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

I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

needwant.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 386 posts

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#121

Post by JackFr »

tedunangst wrote: post #96
tptacek wrote: post #81

Exactly what is the difference between what this person is doing and running an unlicensed extended-stay hotel?

They're disrupting an obsolete industry.

No, travel agents were an obsolete industry.

Hotels are not obsolete, AirBnB is 'disrupting' the industry by ignoring local laws and regulations. It may be that these regulations exist to protect an obsolete business model but it also might not.

When your path is blocked by a fence before you tear it down, its a good idea to understand why it was put up in the first place.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#123

Post by NoodleIncident »

steveisaac wrote: post #67
rytis wrote: post #56

I live in constant fear of getting a bad review. I wonder when is someone going to come up with an idea how to fix this. As far as I can tell there's not a lot a supplier on airbnb/ebay/etc can do about them. It's all too consumer centric... My subjective opinion is that most bad reviews are unwarranted, left by customers that have unrealistic demands.

TripAdvisor and others came up with a good solution a while ago - they let the property owner write a reply to a bad review, and post the reply right underneath the bad review.

I saw those on Amazon a while back, too. It works out quite well, both sides get a say.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#124

Post by MichaelGG »

larrys wrote: post #110
andrewfong wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also prevents a legal and valid use-case -- renting out your couch every night of the the year. So long as you still live in the place yourself full-time, this isn't illegal under most municipal codes.

"So long as you still live in the place yourself " A way to game this might be to: 1) Buy a place 2) Rent out 1 room full time to someone who agrees to #3 in exchange for below market rent. 3) Rent out the other room or rooms.

I think rooms get far less than a full apt, even if you get the same space. Just having to deal with another person there means you can't totally relax in most places. (Like walk naked from the shower to the room.)

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#125

Post by bradleyjg »

petercooper wrote: post #4

It’s possible to find a nice apartment in a major city for less than $50,000. The place I found was in Las Vegas and it cost $40,000. Wow, I had no idea things were that good/bad. Here in the UK, I deliberately choose to live in a cheap part of the country and you'd still be talking $120k or so for an equivalent 1 bed flat. This really illustrates to me why efforts to turn various areas in the US into "mini Silicon V…

Blame the governments of both Labor and Tory persuasion that decided that it should be incredibly difficult to build new housing virtually anywhere in the country. In particular the pernicious greenbelt rules and the grotesque planning permission process. Also worthy of special condemnation are London's protected views.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#126

Post by pbreit »

adrianpike wrote: post #68
wildgift wrote: post #30

That's messed up for the neighbors. Please don't do this.

I don't want to come across as being facetious, but why? At least in my building, there's a large percentage of neighbors who I don't know at all - whether they were renting via Airbnb or owners of their condo, it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

Having new, random, unvetted people accessing your building on a daily basis should make a difference to you.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#128

Post by camus2 »

brightsize wrote: post #97
atwebb wrote: post #14

Good, concise write up with real numbers which is nice. But the woman who is doing all that cleaning and contact work for $200/month is the one making this possible (so it seems) and that could quickly eat up profits (though the ROI is great enough that there's lots of room there). EDIT: Also, is there currently an AirBnb manager market? Similar to the cleaner/manager he has, it would be great for people to invest re…

In a couple of the Airbnb places I stayed at, which had remote owners who I never saw, the manager was really just a minimum-wage sort of person who met me, oriented me, and periodically came in to do some light cleaning (I was a long-term (months) tenant). In Berlin, one of the guys had the gig as a "mini-job", and seemed quite unhappy when I tried to do any of the housekeeping myself - it was taking EUR out of his…

and that can sue you when things go south...

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#129

Post by jongold »

petercooper wrote: post #4

It’s possible to find a nice apartment in a major city for less than $50,000. The place I found was in Las Vegas and it cost $40,000. Wow, I had no idea things were that good/bad. Here in the UK, I deliberately choose to live in a cheap part of the country and you'd still be talking $120k or so for an equivalent 1 bed flat. This really illustrates to me why efforts to turn various areas in the US into "mini Silicon V…

I live in London. I'm looking at >$600k for my first apartment. Jon's apartment in Vegas would be a small fraction of my deposit.

Ugh, I feel sick. And need to move.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#130

Post by [deleted] »

mbreese wrote: post #108

If anyone is interested, this looks like the link to the place: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/643721 Another thing to add to the "if you're thinking of doing this" list - don't write a post about it where you and the location can be identified. This is probably against the HOA agreement (short term leases are prohibited). It also could be a safety issue if you aren't actually living there. Once someone knows the apart…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN