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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

#291

Post by 205guy »

gaius wrote: post #99
adrianpike wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because people don't behave in a hotel as they do at home - they're on holiday after all, so they might come back late drunk, they might want to party, they might make a mess in the hallway. Different people, every night. An unlike an owner, they could be anyone, or bring anyone with them. Basically, you are externalizing all the downside onto your neighbours, while pocketing the upside. It is no surprise that AirBnB…

Upvoted to counter the downvote. US citizen (who went to college in Europe) here and I agree that it's no surprise that AirBnB started in America. I've seen ruthless business practices all over Europe, but there is always a level of social responsibiltiy that is more generally lacking in the US.

Edited to add: Americans almost always say "vacation" instead of "holiday" but you could be a long term expat who is picking up the local language.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#292

Post by fthssht »

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…

I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm surprised this is the top comment on "hacker" news.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#293

Post by vidarh »

argumentum wrote: post #288
_delirium wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if he/she dated and brought home 365 people a year? You may not like it .. but it is really your business what someone does in the privacy of their own home?

The moment the person operates it as a hotel, the person has turned it into a business and semi-public space and regulation does not affect the privacy of the owner. In the dating scenario, on the other hand, it would.

There's a lot of behaviour that is undesirable to neighbours because it directly and negatively affect our lives, that we are still willing to accept (if possibly grudgingly) if doing anything about it would mean interfering in someones private life.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#294

Post by patio11 »

If you're thinking of doing this but aren't sure about the legal side of things, consider buying a duplex or quadplex and living in one of the units yourself. This will let you qualify for owner-occupied rates on the mortgage and insurance, likely insulate you from a condo agreement which would forbid renting, and means that you're the primary party who'd suffer from guest misbehavior, which strikes me as socially optimal. Also, if you tire of Airbnb transient relationships, duplex units are fairly easy to rent out "traditionally."

Downside: more capitally intensive, and requires you to be OK with owning a house.

This is (pre-Airbnb) one of the classic hacks for middle class Americans to start real estate businesses, since you can fairly easily get sufficient cash flow and/or equity after running a duplex for a few years to get a bank to OK you adding other rental properties.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#295

Post by vidarh »

maxwell wrote: post #224
JackFr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I worked in hospitality for 5 years, and right now I'm staying at a hotel in downtown Vegas, a few miles from the author's Airbnb place. Hotels are obsolete. It's not the business model, short-term housing and hospitality certainly have no risk of obsolescence ever, it's the industry. Service sucks, rooms suck, tech really sucks. You have awkward kids in bad suits and clip-on ties at the front desk who're trained to…

Here's the alternate view:

I used to "commute" to the Bay Area every 6-8 weeks for a couple of years. I'd stay a week each time. A hotel offered me a certain expected standard of service, which might not be great, but it was there. It offered me regular cleaning. It meant I had a reasonable expectation of a room of the standard expected of the hotel whenever I came over, as the number of rooms available meant I did not have to deal with people who had a single room or a handful of units available that'd regularly book up.

After a handful of trips, I had my list of 3 preferred hotels in the area, and knew I'd generally get one of the types of rooms I liked best every time I came over.

And every now and again I made use of room service or laundry services, and those few instances were themselves often worth it. But most of the time I spent a total of perhaps 10 minutes dealing with hotel staff over the course of a 1 week stay.

For a lot of people, hotels offers a certain set of expectations that might very well not include "great service" to be worthwhile. Not having the risk of suddenly dealing with some owner flaking on me would alone make picking a hotel worth it. When arriving after 16 hours of travel (11 hour flight + annoying time on both ends), I wanted to be able to walk up to the desk at the hotel, present them my details, including my bonus card, and know I'd be in the room and relaxing five minutes later, with no hassle.

"Walking through a beautiful neighbourhood" or chatting with a host would be far down the list of things going through my head at that time. In fact, my boss at the time lived nearby, in a beautiful, expensive house in Palo Alto, and I did stay with him once and it was nice as a social thing. But the hotels, while far less personal have what for many travellers is an advantage of being extremely predictable.

So no, hotels are not doomed at all. Some hotels might lose some types of customers. Likely the type of customers that are fickle and leave money in local breakfast places rather than in their restaurants, care about the cost of extras because they pay for it out of their own pocket, and otherwise generally contribute less to their profits anyway.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#296

Post by shawnee_ »

Find a great property manager / cleaner -- Without one of these doing this remotely would be impossible. I managed to find a great local cleaner on craigslist. She charges a flat fee of $200 per month which covers unlimited cleanings.

And she's probably illegal . . . But even if she's not illegal, how can this "property manager" live with himself, taking advantage of people who don't "know" enough (whether of the language or minimum wage laws) to understand that they are being taken advantage of? I was born in Vegas and have seen what that city has become -- if there's one thing in abundance there it's under-the-radar immigrants.

This post represents everything that is wrong with the property management and rental industry:

White man want easy money. White man charge high rents. White man hire nice, busy ladies who no speak English to do hard work cleaning. White man hire nice, fast men who no speak English to do hard work painting and carpet replacing. White man take profit for himself and give teeny bit to people who no speak English because they no understand how hard it is to make easy money.

His cleaning lady is even laundering towels and sheets for $200 per month? How nice of her.

I have about 3 or 4 sets of sheets and towels. This way the cleaner doesn’t need to wash everything in the 3 hours between guest check in and check out. They can simply take all the dirty sheets and towels home, wash them, then next time they swing by the apartment have a clean set of everything ready to drop off.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#297

Post by vidarh »

crbnw00ts wrote: post #273
maxwell wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in hospitality for 5 years, and right now I'm staying at a hotel in downtown Vegas, a few miles from the author's Airbnb place. Hotels are obsolete. It's not the business model, short-term housing and hospitality certainly have no risk of obsolescence ever, it's the industry. Service sucks, rooms suck, tech really sucks. You have awkward kids in bad suits and clip-on ties at the front desk who're trained to…

A quick list of gripes is a pretty unconvincing argument that hotels are "doomed". There is no guarantee that any of those things would be better at an AirBnB. Likewise, a corresponding list of gripes could be assembled for AirBnB-like services. Neither type of service seems "doomed", although the AirBnB-type stuff is probably on shakier ground at the moment, merely due to the legal gray areas.

The big thing for me, is predictability. If I book in at a chain hotel in particular, especially a chain I've stayed at before, I have a certain expectation that the standard is roughly en par, and that the level of hassles will be similar. If I book via AirBnB, I have no idea if the next host will be anything like the previous, and have to put in effort checking reviews. It's hassle I might take if I'm going to spend lots of time planning a long vacation. Not something I want to deal with for short stays or business trips.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#298

Post by pimeys »

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…

In Mitte, there are some buildings where most of the apartments are Airbnb rentals or similar. There are few local residents left who are not so happy about living in a 24/7 party hostel.

If you don't end your contract, your rent is going to stay quite low in Berlin. If you're retired or unemployed and living decently with a rent around 100€ per month, it's not so easy to escape from the apartment. With a new contract, the rent might be ten times more expensive. Or the place is renovated and put into Airbnb.

People in general here in Berlin don't want more hotels. Especially for the residential neighbourhoods which makes all the prices go up even faster. Too bad some of the neighbourhoods are also very 'hip' places to stay...

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#299

Post by jrockway »

jasonwocky wrote: post #249
scott_karana wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the difference (at least in the case of NY) is lack of regulation and kickbacks (sorry, taxes) for the local government.

If you want to visit my city and see its sights, you can "kick back" into the damn kitty that it takes to keep those sights maintained.

I'd prefer the opposite. I wish tourists didn't cover any costs of running my city. Then it would be optimized for those of us that actually live here.

If there's one thing I've learned in my old age, it's that I love buying things for people. Because then the power dynamic is in my favor: this is my city, enjoy your visit but leave no trace.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#300

Post by happyrock »

shawnee_ wrote: post #296

Find a great property manager / cleaner -- Without one of these doing this remotely would be impossible. I managed to find a great local cleaner on craigslist. She charges a flat fee of $200 per month which covers unlimited cleanings. And she's probably illegal . . . But even if she's not illegal, how can this "property manager" live with himself, taking advantage of people who don't "know" enough (whether of the lan…

Those evil white men up to no good again. When will the evil white man ever understand his evil? He won't, because evil never knows itself. It's in his nature after all.

In other words, yawn.

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