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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

theolivepress.es

71–80 of 375 posts

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#71

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

It's about votes, not math. The only solution is for people who can math to learn how to also get votes.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#72
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels suck. I want a hotel with no staff. Thats airbnb

And for me, I value predictability and the availability of staff if I need them. I've certainly stayed at many B&Bs that didn't have a 24-hour desk but, by and large, I'm looking to stay at places where I can count on things going smoothly.

Being able to do laundry makes Airbnb worth it almost every time.

If I have a multi leg journey I'll make sure every other stop is at an Airbnb with a washing machine.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#73
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting hotels that feel like an AirBnB don't really exist. Even though the professional AirBnB hosts are doing all the functions that hotels do. Why not the reverse.

What do you mean by a hotel that feels like an Airbnb? If you want to stay at a place that has a kitchen, and multiple bedrooms, there are suite hotels (eg. Homewood suites) and extended stay hotels. If you want someone to host you, then a bed and breakfast is another type of accommodation.

1. An actual kitchen that's good for cooking complex meals. This is great for family trips on holidays.

2. 3+ bedrooms. Good luck finding that in Hotels.

3. Things like private hot tubs or pools, BBQ in the backyard, etc are almost unheard of in hotels.

4. Laundry machines.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#74
post #36

Honest question: does this work? It seems to me that this change will have unintended effects and will fail to produce the desired results. AFAIK rent in NYC hasn’t gone down since they changed their short-term rental regulations. I might be naive, but I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply instead of curbing the demand? Genuinely curious about others’ takes on this.

> I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply Demand for tourist housing is probably a bit more elastic than for residential housing, so it'll probably help a bit, but in general, I agree that growing the pie is better than bitter fights over how to cut the pie up.

Elasticity of demand is the elephant in the room for build-more-housing advocates. Let's say NYC's mayor rubbed a genie's lamp and wished to double the city's housing supply overnight. Yes, rental and real estate prices would crash through the floor due to the glut of supply. But then millions of people would move to the city and buy up all that supply.

This would rapidly double the population of the city which would cause tons of businesses to move there to hire everyone and then commercial real estate would skyrocket. At the end of the day, the city would be twice as large and more overcrowded than ever. Sure, they'd be more efficient in terms of infrastructure (plumbing, electricity, transit) but rents would skyrocket to capture that extra efficiency for landlords.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#75
I like AirBNB especially for housing me in a regular apartment with more local vibe, won't travel to Barcelona again because I hate hotels for being too impersonal, there are other places that don't close up to visit. I respect their choice, I also prefer tourism on my own terms.

Taxing short term rentals to build affordable housing seems like a good idea to me.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#76

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

> Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats. What if we let people decide what they should/n't do with their own property instead?

Well the people are deciding what they want to do with their own city. Individualism has its limits.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#80

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years. They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020. The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the…

10,000 houses on 100k people is actually a substantial portion. I think its totally reasonable. And Airbnb houses that are permanent temp rentals have no special status in law when there's a housing shortage. Building more houses is important, but not incentivizing rental houses and even eliminating them is a good direction, and a significant step towards housing people.
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