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I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

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Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#261

Post by _delirium »

jessedhillon wrote: post #258
omonra wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

If you live across the street from me and have a garage sale every day of the week, we're going to have a problem. Your casual dismissal of licensing and oversight, as merely protections for the entrenched, overlooks the fact that there is more than one interested party here. I have to agree with the upstream commenter's general sentiment that this idea gets all the support here because it lends itself to an easy nar…

Yeah, that's the difference for me also. If my neighbor rents out a couch or spare room on AirBnB a few times a year, no problem. If he is running it as a 365-day-a-year hotel, much more of a problem.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#262

Post by tempestn »

tedunangst wrote: post #134
tptacek wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: your answer is, "nothing", right?

well, there's the whole blogging about it aspect, so not entirely nothing. :)

I think he's saying that the previous industry that airbnb is disrupting is "nothing". As in, there was nothing pre-existing that satisfied the same demand as airbnb.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#263

Post by mindcrime »

omonra wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #81

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

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

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

Neither do I. This is not something the State needs to be involved in at all.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#264

Post by clarkm »

delinka wrote: post #136
oijaf888 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there hotel and zoning laws in unincorporated communities in Nevada?

Probably. It's still in the state of Nevada and in a county. An "unincorporated" town isn't lawless.

Why probably? Even some incorporated areas don't have zoning laws. For example, Houston.

That's right, Houston doesn't have any zoning laws.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#265

Post by aetherson »

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…

That stood out to me as well. She's cleaning his place probably > 4x per month plus doing miscellaneous point-of-contact duties, all for $200 a month? That's insane. It's hard to imagine that if she doubled her prices, the blogger would be better-served to find a new manager.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#266

Post by aetherson »

chadwickthebold wrote: post #138
andr3w321 wrote: post #133

Could someone explain to my ignorant self why zoning a property as hotel and paying hotel tax is necessary? What is it for and why was it created? It seems like a lot of these new startups are the same old business model but skirt costly taxes and regulation (Uber for taxis, Airbnb for hotels, Bitcoin for money transfers)

I believe hotels are regulated and inspected? Not all taxes and regulations are invalid on principle.. Regulations on hotels, car services, and money transfers are usually sold on being in the best interest of the people - protecting their health, safety, and preventing them from being scammed.

That is the theory. However, these sorts of local business regulations are the kinds of things that I think you should be particularly skeptical of. A few points:

1. It's hard to imagine that there's a ton of democratic oversight over hotel regulation. Prior to AirBnB, did anyone EVER, in your life, suggest to you that you should be concerned about the specifics of hotel regulation in your town?

2. These are local laws. Smaller government components, like city, county, and state, are probably more vulnerable to being captured by medium or large businesses than the federal government is, due to less sophistication and professionalism of the politicians (especially) and bureaucrats (less so).

3. A big hotel has a lot of incentive to try to corrupt local regulation to quash competitors and shore up their business. It directly affects their bottom line.

4. These regulations have accreted over time, leading to complex regulations that have lots of loopholes and potentially anachronistic components to them.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#267

Post by tedunangst »

tempestn wrote: post #262
tedunangst wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, there's the whole blogging about it aspect, so not entirely nothing. :)

I think he's saying that the previous industry that airbnb is disrupting is "nothing". As in, there was nothing pre-existing that satisfied the same demand as airbnb.

No, both of us are saying that buying a house to rent out full time is no different than running a hotel. "nothing" is the difference. tptacek appears to have recognized the sarcasm, but apparently nobody else did. I win again.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#268

Post by brandall10 »

benatkin wrote: post #238
mooreds wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someth…

Former HOA president here (for a 77 unit building in downtown San Diego).

Short-term vacation rentals are forbidden here and they are absolutely shut down when found out. You can't 'manage' every single guest that comes thru - most will be respectful, but it won't take long before a group of college students use it as as a party pad. I lived next to one used for that purpose, and while I was on the board we had 4 others we fined to the point where it wasn't worth their while.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#269

Post by mathattack »

nilkn wrote: post #190
mathattack wrote: post #120

I think this is great. Vegas is the perfect spot. It was overbuilt, there is lots of extra supply, and lots of tourists. Great they made it happen. I would think there are two dangers: 1) It can take a lot of time, and time is money. If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on this takes away a 10K profit. 2) You are the on the hook for big surprises: Theft, something breaks, etc. But a…

> If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on this takes away a 10K profit. Stuff like this doesn't make much sense if you're salaried. People like to break down salaries by the hour, but it's just not true. You can put in all the overtime you want and not see an extra penny of profit, at least not directly. You'll only benefit from it if you actually get a promotion or raise as a direc…

Ok - 100k and it's 50 an hour. You could be freelancing with that time. Unless you get enjoyment out of rebuilding homes and customer service. In that case, knock yourself out and do 2 more. Or plow the earnings into a housing empire and do it full time.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#270

Post by Steko »

mindcrime wrote: post #263
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.

Your argument presumes that an extended-stay hotel needs to be licensed. I don't buy it. Neither do I. This is not something the State needs to be involved in at all.

There's something analogous to the weak anthropic principle here in that we mostly live in places where the problems that come with unlicensed hotels have been stomped out, sometimes for generations, largely through successful regulation.
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