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

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

#341

Post by bartread » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #55

bartread wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't especially mind tourists in moderate numbers - after all, from time to time, I play the tourist myself. However, I live and work in Cambridge, and if we were to put what you suggest into practice the city would become an absolutely intolerable place to be for everyone. AirBnb may or may not be a big problem here but, if it is, it's a subset of a bigger problem: buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely…

> buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely curtailed within the city, as it's certainly driving up already high prices. I'm familiar with the argument that AirBnB reduces rental stock by devoting it to tourism. But I rarely encounter someone who is mad that more rental stock is being added. Wouldn't you want rental prices to fall by increasing the availability of rental stock? Is a big gap between the cost of…

This is the problem. Rental stock isn't being added. Private residences are being built that are then bought up by private landlords rather than people who actually want to live there. Private landlords then rent those properties out at a profit, because the yield is good enough for them to do so. This leaves fewer properties available to buy.

You can argue about whether buying property is a good model or not: in lots of countries in Europe it's not considered the norm, but I'm talking specifically about the UK where it is. Having more rental properties here is fine, but it's also not necessarily what people here want: many people want to buy their homes, and it's better that they do so in a market that isn't skewed by private landlords mopping up large quantities of property. In some parts of the country, though as I've already acknowledged it's unclear to me that this applies to Cambridge, AirBnb (and holiday homes in a more general sense) are a significant contributor to a lack of available property for long-term residents, or people who want to be long-term residents.

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

#342

Post by bartread » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

throaway46546 wrote: post #148

rsj_hn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely curtailed within the city, as it's certainly driving up already high prices. I'm familiar with the argument that AirBnB reduces rental stock by devoting it to tourism. But I rarely encounter someone who is mad that more rental stock is being added. Wouldn't you want rental prices to fall by increasing the availability of rental stock? Is a big gap between the cost of…

Sounds like a NIMBY

Sounds like somebody who doesn't know what NIMBY means. Seriously, go and look it up before you throw your cheap and uninformed shots around. They aren't welcome here (and, yes, I note that you're hiding behind a throwaway account to do it, so you're gutless as well as ignorant).

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

#343

Post by _v7gu » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #149

mercy_dude wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree using right vs left is dumb on occasions but OP has a point. Liberals (at least in US/Canada) used to be the one who would care about working middle class and their living conditions. In US and Canada all major North American cities(almost all of which I had left leaning politicians) the prices have exploded. You hear for example Canadian prime minister making it election pledge to make housing affordable, wh…

It’s quite hard to follow your line of reasoning here. Unless you can explain how “leftist” policies have led to housing inflation, the fact prices have gone up doesn’t seem to contradict your PM pledging to reduce them.

Expansive immigration+highly regulated housing. Car-dependent city building which forces people who can't afford cars to live in the city. Small apartments and multi-home houses being regulated out of existence which push immigrants into windowless basements.

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

#344

Post by bartread » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #223

bartread wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't especially mind tourists in moderate numbers - after all, from time to time, I play the tourist myself. However, I live and work in Cambridge, and if we were to put what you suggest into practice the city would become an absolutely intolerable place to be for everyone. AirBnb may or may not be a big problem here but, if it is, it's a subset of a bigger problem: buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely…

I also live in (UK's) Cambridge. For now. Extensions to the transport network to reduce the car traffic are blocked by NIMBYs. Relocation of a sewage plant gets fought by NIMBYs. And every day, the university enjoys subtracting rent from companies with their iron hold over land they've owned for the centuries since their law mandated monopoly on higher education. It's a small city with a low verticality. Cambridge is…

It's certainly a frustratingly contradictory place.

On the one hand the city wants to encourage growth and innovation. On the other they do this by promoting the most tedious urban sprawl around the edges because of some arcane rule about buildings not being allowed that are taller than, is it Great St Mary's or Kings College Chapel? I forget, but it's too irritatingly stupid to think about. Oh, and the rent and business rates are an absolute outrage. How's anybody supposed to make any money[0]?

At the same time the infrastructure and public transport situation is awful. Infrastructure is rarely upgraded to keep pace with new developments and increases in population. The addition of Cambridge North station is welcome but it took far too long to get it done. Likewise the busway. And there are huge swathes of the city and county that aren't adequately served by any public transport which, of course, forces everybody into their cars and clogs the also inadequate road network.

From where I live, within certain restricted hours of the day (e.g., not after about 6.30pm), and not on Sundays, it's pretty easy to get a bus into the city centre and back again. It's not frequent enough, and it takes too damn long, but it can be done. The trouble comes if you want to go somewhere that isn't the city centre or somewhere in a direct line from here to there. Then you have to go into the city centre and wait however long for another bus. The last time I did this it took me about 2.5 hours to get from my place to a business located in Shelford - a total distance of something like 13 miles. Never again. I literally could have run it quicker.

I don't know what's gone on with the sewage plant, but I remember that moving it was being discussed at least as far back as 2002 and yet, 19 years later, here we still are. Not to labour the point but that's a quarter of a human lifetime. It clearly takes FAR TOO LONG to get things done that will improve the lives of people who are alive here, now, and today.

[0] On this point it annoys me intensely when I hear handwringing about vacant shops and business premises in the city centre where nobody addresses the obvious point: it's unreasonably expensive for businesses to be there.

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

#345

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #228

jfrunyon wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that "ride-sharing" companies proved was that they can do it cheaper by (a) bleeding capital and (b) evading regulator enforcement/taxes.

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

If an Uber is a better experience in any dimension (booking experience, car, driver, payment, …) that just means the Taxi company was a poor one. If it has a worse app than Uber then it’s not running its business properly. There are off the shelf taxi apps with booking, tracking, payments etc that any taxi company can license.

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

#346

Post by KingMachiavelli » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #279

mrep wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "d…

It depends on the suburb. Midwestern suburbs don't really have the downtown in the same way large cities do. IME they are either just glorified strip malls or touristy places. (TBH I'd really like to know how so many chain restaurants can remain in business... is it just a real estate investment?).

Once you account for some states have terrible weather, dysfunctional state governments, higher property taxes, etc. it might not make sense to trade a a net 20% change in overall CoL if it means you have significantly less to do. If your first thoughts are kids, pets, and gardening than sure the midwest is pretty good. If your primary concerns are career advancement, educated social/dating pool, variety in food and music, niche/luxury hobbies like skiing or surfing, etc. then your options for places to live becomes essentially drastically smaller and more competitive.

That said there are certain midwest cities that might strike a good balance.

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

#347

Post by FredPret » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #337

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or someone good at math just made some calculations and found out that if people at the top have a villa and a tesla and people at the bottom can't get to the end of the month without a side job, some wealth stealing is happening somewhere, it's not like "Oh they were saying the same things so they are not true and we should not do anything about it" But we should stop thinking about the past and think about the curr…

> I've read a bit and I think the problem with russia was not the communism You've read the wrong bits. Before the WW1 Russia had a booming cultural and scientific spheres, was undergoing a rapid industrialization and had a lot of philosophical schools and movements. All was hampered by an ineffective and inadequate authoritarian rule, but the human capital was there and rapidly closing the gaps to leading economies.…

There’s no arguing with someone who’s a communist after 1991.

It’s morally and intellectually equivalent to neo-Nazism.

I suppose the Nazis were defeated in 1945, and the bulk of the Communists in 1991, so maybe we just need a few more decades for the cancer to die out.

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

#348

Post by evgen » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

solveit wrote: post #334

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that you guys from Russia have started thinking that you're the solo holder of human sufference, I come from Southern Italy with Mafia and absent government, where rich get richer, kids play on the street surrounded by heroin needles, all with few castles of rich people being the kings among the shit, so yeah I won't dare to tell you how entitled you are to your ideas, but probably if the people that too…

"Maybe Lenin and Stalin had their reasons" is not a take I expected to see on HN today, but that's the lifecycle of all successful intellectually-oriented discussion forums I guess.

If you are not completely intellectually-stunted then you might actually know a bit about Russian history of the period. While few would excuse the later actions of Lenin or Stalin, the people who actually revolted against the Tsar had seriously justifiable reasons for doing so and given what I know about the time and place I would like to think that if I were in their place I would have joined them in putting the ruling class up against a wall and shooting them.

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

#349

Post by lnxg33k1 » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #347

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read a bit and I think the problem with russia was not the communism You've read the wrong bits. Before the WW1 Russia had a booming cultural and scientific spheres, was undergoing a rapid industrialization and had a lot of philosophical schools and movements. All was hampered by an ineffective and inadequate authoritarian rule, but the human capital was there and rapidly closing the gaps to leading economies.…

There’s no arguing with someone who’s a communist after 1991. It’s morally and intellectually equivalent to neo-Nazism. I suppose the Nazis were defeated in 1945, and the bulk of the Communists in 1991, so maybe we just need a few more decades for the cancer to die out.

Another cancer that might be useful to kill is the one associating wealth misredistribution and equality to communist regime, it's kinda of implying that the current system doesn't have any tool in order to achieve that and the only way to make a fairer world towards the working class is through the adoption of regimes? Because if you look closely those against the communism are the only one that brought it in the conversation, so are those only possibly in that setup?

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

#350

Post by AlwaysRock » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

dcgudeman wrote: post #324

AlwaysRock wrote: post #266

I'm a power user of Airbnb. I have never disliked a service as much that I pay continue to pay for other than LinkedIn. Both of these are because I have/had little choice. What it all comes down to is getting a shitting experience and paying a premium for it. I have a 30+ day stay that had been booked close to 6 months in advanced canceled 7 days before my stay because the user sold their house. Airbnb said they woul…

What? Kind of a illogical reaction to a tough situation right? What is AirBnb supposed to do if one of their hosts sells their house without notifying them and all similar listing are already booked? Would more compensation satisfy you? Honestly confused why you would want to punish a service you admit to using frequently.

Airbnb said they would help find a comparable place for us to stay. A comparable place was $2000+ more than the place we had booked initially (due to most places being booked 6 days before a holiday trip). They gave us a $200 coupon. Which meant we spent $1800 more on a place than we planed to.

I expected them to have some plan to ensure users don't get fucked if someone sells their house. Dozens of similar, but more expensive, places sat empty during that holiday. Airbnb could have given us a coupon for the difference between one of those and what we pair for our original place. That is what their initially made it sound like they were going to do. That is not what they did.

I'm a frequent user but not because I like them as a company. Because they are a monopoly.