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

231–240 of 386 posts

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#231

Post by jseliger »

brightsize wrote: post #78
rll wrote: post #13

If enough people do this it will be the end of Airbnb. This is one of the patterns the state of NY is using against Airbnb while Airbnb is arguing that the service is intended for people occasionally renting out their primary residence. If the state is able to prove a significant number of people used this model Airbnb is done in NY and I fear other states will follow.

When I was visiting Berlin last winter, I stayed at Airbnb flats and it seemed like a lot of the owners were doing exactly this. In fact, to your point, the city was, IIRC, about to forbid vacation rentals in certain neighborhoods. Berlin is rapidly gentrifying, there's a R.E. bubble going on, poorer people are being pushed out of the city, and this kind of thing intensifies that trend. I've no idea if cities in the…

Berlin is rapidly gentrifying, there's a R.E. bubble going on, poorer people are being pushed out of the city

This is true in lots of fun cities, primarily because it's so hard to build new housing stock—which is a Bad Thing, as Matthew Yglesias describes in The Rent is Too Damn High. Britain is suffering from a variant of the "no building" problem too: http://www.buzzfeed.com/dlknowles/britains-dysfunctional-pro... : "Construction started on just 107,000 new homes in England last year. Excluding World War II, that’s the lowest figure since the 1920s."

The solution to "gentrification" and what not is "building new dwellings," which we know how to do very effectively (elevators and steel are century-old technologies). The problem is regulatory / political.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#232

Post by _delirium »

rosser wrote: post #177
rayiner wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But, computers!" is the difference.

s/computers/disruptive/ But, yeah. Pretty much.

Well, that part isn't new. An illegal flophouse is already disruptive, and it didn't require computers to operate one. The new thing here is flophouses with online booking.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#233

Post by _delirium »

JesseAldridge wrote: post #227
tptacek wrote: post #81

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

Airbnb's review system fills the roll of licenser.

Does AirBnB's review system let neighbors to the property file negative reviews?

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#234

Post by jseliger »

hammerzeit wrote: post #191
riggins wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is definitely happening in NYC. A friend of mine just told me how he was considering getting in on it. In NYC there's an enormous arbitrage. The cheapest hotel room in the city is $300/night. Meanwhile, you can rent a 1BR apt for $2,500 / month. So you rent an apt for $2,500 / month and book it out on AirBnB for $200 / night ... and you're looking at a monthly arbitrage of $3,500. The guy I know heard about it f…

Easily. I know at least two people clearing $100k/year by being 'airbnb slumlords.' Real estate agents are keeping apartments off the market and renting them out as hotels. Airbnb is clearly forcing a convergence between hotel prices and rents. This doesn't just mean forcing hotel prices down, it also means forcing rents up. I wish the tech community could stop reflexively defending airbnb and engage with the questio…

Airbnb is clearly forcing a convergence between hotel prices and rents. This doesn't just mean forcing hotel prices down, it also means forcing rents up.

I responded to this issue here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6657242 , but the short answer is to build more units.

Building the Second Ave Subway, extending express bus service, and doing similar things would also be helpful.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#235

Post by ye »

So what happens when

1) Your apartment gets trashed. They break your walls, pour cement down your drain, break the furniture, etc?

2) Tenants refuse to move out. I'm sure there are all kinds of laws protecting them, and it's very hard to kick them out even if they aren't paying.

3) Somebody gets injured on your property (slips in the bathroom and breaks an arm), and sues you for a shitload of money.

Also, you forgot amortization in your calculations. Things will wear and tear.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#236

Post by genwin »

bluedino wrote: post #98

Just buy houses in Flint or some other lowly rust-belt city. Buy the property for $5,000, fix it up a little (wait to see why) and then find a renter for $700/month. If you're lucky they'll be section 8 so you don't really even have to worry about them skipping out on the rent. Worst case you spend a few months evicting them and then spend a couple grand fixing it up after the house is completely trashed from piles o…

There's an article online about a guy who did this for dozens of properties in Detroit. It didn't work out so well because rent is more like $400 a month. The typical fix cost on a $5K property is $20K because of tax payments in arrears and liens and so forth.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#237

Post by omonra »

dsl wrote: post #230
omonra wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument presumes that an extended-stay hotel needs to be licensed. I don't buy it.

Well seeing as you'd be obligated to collect things like hotel occupancy taxes in most cities and states, and all sorts of consumer protection laws apply to hotels, the reasonable assumption is licensing is required. At the minimum, you need a business licence.

To me the issue is scale. Just like people can hold garage sales or lemonade stand w/o a license vs running a bar.

By same token - I don't mind someone renting out AN apartment. If the issue is tax - Airbnb can simply collect it on behalf of the renter. As far as consumer protection - the guest deals with AirBnB and not an individual host.

If license was obtained by simply filling out a web form and paying a fee - I'd be all for it. But the way things are now, the whole issue of licensing is about protecting the hotel industry.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#238

Post by benatkin »

mooreds wrote: post #170
mbreese wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a quick scan of what I think is likely the HOA rules ( http://valenciahoa.com/admin/uploads/r&r.pdf ), you can't have sub-30 day leases. I'm not sure this is the right HOA, but from the Google Street View, the logos are the same.

Hy HOA (not in Nevada) has this exact same clause, and when I read about this, I wondered what his HOA would say. If I were an HOA, I'd be pretty concerned about AirBNB.

If I worked for the HOA and I saw this I would try to figure out if anyone knows I saw it. If not, I would ignore it. It's technically against the rules but OP seems to be doing a good job of managing it, and I doubt I could apply a higher standard to the rest of the units. I'd wait for a resident to bring the issue to me, which would hopefully never happen.

If I managed a ritzier condo complex I'd probably do something about it immediately rather than take a wait and see approach.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#239

Post by melatoned »

brightsize wrote: post #78
rll wrote: post #13

If enough people do this it will be the end of Airbnb. This is one of the patterns the state of NY is using against Airbnb while Airbnb is arguing that the service is intended for people occasionally renting out their primary residence. If the state is able to prove a significant number of people used this model Airbnb is done in NY and I fear other states will follow.

When I was visiting Berlin last winter, I stayed at Airbnb flats and it seemed like a lot of the owners were doing exactly this. In fact, to your point, the city was, IIRC, about to forbid vacation rentals in certain neighborhoods. Berlin is rapidly gentrifying, there's a R.E. bubble going on, poorer people are being pushed out of the city, and this kind of thing intensifies that trend. I've no idea if cities in the…

I put my parents up in an AirBnB apt in Paris when they were visiting me. The renter had an agreement with a handful of friends that they would crash at their friend's apt when their apt was being AirBnB'd out. She said a lot of the students do it to earn extra cash. Same was true in most other cities we AirBnB'd in.

Berlin has been gentrifying ever since they tore down that wall. You can still buy apartments in East Berlin for under $100K.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#240

Post by genwin »

KingMob wrote: post #214
lotsofpulp wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unrealistic to expect any dwelling, whether it be hotel or hostel, to be free of bed bugs, especially if you're in a region with lots of international travelers. There is no effective insecticide for them, they can be impossible to see, and they don't need to eat for months. Now, any decent hotel will be doing periodic checks for bedbugs around the box spring and headboard, and any other wooden furniture. But t…

??? If there's no effective insecticide, how do you think we're killing them? The various -methrin-based compounds are generally pretty effective, though occasionally resistant subpopulations crop up.

A shop vac removes them from a mattress.
Post reply on HN