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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

#371

Post by unethical_ban »

vidarh wrote: post #293
argumentum wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ugh. My sister says the same thing: If someone does something for profit, suddenly it's everyone's business.

I don't get the logic at all.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#372

Post by eropple »

ghaff wrote: post #344
marvin wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good. But all the wealthy people who already live there will probably use their political clout to prevent new construction.

And this is inherently wrong, why? People (of whatever their net worth) vote, speak at meetings, and talk to their representatives to try and pursue outcomes that they prefer. One of those outcomes may be maintaining a particular character for a neighborhood. It's complicated. Greater good for the larger city or whatever and all that. But I don't see anything devious about residents having a say in what their communi…

> And this is inherently wrong, why?

Because the world does not exist for the benefit of the rich and privileged; not simply the "rolling in Maserati" rich but those in a position to enact those gentrifying policies--who are overwhelmingly upper-income and capable of exerting more time to get what they want, have more money to apply to their causes, and generally are better-educated and able to execute.

The "selfish vote" amongst the privileged is indeed a problem. A lack of social responsibility and a refusal to understand that those unlike you must too be able to live are moral failings. They are wrong, and situations that increase the effectiveness and value of the selfish vote amongst people with privilege are undesirable.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#373

Post by geofft »

sausman wrote: post #307
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…

If he's offering $200/mo and she accepts, it's the best she can get. If she were being offered more by someone else I imagine she "knows" enough to determine the bigger of two numbers and accept the better offer. Her options range from $0/mo to $200/mo. You think her best option, the one she chose, should be taken away by force because after reading a blog post you know how to make better life decisions for her? I fi…

What's your opinion on minimum-wage laws, and about the thought process that went into creating them?

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#374

Post by lambdaphage »

geebee wrote: post #350
anoncowherd wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly legal to do this. .. Why the everloving fuck would this be illegal? What sense could it possibly make? -You have some property and you're letting someone use it for a fee. I get that this actually might be illegal somewhere - I'm just trying to highlight the fact that it would be absolutely fucking insane.

A lot of people don't want to live next to a revolving door of new arrivals. They enjoy knowing their neighbors, having friends for their kids nearby, and building lasting relationships with the community. They are willing to trade their own right to rent out their house as a short term hotel in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either. Yes, this does amount to a limit on…

People have lots of preferences about housing, which is why people tend to make an effort to suss out their housing options. Whether your neighbors are permanent or transient is just another dimension along which your preferences can vary. I don't understand why that preference in particular should be legally codified, whereas practically every other variable gets determined by people voting with their feet and dollars.

The same argument, after all, goes through for long-term renters too, whom a lot of people don't want to live next to. Should we zone all annual leases as well?

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#375

Post by lylebarrere »

Shinkei wrote: post #325
lxmorj wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? It's abusive because he makes a profit and doesn't do all the work himself?? Watch out, all of business, ever!!

It's abusive because he is passing the cost of cleaning the place to the user... which in fairness should then be variable based on its usage. 1 OCD person gets charged the same fee as multiple slobs that brought their pets and smoked in the apartment. That 'fee' should be rolled into the rental cost/cost of doing business. He is using it to augment his profit.

The distinction is that the cleaning fee is per stay; I'd agree that it would be smarmy if the fee was per night.

So if you stay one night you pay $35 and if you stay seven nights you still pay $35. Raising the per night rental fee would mean penalize people who stay longer than the average stay.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#376

Post by omonra »

WalterSear wrote: post #362
omonra wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so the issue is not really licensing, if we get honest. Instead you don't want your next door neighbor to rent out his apartment on a full-time basis and see requirement to obtain a license as a measure that would prevent that from happening. I do agree it's a valid concern - but I'm not really sure why we need extra laws for this. The guests are either doing something illegal or they are not - in which case, I d…

No, you don't know what the point of licensing is about. If you drive badly, what will the police do with your license?

Fine - so let's make obtaining an 'airbnb license' as easy as the driver one. Then if host has issues - take it away.

But somehow I imagine that red tape required to obtain a hotel license is significantly longer, benefiting large companies.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#377

Post by unethical_ban »

unethical_ban wrote: post #371
vidarh wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ugh. My sister says the same thing: If someone does something for profit, suddenly it's everyone's business. I don't get the logic at all.

And no one tried to justify it.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#378

Post by intopieces »

lambdaphage wrote: post #374
geebee wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't want to live next to a revolving door of new arrivals. They enjoy knowing their neighbors, having friends for their kids nearby, and building lasting relationships with the community. They are willing to trade their own right to rent out their house as a short term hotel in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either. Yes, this does amount to a limit on…

People have lots of preferences about housing, which is why people tend to make an effort to suss out their housing options. Whether your neighbors are permanent or transient is just another dimension along which your preferences can vary. I don't understand why that preference in particular should be legally codified, whereas practically every other variable gets determined by people voting with their feet and dolla…

Have you ever bought a house? It's exhausting and expensive, and it's not as easy to "vote with your feet" after the neighbor decides to make his new place into a hotel. It's not like changing pharmacists. These protections exist for a reason.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#379

Post by lambdaphage »

intopieces wrote: post #378
lambdaphage wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have lots of preferences about housing, which is why people tend to make an effort to suss out their housing options. Whether your neighbors are permanent or transient is just another dimension along which your preferences can vary. I don't understand why that preference in particular should be legally codified, whereas practically every other variable gets determined by people voting with their feet and dolla…

Have you ever bought a house? It's exhausting and expensive, and it's not as easy to "vote with your feet" after the neighbor decides to make his new place into a hotel. It's not like changing pharmacists. These protections exist for a reason.

Well actually, speak of the devil, I moved out of my last apartment specifically because my downstairs neighbors, who had lived there for years, were completely intolerable. If I could have waved a magic wand and replaced them with an AirBnB crash pad, I would have done so in an instant. Restrictions on short-term rentals are of little comfort when your long-term neighbors are worse. Then again, the arguments against short-term rentals go through just about as well for long-term rentals, so why not just restrict rental properties altogether? Many homeowners seek to avoid neighborhoods with high rental density, so why not make their jobs easier with a law?

As I said, there are plenty of attributes that make different houses more or less desirable to different people. If the OP had converted their apartment into a sarin gas factory or a practice pad for MBV, it might be a little more understandable why regulation would be efficient. As it stands, having a short-term rental next door strikes me as an extremely vague sort of source of disutility: all you can say with certainty is that you won't have long-term neighbors. Which many people are fine with in the first place. If people have varying preferences about living next to short-term rentals (either because they view them as a source of variety in se or just don't mind that much either way, as I do) then it should be more efficient to let people figure it out for themselves. People already self-assort into spatially resolved communities according to many other attributes (e.g. school quality, proximity to nightlife, population density; all attributes which reasonable people can value differently) so it seems strange to pick 'proximity to a short-term rental' as the one intangible neighborhood-character issue to treat like 'proximity to a meth lab'.

So let me just state again: I wouldn't mind living next to a short-term rental. In fact, if they're as widely despised as you suggest, I'd mind it even less because the housing market would be effectively subsidizing my tolerance.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#380

Post by anoncowherd »

eropple wrote: post #372
ghaff wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is inherently wrong, why? People (of whatever their net worth) vote, speak at meetings, and talk to their representatives to try and pursue outcomes that they prefer. One of those outcomes may be maintaining a particular character for a neighborhood. It's complicated. Greater good for the larger city or whatever and all that. But I don't see anything devious about residents having a say in what their communi…

> And this is inherently wrong, why? Because the world does not exist for the benefit of the rich and privileged; not simply the "rolling in Maserati" rich but those in a position to enact those gentrifying policies--who are overwhelmingly upper-income and capable of exerting more time to get what they want, have more money to apply to their causes, and generally are better-educated and able to execute. The "selfish…

> Because the world does not exist for the benefit of the rich and privileged

No? Does it exist for the benefit of the poor then? -They sure keep voting for more wealth transfers and taxes on the rich, and they keep getting them too!

Note that I'm just an ordinary middle-class white person. I just wanted to point out that the world does not exist for any group's benefit. We're all just people, all just individuals here.

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