Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#271

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #201

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I have no sympathy for the upper ones, the worst they get, the happier I am That's the stance I fully despise. My country (Russia) has suffered tremendously (and still does, 100 years later) because people sharing such ideas took power, killing dozens of millions in the process.

I doubt that introducing some regulations to introduce more fairness to the market can be honestly comparable to killing millions of people.

I was replying to the comment where a poster says this: "the worst they get the happier I am".

From this, we can logically conclude that poster would be most happy if rich people get plundered, deprived of their property and possessions, tortured, raped and killed, because these things are the worst that can happen to a person.

I can hardly interpret it as a call to introduce some fairness to the market.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#272

Post by rocqua » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

bjarneh wrote: post #156

nikanj wrote: post #9

So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.

> once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way Good point, but how little oversight does this country have of money being sent to peoples accounts from Airbnb etc? In my country (Norway), all transactions > 500 USD, (or multiple transactions from the same sender of lesser amounts), would register with the tax office. The receiver would have to disclose the source of these transac…

Does this registration of transactions only happen only for air-bnb, or does it happen for all transactions?

If its the latter, that would be considered a massively over reaching collection drag-net here.

Besides that, this is a municipal tax, whereas the income information is only present at the national tax authority. Getting those to inter-operate is quite difficult. Especially since our national tax authority is known to be digitally incapable, and currently has some other much bigger issues to contend with.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#273

Post by cletus » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

You see a lot of millenials in particular complain about how they're basically screwed, financially. Houses are unaffordable, they have a mountain of debt, etc. Probably the only reason you don't hear this so much from Gen-Z yet is they're either too young or just in shock and denial about their position.

I'm truly sympathetic. I compare how I could live post-university and it's just not achievable now.

Here's the rub: if you support the view that housing is too expensive and people can't find places to live then you should be absolutely against AirBnB. At least, AirBnB of whole units. I'm completely fine with someone renting out rooms in their house or an additional unit on their property.

It is undeniable that AirBnB makes houses more expensive and reduces supply to buyers and renters.

Cities should be first and foremost for the people who live in them. AirBnB facilitates running illegal hotels. I'm also against people using residential property to park their money. We given real estate exemptions from reporting requirements that no other asset class has.

Landlords need to exist otherwise who will provide rental stock. Those landlords should be residents of those cities and not some faceless hedge fund.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#274

Post by michaelt » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #256

mensetmanusman wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it wasn’t just cheaper, but also better quality.

Initially, when they entered new markets and burned VC money to sustain the beachhead. Once their position on a given market was established, the prices went up and quality dropped like a stone.

The experience here is extremely location-dependent.

In some cities, pre-Uber taxi companies have upped their game and got themselves apps that'll give you a price and wait time both of which are actually right, that let you see the taxi on its way to you, tip included in the price, and let you pay by card.

In other cities, taxi operators provide shitty service where their card machine "doesn't work" and they "don't have any change" either.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#275

Post by lnxg33k1 » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #271

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that introducing some regulations to introduce more fairness to the market can be honestly comparable to killing millions of people.

I was replying to the comment where a poster says this: "the worst they get the happier I am". From this, we can logically conclude that poster would be most happy if rich people get plundered, deprived of their property and possessions, tortured, raped and killed, because these things are the worst that can happen to a person. I can hardly interpret it as a call to introduce some fairness to the market.

Well i guess there is nothing in the middle ground between having exploiting industries go out of business and have lords raped, tortured and killed

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#276

Post by mtalantikite » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

scrose wrote: post #71

nikanj wrote: post #9

So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.

Years ago when Airbnb was picking up steam and I was in college I got a gig building a tool to automate cross-referencing Airbnb listings with housing records so the city could request the optional tourism tax. What we found surprised all of them. A handful of people were listing sometimes over a dozen properties and avoiding the larger, but not optional, hotel tax. The 80% figure doesn’t surprise me much now just kn…

A friend was visiting NYC and staying in my Brooklyn neighborhood at an Airbnb back in 2019. One night we were out and we ran into his Airbnb host at a bar. He was French and told me he had about a couple dozen units in the neighborhood all converted to Airbnb hotels, none of which he owned, all of them in some sort of agreement with the landlords. He said he had some in Paris as well and wanted to get up to 50 by the end of the year. He had zero insight into how this was completely problematic and was ruining life for the locals, all he cared about was making lots of money.

It's infuriating that we let companies like this be founded on completely illegal premises and continue operating.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#277

Post by datavirtue » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

These companies are going to screw themselves by not policing the behavior of landlords. The government will do it for them, as evidenced by this move. I know VRBO does nothing to protect renters (unless they get raped/assaulted and need to head off bad PR). There needs to be transparency about who owns and is ultimately responsible for the property. VRBO currently insulates owners/operators from accountability to renters. I got ripped off for $2100 and had no recourse from VRBO. No way to file a complaint and it was clear once I went looking for support that it was 100% focused on helping owners/operators use their platform.

The current requirement to assure that a renter doesn't get ripped off is to use a credit card that will refund their money in the event the owner tries to rip them off. Good luck to the un-banked and working poor.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#278

Post by dundarious » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

jupp0r wrote: post #258

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's something deeply wrong with western housing systems? I don't want to sound too radical, but this seems to be inextricably connected to capitalism. We won't ever solve it without structural changes. What Amsterdam is doing is a decent start at least.

The discussion here is centered around very desirable centralized locations. Out in the countryside things look very different. You can buy surprisingly cheap houses 2h outside of Berlin. Nobody does.

You also need an income to live.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#279

Post by Spivak » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

mrep wrote: post #229

iso1631 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a housing crisis in the Netherlands Is there any western city where there isn't a housing crisis?

Pretty much the entire midwest and southern US [0]. Granted, they benefit from basically having no geographical barriers to sprawling and building out ever more subdivisions and americans don't seem to mind suburbs. [0]: https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/

Why wouldn't American's mind the burbs? In the midwest you get a huge really nice house with a garage, with as much storage and rooms as you could ever desire for hobbies and/or children, lots of land for pets and gardening on the cheap. Like half the cost of a run-down shack in a place like Boston cheap. All ~20 minutes from downtown where there is plenty of parking and a 10 minute walk to your suburb's satellite "downtown."

You won't make SV money but cost of living is unreal. I pull well over the 6 figure mark while getting to put ~60% of my take-home pay straight into savings and investments. And I'm not even close to frugal.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#280

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #224

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you work hard to make your city to become one of the major tourist destinations in the world, who bring in a lot of money and help the local business flourish, and then need a reprieve from that? Kinda counterproductive, no?

Let me tell you. I was a poor boy growing in a tourist city in a latin american country. It was a small town, a bit sophisticated, so we got the cream of the tourism business: Upper middle class families. Indeed, plenty of money flowed into the city. But, it was not distributed equaly. Social mobility was almost null, because tourism have lots of jobs, but most of them low skill jobs. Then, there's this permanent hum…

Then, there's this permanent humiliation of feeling like a servant in your home-town, because the local upper class makes very clear to you peons, that you're less important than the tourists, and they also think this very clearly.

We see this happen in the US, too, when a handful of billionaires buy up small town property and turn it into a resort town, driving out the locals. Some of my friends in that situation got "servant" level jobs as teenagers and really think that, somehow, serving the rich for $12/hr will lead to them becoming "one of them."