AirBNB restrictions should be based on housing vacancy rates. In areas where either through poor zoning or historical preservation there is a restricted supply of housing AirBNB should be strictly limited. However, if vacancy rates are high enough AirBNB acts as a nice pressure valve distributing residential and vacation occupancy without the expense of having to overbuild hotels.
What if the vacancy rates are due to untenable rent prices? I could see vacancy being artificially created this way.
If vacancy rates are high enough they create downward pressure on rent.
I still use airbnb when travelling because it's convenient but when I'm not travelling I can't stand it at all. (I do realize that I'm contributing to the issue by being a customer myself.)
Airbnb is probably one of the worst things that has happened to many places that were already tourism heavy. The bit of regulation that made stuff work somewhat was completely subverted by it and because of how quickly it became popular it's now almost impossible to put the genie back into the bottle as there are too many vested interests now.
Overall I can't get rid of the feeling that Airbnb is here to stay and it permanently made the world a worse place.
This is the heart of the matter. it is also the heart of globalisation and the very heart of the internet - we should be very aware of the massive social dislocation caused by the globalisation of the food industry in 1870s following the first wave of refrigeration (ice in atlantic ships)
> it is also the heart of globalisation and the very heart of the internet Except that real estate is intrinsically a geographic issue. Manufacturing and distribution aren't.
Distribution only exists because geography is a thing.
How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit?
It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply.
Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather they focused on allowing more housing to be built.
It seems like there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground here — where households have the flexibility to rent out part of their primary residence, on a limited basis (either temporal or just part of the house), subject to clear and evenly enforced regulations. This is a pre-internet idea (e.g., casas particulares in Cuba in the 1990s) that becomes way easier/safer/better with a web-based platform. Personally, I fi…
Berlin will be the testing ground here - the exact limitations you describe in your comment are imposed right now in Berlin. Whether or not AirBnB succeeds under these regulations will reveal how such a model will fare in other jurisdictions.
How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit? It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply. Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather…
Unless there wasn't, and now there is because of Airbnb. Or an existing shortage was exacerbated by Airbnb.
I still use airbnb when travelling because it's convenient but when I'm not travelling I can't stand it at all. (I do realize that I'm contributing to the issue by being a customer myself.) Airbnb is probably one of the worst things that has happened to many places that were already tourism heavy. The bit of regulation that made stuff work somewhat was completely subverted by it and because of how quickly it became p…
The legal side of AirBnB is bad enough, but you couple that with their shady practices and the outright illegal stuff that goes on and AirBnB as a whole is a plague. I've heard there are smaller alternatives that work fantastic, I don't know them by heart though.
How have we gotten this far into the comments without anyone mentioning the root cause here is a general shortage of housing in places people want to live / work / visit? It seems to me that AirBNB isn't to blame for the overall lack of housing (and temporary housing aka hostel/hotel) options, rather it's just the most visible brand name competing for the limited supply. Cities can ban it if they want, but I'd rather…
The root cause is that in many ways, housing is subsidized and cheaper. Airbnb takes advantage of that to undercut the hotel industry.
It seems like there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground here — where households have the flexibility to rent out part of their primary residence, on a limited basis (either temporal or just part of the house), subject to clear and evenly enforced regulations. This is a pre-internet idea (e.g., casas particulares in Cuba in the 1990s) that becomes way easier/safer/better with a web-based platform. Personally, I fi…
That's the NYC law, dating to pre-AirBnB times but now with new relevance. It distinguishes 'taking in a boarder' from 'subletting the apartment'. If you occupy the unit as your primary residence, you're allowed to take in boarders, defined as people with whom you intend to share the common spaces. So renting out a room in your apartment is fine (as long as you don't do some weird partitioning to make it de-facto a separate unit... you're supposed to be essentially welcoming a guest into your own household, even if it's a paid guest). But you can't do a whole-apartment sublet for periods shorter than 30 days.