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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

#131

Post by ryan_lane »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #101
daedrdev wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The rest of the market was allowed to maximally increase rent to the point this person can't afford rent anywhere except for where they live, and the problem is rent control (which NYC has relatively little of)?

Why not complain about the high-rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering? Why not complain about the tens of thousands of airbnb units?

NYC is actually quite good in terms of building supply, but the demand is also extremely high. Some of that demand is completely artificial due to money laundering and short-term rentals, and without fixing those issues, how can we expect people to live without limiting maximally increasing rents?

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

#132

Post by givemeethekeys »

izacus wrote: post #108
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.

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.

Fine, read it without the "just" if it makes you happy.

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

#134

Post by givemeethekeys »

QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #122
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.

Since Spain is in Schengen they won't be able to easily block tourists getting visas. Plus the visa waiver programs are usually reciprocal. Best way to reduce tourism is to levy taxes on tourist activities.

That's a good point. I believe Jordan charges foreigners a much higher rate for to see tourist attractions. But, visitors don't usually stay in Jordan for more than a couple of weeks.

I think if a country let's someone in only for them to find out that they're not welcome there - they're probably not going back again. It's better to know that a place is very expensive to visit up front, or - like Bhutan - there are very few tourist permits given out.

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

#135

Post by IncreasePosts »

ryan_lane wrote: post #131
IncreasePosts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The rest of the market was allowed to maximally increase rent to the point this person can't afford rent anywhere except for where they live, and the problem is rent control (which NYC has relatively little of)? Why not complain about the high-rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering? Why not complain about the tens of thousands of airbnb units? NYC is actually quite good in terms of bu…

The problem is he has such a sweet deal, he needs to use the apartment even though he would rather someone else have the apartment. I don't think the goal of rent control is to trap people in a city so they can't leave.

There aren't really that many high rises full of empty apartments bought by oligarchs for money laundering in NY. And even when there are - how much land does it actually take up? At the Central Park Tower for example, 180 oligarchs can launder their money in a 200'x200' plot of land. You'll walk by it in less than a minute without really clocking it.

I do also complain about airbnb units :)

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

#136

Post by ryan_lane »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #69
seer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that is the only solution. I like what Singapore is doing - having a government built “base level” of housing that is both abundant and readily available - it can anchor the price where deep excesses are harder to end up with. It’s like a market where a very significant player keeps the price law, because of its own reasons. In such a scenario the price will not go up as sharply, so there would be less…

Singapore is very special in that 80% of the population lives in "public" housing.

Because the government builds that much housing, and subsidizes the cost, to ensure their citizens (and PRs) have affordable housing.

It's special because they made it that way.

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

#137

Post by ryan_lane »

miguelxt wrote: post #110
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 th…

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

New York, as expensive as it is, is still considerably cheaper than cities like SF. Part of this is that they build more, part of it is that they have a usable train system, which allows people to live more spread out across the city, but part of it as well, is that they've banned airbnb. It would be ideal to also see empty unit taxes on units >$10m (inflation adjusted). It would also be good to see high taxes on sales of units >$10m (inflation adjusted).

> Minimum contract length of 5 years.

This is good, assuming it's one sided (the tenant can choose to move out, but the landlord can't break the lease). People need stability in housing more than landlords need to be able to end leases.

> Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years)

Sure, it should be generally tied to inflation, but what other investment exists where you're guaranteed yearly increases? Why are people so adamant that landlords need to be guaranteed minimal increases in their profits?

Housing is a natural monopoly, and allowing businesses to maximize their profits, unchecked, isn't capitalism.

> It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder.

This is often brought out as a massive negative of regulations, but let's be honest, this is an outlier. Without tenant protections, however, it's common for landlords to evict tenants to increase rents. Even with protections, landlords still take illegal measures to try to evict tenants to increase rents, like doing constant construction at night, or refusing to do maintenance.

This is basically the same complaint about welfare programs. We have to accept some percentage of fraud to serve the greater good.

It's completely normal for most businesses to take a risk based approach to fraud, to maximize profits. Retail businesses, for example, will try to maximize their credit card auth rates, even though that may increase their fraud rate, if the increases in auth rate outweigh the cost of the fraud.

A stable society is worth a small percentage of fraud.

> If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder.

Good. I don't see how this is a downside.

> Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated.

Again, this is good. If there's a housing crunch, then residents should be prioritized over tourists.

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

#138

Post by nradov »

ryan_lane wrote: post #130
nradov wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is that in many cities there is a persistent and ongoing market failure where legitimate hotels in tourist areas often don't offer accommodations suitable for families with multiple children. There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette: it's not that they're more expensive, they simply don't exist at any price. So despite the social problems that Airbnb causes they do address a real ma…

> There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette There are very few hotels with kitchenettes. Most people don't cook (and don't want to cook) on vacation. Most hotels also don't cater to the low-income, and folks who cook on travel tend to be low-income. There's business rentals that offer this, but they're often not bookable for short-terms (usually 2+ weeks minimum). Most hotels can accommodate 5+ peop…

It's not about low-income people. Those needs are actually quite common among upper-middle class American vacation travelers with children so I assume you don't know many of them. Regardless of expense it's a huge hassle to drag multiple small children to a restaurant for three meals per day for a week. For at least some meals it ends up just being a lot easier to heat up something in the hotel room.

I am well aware that hotels will provide cots. Cots are torture. No one wants to sleep on a hotel cot. And even if hotels have adjoining rooms they often won't guarantee to give them to you when you make a reservation. It makes no sense at all.

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

#139

Post by friendzis »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #125
QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely find household named economists that don't agree with Land Value Taxes. Hell there's a grassroots push in the US to eliminate property taxes.

I do like Georgism, but taxing wealth and not a transaction is just going to transfer wealth from poor to government. Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest).

> Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest).

Capital gains tax has zero effect on billionaires precisely because it is not levied on them in most cases. When one's total wealth hits high tens of millions suddenly they get access to instruments to use their wealth without triggering "taxable events". Probably the most well-known example are loans against shares.

This eliminates [some of] downward pressure on some asset prices, triggering positive feedback loop on price and thus wealth transfer.

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

#140

Post by friendzis »

advisedwang wrote: post #102
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…

The tourists do not have to be particularly wealthy. All they need is to afford a per-night/week fee that is a bit higher than average equivalent local long-term rent.

At 100€ per night, at 70% occupancy the equivalent monthly rent is ~2000€.

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