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Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

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Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#101

Post by IncreasePosts »

daedrdev wrote: post #71
embedding-shape wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because now people aren't priced out of their current place where they live simply because the landlord wants more money each month, now it's limited to increases by an index. And landlords can also not just kick out a tenant, raise the rent price and find someone else. Again, many small streams make a big river. Not one single action or new law will instantly fix the issue, you patch what you can and incrementally w…

But it ruins the future market. People with a rent controlled unit will not leave even when they should, because they have it so good. Thus turnover never happens, which is why most programs have a waiting lists easily more than a decade. Like it helps those who have one at a greater expense to renters without one

When I first moved to NYC, my neighbor was a 70 year old single man who absolutely hated living in NY at that point in his life, but couldn't leave because his rent was so cheap(I was paying $1500 for a studio and he was paying $300 for a 1BR) - he literally could not afford to move even to a cheap area. It certainly would have been better for him if he could just swap apartments with someone living outside the city who wanted to move in, but that would be illegal.

I think rent control advocates focus on people who might be lucky enough to get a rent controlled apartment, but it is much harder to think about what happens to all the people who want to move to a city but can't because no housing stock is available.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#102

Post by advisedwang »

daedrdev wrote: post #9

The main issue with going after airbnb is that its a true bandaid fix: the gains in supply are often offset by just a few years or months progression of the underbuilding of supply

If there is a high-demand tourist location (like many parts of Spain) and tourists are more wealthy than locals (like many parts of Spain) then new housing stock will also be soaked up by AirBnBs. In this situation the "just build" argument means you have to build enough housing to house every single wealthy tourist that wants to come before you start seeing any relief to local housing issues. Not only does that mean locals have to wait thought, say, 10 years of construction before their issues are addressed, but in the mean time the tourism sector will have dominated the economy, which is not healty either.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#103

Post by tverbeure »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #95
MisterTea wrote: post #55

I was in Spain this past summer and it certainly seems they are experiencing tourist burnout. I saw anti tourist messages on banners hung on buildings, graffiti, posters and stickers in Madrid and Barcelona. Some of it was a bit threatening but I had zero issues. The issue of airbnb is a sticky one. On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you g…

If there is such a burnout, then why doesn’t the government just stop letting so many people in? This feels more like a scapegoat situation.

“just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#104

Post by givemeethekeys »

tverbeure wrote: post #103
givemeethekeys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is such a burnout, then why doesn’t the government just stop letting so many people in? This feels more like a scapegoat situation.

“just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Tourists don’t travel illegally. What am I missing?

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#105

Post by tverbeure »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #104
tverbeure wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Tourists don’t travel illegally. What am I missing?

You’re reducing a very complex problem to a meaningless slogan.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#106

Post by alexandrerond »

I have legal holiday rentals on two properties in Spain, but they are managed by an specialized company:

* The regional administration handed out licenses without problems until a year ago, even when everyone was complaining already about these rentals. It was just paperwork + fee to get the license. They did for years and now they wonder why there are so many flats: they allowed it.

* The main issue these rentals cause to the neighbors is people partying, being noisy, inconsiderate. Rentals have rules against these behaviors yet they happen frequently. I wish we or the police had tools to legally kick people out in the middle of the night for this behavior.

* Apart from legal rentals, which are being limited now, there are a lot of illegal rentals. They are only starting to crack down on them. AirBNB and others have not complied with the law and this should not come as surprise. They have actively enabled illegal businesses for years. People go to jail for that and they should shut them down.

* There is no affordable housing in the city-center. Rental flats make it worse but in many places the issue will not be fixed if they disappeared. The causes are deeper and a nice flat is not going to become "cheap" to rent in any case.

* Holiday rentals are a bit more profitable that long-term rentals, but not crazy unless you are doing it at scale and they come with their own problems. Many are switching now to "seasonal" rentals, which are rentals for a period less than a year and the tenants need to go then. They forgot to handle these in the new regulations. Long-term rental is problematic because you can't use your flat when you need it. i.e. if you have a flat that you come to spend your own holidays. So people in that situation have limited alternatives.

* I am personally not against switching to long term rentals, but the current situation wrt. licenses etc. puts me in a "wait and see" mode. My flat is legal, so they might make it more profitable by cracking down on illegal ones. Once I put a long-term rental I cannot ever go back to vacation rental either. There is little incentive to switch right now, but I will of course do it if I'm legally required to do so. For all the talk, they haven't taken that step, which is a testament to how politicians can say one thing and then do close to nothing in the end.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#107

Post by IncreasePosts »

reed1234 wrote: post #24
dvt wrote: post #22

This is not just a problem in Spain. Affordable housing is a problem in almost every Western metro, both in the US and in Europe. The problem is caused by the financialization of real estate. I know it's always been a bit of a financial asset, but the past 40 years have really seen this accelerate to pretty crazy levels. The issue, when you boil it down to the basics is: wealthy folks, development companies, overseas…

Is it not a supply and demand problem? Then the only rational solution to get prices down is to build more housing.

The problem is people don't "just" want cheap housing - they want the character of the area to remain the same. But, those two things are frequently incompatible.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#108

Post by izacus »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #95
MisterTea wrote: post #55

I was in Spain this past summer and it certainly seems they are experiencing tourist burnout. I saw anti tourist messages on banners hung on buildings, graffiti, posters and stickers in Madrid and Barcelona. Some of it was a bit threatening but I had zero issues. The issue of airbnb is a sticky one. On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you g…

If there is such a burnout, then why doesn’t the government just stop letting so many people in? This feels more like a scapegoat situation.

Whenever you use the phrase "why don't you just", you're almost certainly about to say something utterly dumb and poorly thought out.

Stop and think a bit more instead.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#109

Post by dvt »

socalgal2 wrote: post #66
dvt wrote: post #22

This is not just a problem in Spain. Affordable housing is a problem in almost every Western metro, both in the US and in Europe. The problem is caused by the financialization of real estate. I know it's always been a bit of a financial asset, but the past 40 years have really seen this accelerate to pretty crazy levels. The issue, when you boil it down to the basics is: wealthy folks, development companies, overseas…

That is not the issue. The issue is supply. People keep blocking construction of new housing and so prices go up and therefore it becomes an investments. increase the supply and it would no longer be an investment and you could not charge high rents

This is a very "Econ 101" way of looking at the problem. If you've ever been to Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, London, Barcelona, you quickly realize you can't "build more," as the desirable city locations are saturated.

The problem is that the supply/demand curves are being manipulated by, as mentioned, property owners which are destroying the fabric of their respective city via short-term rentals (or, by just owning an appreciating empty property), which, in turn, increases rents and prices for housing en masse. All of a sudden, a "boring" property becomes an investment that generates revenue. All of a sudden, hedge funds, banks, etc. want in on the action. There's money to be made, after all!

While this used to be the case in the past (if you bought, for example, farmland, or a factory, or something), the financialization of housing is a relatively new phenomenon.

Expats and global financial markets further complicate this: how can an average Spaniard that makes $50k compete with a California "digital nomad" that makes $150k? Obviously, we need to have some sensible rules that protect the citizens with heritage and history there.

Re: Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

#110

Post by miguelxt »

NotGMan wrote: post #89

AirBnB should be banned, and I say that as a very pro-capitalist guy. In an economy where there is a housing shortage local population needs affordable and long-term (6-months+) rental contracts or they don't have stability. Capitalism is great in general, but some things, such as healthcare, housing, electricity,... needs to have a stronger regulatory framework then eg TVs since the collapse of basic human necessiti…

Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next?

Housing and rent are already heavily regulated in Spain. Some regulations and side effects of those regulations:

  * Minimum contract length of 5 years. 
  * Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years).
  * It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. 
  * Even if the tenant is not paying, you, the landlord, have to keep paying the utilities, because if you stop paying, you'll be charged with "coacciones".
  * If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. 
  * In some cities like Barcelona, regulation goes beyond. Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated.
  * And all that is not going into detail of the "Okupa" problem.
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