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Unbundling Airbnb

peterfabor.com

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Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#11

Post by dazc »

jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tried this via Airbnb in Spain and ended up moving from place to place instead. I never actually found a location where I could work properly, to the extent that I rented a separate office some of the time. Patchy internet almost always, cheap furniture, base level electricity that would trip out if you had two appliances running at the same time, and #1 problem NOISE all of the time.

I'm not sure that Airbnb is the actual problem here, for me it was the host's expectation that people will just throw money at them whilst all they have to do is provide the location. The one half-decent place I stayed was, ironically, the only option without a hundred or so glowing reviews.

Alternatives to Airbnb exist for every niche and, in my opinion, you generally have a good idea of what you are going to get from the outset rather than with Airbnb where it is always a gamble - regardless of how much money you are willing to spend.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#13

Post by ricardobayes »

dazc wrote: post #11
jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tried this via Airbnb in Spain and ended up moving from place to place instead. I never actually found a location where I could work properly, to the extent that I rented a separate office some of the time. Patchy internet almost always, cheap furniture, base level electricity that would trip out if you had two appliances running at the same time, and #1 problem NOISE all of the time. I'm not sure that Airbnb is th…

In Spain you need to make sure they have fiber, and not some satellite internet (surprisingly common). Other than that, yes, noise is a huge problem for us foreigners in Spain. Most landlors opt for the smallest kWh electricity contract as electricity is one of the most expensive in Europe.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#14

Post by ricardobayes »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #5
ackbar03 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean real estate agent?

Never rent through a real estate agent. You're at a disadvantage, they're too good at screwing tenants. Look at it objectively: two people have to be able to make a profit off of you in this arrangement (the owner and their realtor) and both of those margins will be pretty fat since neither of them is a long-term employee of the other, like you'd see in an apartment complex with an on-site manager. Real estate agents…

Yes, according to my experience the owners who actually care and will solve any issues are not using real estate agents. Only those who want to be 'hands off' do. It usually ends up not being a great experience for everyone involved.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#15

Post by mijamo »

ricardobayes wrote: post #14
octoberfranklin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never rent through a real estate agent. You're at a disadvantage, they're too good at screwing tenants. Look at it objectively: two people have to be able to make a profit off of you in this arrangement (the owner and their realtor) and both of those margins will be pretty fat since neither of them is a long-term employee of the other, like you'd see in an apartment complex with an on-site manager. Real estate agents…

Yes, according to my experience the owners who actually care and will solve any issues are not using real estate agents. Only those who want to be 'hands off' do. It usually ends up not being a great experience for everyone involved.

My experience is that the owners not usings agents are the cheap ones that will cause trouble for everything and not pay up for renovations and things breaking down. Hands off owners are the best as they just let the agent handle things professionally instead of trying to save a buck by calling illegal workers to half fix everything, then steal your deposit because things are broken when you leave. I have not met any of those magical owner that fixes everything correctly and would go the extra mile and I actually wonder what would be their inventive to do so, when simply having an agent take care of everything would save their time.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#16

Post by quickthrower2 »

jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

Good idea for people working for 2 years abroad for a job opportunity. It might be part of the package and the employer offloads it to your company. Imagine how productive your exec hire will be without having to deal with all that.

I imagine it coming with a concierge app so you can add or remove stuff and the push of a button.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#17

Post by mprev »

nraynaud wrote: post #2

What’s funny is that in France we had various alternatives to Airbnb for so long before Airbnb that Americans are completely baffled by the choice when they learn of them. Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France. I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories. Those things existed long before the internet.

I always disappointed there wasn't a site called GiteHub.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#18

Post by mg »

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place.

For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB.

I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming.

It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair and a monitor would be golden of course.

And there are a bunch of additional things I do manually too. For example reading the reviews. Meanwhile, I am pretty good at predicting the quality of a place by reading the reviews. The stars are somewhat of an indication. But not reliable at all. I had really bad stays at places that got 100 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars. Hosts have too much influence on this metric.

Here are two examples of positive signals that help me find nice places:

1) How long the reviews are.

Hosts can remove bad reviews. And they can manipulate their guests into writing 5-star reviews. But they cannot really manipulate them to write long, enthusiastic reviews with many details.

2) How many of the reviews say "I have stayed at many AirBnBs and this one was one of the best".

This is something I usually write when I particularly liked a place. And it turned out a good signal to find nice places.

I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this. I already wrote my own web based tool to organize and sort AirBnBs that I am interested in. So it would not be a lot of work to make these lists public.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#20

Post by postsantum »

mg wrote: post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

I think it could be implemented as a browser extension. 8/10 people found this property has a suitable workplace. The lenght of the average comment is 56% shorter than usual
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