBnB; right now it's a market of people basically selling unused inventory at very low prices. I'm saying that if they had to incur more normal requirements (safety, taxes, insurance), the pricing would rise and the inventory would decline. If that same AirBnB room cost $250, it might not as interesting to you.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cannot be serious. Just because you happen to own the property does not give you absolute rights. What you are arguing against is called zoning and the legality of that is very well settled. The tannery example is pretty apt here - what right do you have to run a foul smelling eyesore right beside the property where I'm attempting to raise a family?
> What you are arguing against is called zoning and the legality of that is very well settled. Indeed. I am seriously arguing against zoning, or rather, against the necessity and wisdom of government (i.e. violent, compulsory) action to solve this problem.
The alternative would be a society not based on the law, but on connections and reputation - real-life examples would be a Brazilian favela, Wikipedia, the Iceland of the Sagas. Not something I'd prefer.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're supposed to. How many do you think actually are?
Probably about the same percent as individuals who rent out their apartment long-term?
I doubt it. Landlords have to count rent as aggregate gross income on their tax returns, and it's probably both fairly easy to get caught and fairly serious if you do get caught.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Em...
(If you're just subletting, only any net gain is taxable, which is probably minor.)
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cannot be serious. Just because you happen to own the property does not give you absolute rights. What you are arguing against is called zoning and the legality of that is very well settled. The tannery example is pretty apt here - what right do you have to run a foul smelling eyesore right beside the property where I'm attempting to raise a family?
That should really depend on the contracts and negotiations between property owners, tenants, etc. Maybe you don't mind living next to that "eyesore" because it's much cheaper and you can afford private schooling for your children. Everything is a cost/benefit, and people may be willing to sacrifice one thing for another, so have a little empathy.
I think you missed the point of "externality": the people affected by the externality are not party to the negotiations.
In other words, when I buy the house next to yours, and from one day to the next, decide to use it to store decaying pig shit in the yard, or manufacture high explosives, all of a sudden, you got something really nasty that you did not choose. It's not as if you chose to move next door knowing full well what goes on in my business. All of a sudden, the value of your house has dropped, and you haven't been compensated for it at all.
I agree that zoning and restrictions should be regulated at a local level so that multiple solutions can arise, but it seems like trying to involve neighbors in contract negotiations becomes quite complicated quickly. The guy 2 houses down has seen his house fall in value too, although maybe not quite so much. The guy 20 houses away might still smell things on a bad day, so he's affected a little bit too, should he be included in negotiations as well?
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When you forced to pay $300/night in Manhattan at the W hotel, Atlas Shrugged. No one is "forcing" you to spend $300/night in Manhattan for a hotel. You should read that book again because you are also not using "Atlas Shrugged" in a meaningful context. > Not a AR fan btw, just saying both sides of the fence have their pros and cons. I'd place higher value on an apartment complex that explicitly did not allow short…
The only difference that matters between friendly exchanges (cooking and room/board) and AirBnB or underground restaurants is that one set of actions threaten the existing power brokers who have the ear of City Hall. No one blinks when you disrupt file sharing or social networking, but disrupt automotive, taxis, or hotels (for example) and you're in a world of legal hurt. I fully understand that these zoning laws tha…
> The only difference that matters between friendly exchanges (cooking and room/board) and AirBnB or underground restaurants is that one set of actions threaten the existing power brokers who have the ear of City Hall.
I think it's a shame that most people are too cynical to understand why laws and regulations around food, housing, transportation, etc. exist. Odd in particular that you think preventing underground restaurants has anything to do with protecting the power brokers when there's a big public health case to be made for ensuring that food is prepared in a sanitary environment. I'm guessing you're in favor of a solution that let's people get sick/die and then let the free market enact it's revenge on the restaurant. Good thing we decided to leave that model out with the 20th century.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-success-story-of-chobani-... But maybe that is the exception that proves the rule. Or maybe you didn't mean dairy products.
Chobani is unusual in that it brought a different product to the market that was objectively better. There are other new players in the dairy industry, but a lot of that action is applying lifestyle marketing to food products (e.g. getting people to pay more for trendy food when they could get the same food for much less without the lifestyle brand). Think about stuff like flavored water--a product that couldn't get…
Looking at my comment, the last bit looks sarcastic. I actually meant that I thought you might be thinking more of milk production and less about processed diary.
Anyway, I'm not sure 5 of them would really weaken the point you were making.
Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I live in San Francisco, where airbnb is legal (as far as I know) Its generally not (its illegal in San Francisco to rent a unit for less than thirty days in a residential building with more than four units.) New York and San Francisco are the two US locations that I've seen the most news coverage for AirBnB's legal issues in. > yet my property owner explicitly prohibits "short term subleasing," effectively banning…
So because there is dependence on some monopolistic entity for contract disputes (there really shouldn't be), then that gives justification for that entity to intrude on voluntary actions? Seems like a logical fallacy to me. How about we let people transact peacefully and deal with the problems on a case-by-case basis instead of lumping everyone under the same law that allows no room for exploration.
> So because there is dependence on some monopolistic entity for contract disputes (there really shouldn't be)
Its definitional: if you aren't seeking the threat of state enforcement to enforce a set of mutual promises, you don't have a contract, you have a mutual set of promises that lacks the intent necessary to form a contract.
> then that gives justification for that entity to intrude on voluntary actions?
Yes, using the threat of action by other people to get what you want gives those other people a right to a voice in what you can use that threat to support.
> Seems like a logical fallacy to me.
Subjective appearance can say as much about the one seeing as the thing being seen.
> How about we let people transact peacefully and deal with the problems on a case-by-case basis instead of lumping everyone under the same law that allows no room for exploration.
Enforcement of existing laws, civil and criminal, is done on a case-by-case basis by actual people; even if something creates a civil or criminal cause of action, the party (the prosecutorial authority of the state, in criminal cases) with the cause of action may choose not exercise it, and jury nullification is thing, so, largely, what you call for is the status quo.
If you think the specific parameters of the existing law are drawn incorrectly, you probably ought to address your specific problem rather than calling for abstract features that already exist in the current system.