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The two faces of Airbnb
- anabranch 11y agoWhich company is more 'evil'[1], Airbnb or Uber? [1] Defined as you see fit.
- Marazan 11y agoAirBandB. Uber is just an unliscensed taxi firm, AirBandB is destroying communities.
- hugh4 11y agoNeither is evil, both are great. Both have pissed off some monied interests though. Uber gets more bad press because they're actually an existential threat to the taxi industry. Airbnb isn't an existential threat to the hotel industry because even though I use airbnb sometimes it hasn't stopped me using hotels -- hotels are easier and more convenient, airbnbs are cheaper and sometimes better but riskier and more trouble.
- johnpowell 11y agoI'm not a monied interest. But I lived a few blocks away from a University and when all the students went home for the summer the management company decided to just go airbnb year round. There were four front doors within ten feet of each other on a small landing. It was horrible. I was able to deal with during the summer but once it was clear that it would continue throughout the school year I broke my lease and left. My credit is still screwed due to that.
- 100k 11y agoPeople love _using_ Airbnb, but don't want an Airbnb rental next to their home. The negative externalities remind me of cars: super useful for me, super annoying to you.
- aw3c2 11y agoI am a considerate guest, trying not to disturb the neighbors. The guests I have in the flat next door tend to be partying cunts.
- abrowne 11y agoI've enjoyed using Airbnb, and I think the same about myself, but it's hard to rent a place and only get considerate guests.
- titanomachy 11y agoI think there is a systematic problem with overrating on airbnb, both of guests and hosts.
- nostrademons 11y agoWhich bodes well for Airbnb, since the modern business environment is pretty much based on socializing negative externalities while providing value to direct customers. Besides cars, there's also oil, coal, mining, plastics, advertising, agriculture, water rights, and housing development.
- abalashov 11y agoThis. I don't know why I get so many blank stares when I explain that a great deal of the technocratic New Economy is about reassignment of risk.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoArticle's author seems to defend problems rather than acknowledge their solutions. "it comes from professional landlords who are removing badly needed housing from the local market and making it available exclusively for tourists" Since when in modern society should commercial entities care about what is "badly needed" instead of where profit lies? Since when it's not only politicans need to pretend to care about "regular people", but commercial property owners? "That’s true of regular hotels as well, but usually they exist in areas that have been zoned for such activity" This seems to be the root of problem. Zoning is a socialist measure. It will create all kinds of shortages. The whole article reads to me like this: We've implemented this zoning measure that we knew would cause problems. And by golly it did! Now we're trying to blame these problems on all kinds of commercial entities. Make them fix things for us that we knew would arise. And we also want more regulations to fix problems caused by having regulations in the first place.
- mistersquid 11y agoYou seem purposely to miss some of the points of Steven Hill's very even-handed analysis which is that some AirBnB operators are turning residential zones into commercial hotel zones by having multiple listings and this causes conflicts for 1) residents who find commercial activity in and around their homes , 2) municipalities deprived of tax revenue, 3) guests who find themselves in units that do no have adequate safety protections let alone commercial insurance. This is especially problematic given that in LA, SF, and NYC AirBnB makes a large fraction (~44%) of its revenue from commercial operators with multiple listings. That is, in these markets nearly half of AirBnB "hosts" are entrepreneurs who are flouting municipal law and obligations for their personal gain and to others' detriments. Hill offers a few common sense (and in my opinion equitable) actions AirBnB might take to make amends. In a passage worth quoting in context, Hill writes > Perhaps the biggest tragedy in all this is that at the core of Airbnb is a really good idea. It has cleverly used Web- and app-based technology to bust open a global market that connects tourists with financially strapped homeowners. After interviewing some of Airbnb’s “regular-people” hosts, I’m convinced that this service legitimately does help them make ends meet. > But by taking such a hands-off, laissez-faire attitude toward the professionalization of hosting by greedy commercial landlords and multiproperty agents, Airbnb has become its own worst enemy. As the number of victims piles up, it undermines its own “sharing and trust” ethos because Airbnb could easily meet cities halfway: > • With one stroke of the computer mouse, Airbnb could “evict the evictors” — de-list from its website any professional landlords or property managers operating multiple properties as tourist hotels. It has the data and knows who they are. > • Cooperate with cities like San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Portland, which require hosts to register with local agencies, by de-listing any unregistered hosts. > • Pay the same hotel occupancy taxes that hotels pay in all 34,000 cities in which Airbnb operates, or collect them from the hosts and turn them over to the cities. > • Stop refusing to supply the data that cities need to enforce regulations and taxation, including the number of rental nights and rates charged by each host. EDIT: Remove markup. Readability. Grammar.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoI have stayed at 4 AirBnB properties over the past month or so. The first three were great. They were - almost literally bed and breakfasts, where I interacted with my hosts and they made me breakfast the next morning and were company in the evening. Last week I stayed at one in NYC and it was honestly weird. The host wasn't there and just left the door unlocked and all the lights off - without saying as much in an AirBnB message. Some of the outlets did not have outlet covers, leaving wiring exposed etc... Anyway, it's been clear for a very long time that the thing that you find from a hotel is completely lacking with AirBnB: Consistency. On the flip side, should people be looking at AirBnB as a direct replacement for hotels? Obviously that is the operating thesis, but I think a better way to consider AirBnB is as a marketplace for Bed and Breakfast accommodations. All of the problems that are brought up go away if you think of it in that context.
- JonFish85 11y agoAside from the fact that if you market it as such, it loses literally billions in valuation. Airbnb cannot become just a middleman for bed and breakfasts because its investors would rather fail at being a replacement for Hilton/Marriott than settling for a small time bed and breakfast purveyor.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoAside from the fact that if you market it as such, it loses literally billions in valuation. Therein lies the rub. What a consumer receives may be materially different than what investors and the company thinks it should be.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoSounds like much of the problem would go away with better labeling and categorization. Some people want the get-to-know-your-host experience, some people want the impersonal experience, and some people might want either one depending on the nature of the trip. The problem arises when you expect one and get the other.
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- knocte 11y agoIMHO all the regulation to be done against multi-property landlords should be created at the state-level, I mean, decoupled from any Airbnb-like infrastructure ("don't shoot the messenger!"). That is, the state has ultimately all the information regarding real-estate ownership. Creating laws that tax adequately the companies/individuals that own more than 1 property should be easy, and irrespective to how/if they monetize them. Doing a regulation against AirBNB is ultimately going to hurt the real regular people that is being helped by this "sharing-economy", such as the ones that just rent their unique property (either because they have an extra bedroom or because their job required them to move to a different city where they bought their house, and therefore use their AirBNB income to pay the rent of a different apartment).
- abandonliberty 11y agoThey're not shooting the messenger. Proposition F >Limits short-term rentals of a unit to 75 days per year, regardless of whether rental is hosted or unhosted. >Requires proof that the unit’s owner authorizes using the unit as a short-term rental. >Requires short-term hosts to submit quarterly reports on the number of days they live in the unit and the number of days the unit is rented >Mandates that the city post notice on buildings with a unit approved for short-term rentals and notify by mail owners, neighbors of the unit and interested neighborhood organizations. Source: Ballot Simplification Committee AirBnB created a market in an area where existing laws didn't apply. This is part of legislation catching up.
- knocte 11y agoThere you go, 75 days a year? That affects small-owners in the same way as multi-owners.
- incongruity 11y agoExcept that if it's truly about renting out something you already own (and likely attached to your house) then it still makes it possible. However, what it massively disincentivizes is buying property solely to use it for hosting on Air BnB (and thus preventing others from buying or renting the property for residential use).
- orthoganol 11y ago> Here’s what’s wrong: an increasing amount of Airbnb’s commercial activity in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles does not come from the listings of “regular people” who are merely renting out a spare room. This is my problem with AirBnB. I know investment firms buying as much property as they can to list on AirBnB. Every single rental I stayed in when traveling around Asia was done by 'power users' or real estate companies with scores of listing throughout the cities. Unfortunately, that means in my experience the quality drops, no 'homey' feel, and it negatively impacts the locals. AirBnB should implement the rule that you only get to list 1 rental. That would solve this problem, and allow them to stop lying to everyone about who is actually renting on their platform.
- jgalt212 11y ago> AirBnB should implement the rule that you only get to list 1 rental. That would solve this problem, and allow them to stop lying to everyone about who is actually renting on their platform. That proposal is a one way train from a $25B valuation to $2.5B valuation. Of course, if AirBnB loses a number of these key regulatory battles that too could put a serious damper on their biz. Hence, their massive lobbying efforts.
- orthoganol 11y agoIf 90% of their business comes from 'power users' and investment firms and not 'locals renting their home while they are out of town' - then AirBnB is founded on an extraordinary lie.
- sliverstorm 11y agoYes.
- x0x0 11y agoPersonally I'd bet that a majority of their revenue is attributable to units that are not owner-occupied for several reasons: * people using a dwelling limits how much hosting they can do * how hard they've fought to avoid forcing these professional landlords to obey the law (viz nyc, sf, etc); would they have fought so hard (potentially endangering their whole business, see current prop F backlash in sf) if this were a small fraction of revenue? see eg http://www.sfchronicle.com/airbnb-impact-san-francisco-2015/#1 http://www.sfchronicle.com/airbnb-impact-san-francisco-2015/... My back-of-napkin rough estimates are 40-70% of revenue is not the face of the anti-prop F campaign, ie someone earning a little extra money from the odd weekend guest.
- WhitneyLand 11y agoHow is Airbnb responsible for rent control evictions? Landlords would get rid of these tenants at any opportunity regardless of whether Airbnb ever existed.
- tptacek 11y agoNot sure if I'm missing something about your question, because this seems obvious. It's increasing the demand (by allocating a whole new population of short-term tenants to the market, who would otherwise either not visit or would stay in hotels and hostels) and constricting the supply (by incentivizing landlords to take entire properties off the rental market to service those tenants).
- WhitneyLand 11y agoI'm pointing out the demand they create is irrelevant - Landlords always have/will act against rent control.
- Zarel 11y agoIf you're counting "short term tenants" in the demand, it seems really dishonest not to count the properties that serve them in the supply. If we're talking about the supply and demand of all housing, supply has not changed because because using properties to service short-term tenants is still keeping it in the supply, and demand has not changed because you're conflating demand with transaction quantity. In other words, when Airbnb allows the supply of short-term rental properties to increase, this decreases equilibrium price and increases transaction quantity of short-term rentals, but demand itself isn't affected. The number of people who _want_ to visit San Francisco at any given price point hasn't changed, it's just the number of people _able_ to visit that's changed. Really, all that's going on here is that Airbnb has lowered the barrier of entry to short-term rentals, allowing landlords to more easily address market inefficiencies created by rent control. Not that rent control is wrong, but it does work against market forces, and markets tend to route around regulations that work against market forces, in the form of black markets, or scalpers, or whatever. Your enemy really isn't individuals or companies so much as market forces themselves, and while sometimes it's necessary to fight them, honestly, it'd be easier just to legalize building denser housing. Unlike Airbnb, that's what's _really_ restricting the supply.
- tomasien 11y agoHousing in New York City and San Francisco is a problem - MASSIVE. Airbnb has helped many people in those cities find places to stay, make extra income, etc. I'm certain, because of the reasons the problem exists in the first place, that people have and will continue to find ways to use it in ways that are harmful to vulnerable populations. But if you focus really with any energy on Airbnb as a part of the problem rather than some of the applications of Airbnb as EVIDENCE of the problem, boy howdy are you missing the point. I fear that is what will happen - everyone wants a scape goat, tech is an easy one.
- geebee 11y agoI'm a little late to this thread, but I think short term rentals could be a bigger core problem than you've recognized. This is all hard to determine without data, and some of what I am worried about is a risk rather than a current reality, though it appears to be growing. Here's where I'm coming from - in my lifetime, the percentage of SF residents under the age of 18 has dropped from about 22% to below 14%. Much of this happened without airbnb or short term rentals, so obviously they can't be the core cause. However, it could exacerbate it. Airbnb makes it far easier to rent out a "spare" bedroom - in doing so, they vastly increase the value of having a "spare" bedroom that you don't use. So if you are a family with just one kid, three bedroom houses suddenly become much more attractive than two bedroom houses, because what used to be an occasional guest room is now an income generator. What happens when a family with two kids goes up against them in a bidding war? One family can factor in the extra income, the other factors in no extra income and the additional expenses of an additional kid. airBnB(noKids, hasKids) { unless(noKids.income(isWayHigherThan(hasKids.income)) { numKidsSF--; } } At least in that scenario someone is still going to be "from" SF (when this is no longer the case, SF will be nothing more than a disneyland for young people and empty nesters). It can get worse - what happens if investors now realize that they can just buy the whole 3br house and treat it as a hotel? I could see airbnb being a factor in driving the already collapsing percentage of SF residents who are children to even lower lows. By the way, in all of this, I see a good place for airbnb. If a San Francisco family wants to leave for a vacation in Paris, and they can rent out their place for a couple of weeks, and vice-versa, this seems like a good thing. But if converting a "spare" bedroom means that what were formerly kid's bedrooms are too profitable as tourist rentals to be wasted on children, then no, this would be extremely destructive to SF. We need to regulate this, and airbnb needs to be a good citizen and cooperate. The suggestions in this business insider are good ones.
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- vincefutr23 11y agoDo you find it a hassle to rent out like this? Do you ever have any bad guests? What's your occupancy percentage in a typical month ?
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- kafkaesq 11y agoAh, so you're renting the apartment. What do the terms of your lease say about this?
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- xivzgrev 11y agoThis article captured exactly how I feel. Airbnb has become it's own worst enemy by getting greedy and not proactively removing bad actors who make them money. And I really hope SF passes prop F to force their hand.
- floodyberry- 11y agoHow does Airbnb have two faces? Their entire company is just an app that offloads all of the regulations, upkeep, and safety of running a Hotel on to the users, and charges them for the "privilege". The only face there is a greedy leech taking advantage of "not illegal yet" loopholes.
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- heroh 11y agothat describes Uber pretty well too
- Ch_livecodingtv 11y agoI stayed in an AirBnb property and I had good experience. But when you realize the place you stayed wasn't really surveyed for security, it's scary.
- tcdent 11y ago> Unfortunately, that means in my experience the quality drops, no 'homey' feel, and it negatively impacts the locals. Isn't this the fundamental goal of reviews; get a real opinion from the users on wether this is a good or bad thing?
- jrbapna 11y agoThe housing shortage in SF is a citywide problem that goes far beyond airbnb. Removing airbnb listings would barely make a dent in the extreme housing problem that we have in San Francisco. The few times I've used airbnb they were always much better than comparatively priced hotels in the area.
- WalterSear 11y agoAirBnB was just walking by the scene, looking unsavoury enough to make for a sufficently satisfying lynching.
- danieltillett 11y agoThe interesting thing about AirBnB is by going down the unregulated hotel route is it opens up an opportunity for competitors to come in offering a real home sharing experience.
- jackblack343 11y agoI don't understand why they are allowed to look the other way when "professionals" are breaking local laws. Youtube can't allow copyrighted movies on their site. Megaupload was shut down. Below is a real customer service response to reporting a professional in our building. thanks for reaching out about this, I do apologize for the delay in my teams reply and for contacting us regarding your concerns with the listings you've identified. Airbnb is an online platform and does not own, operate, manage or control accommodations, nor do we verify private contract terms or arbitrate complaints from third parties. We do, however, require hosts to represent that they have all rights to list their accommodations. To that end, we are committed to notifying hosts about complaints such as yours, provided we (i) receive a formal written letter (scanned electronically as an image or .pdf) addressed to the user that (ii) details your specific allegation, and (iii) fully identifies the Airbnb user to whom you believe it applies (please include links). Although we will not verify, evaluate or arbitrate the terms you identify, we will provide a complete copy of your complaint to the host and we will ask them whether they wish to remove their listing(s). Again, thank you for contacting us about this. Best,
- flashman 11y agoWell, quite simply, YouTube are (and Megaupload was) serving the infringing content, making them a contributory party. If we started holding building managers responsible for the lawbreaking of their residents, that would at least set some cats among the pigeons I guess.
- HNSucksAss 11y agoThey should have called it AirBnB. WTF is "Airbnb" supposed to mean?
- dandare 11y agoThis just reminds me of Uber - same clash of ideologies between those whon see empowerment of people through new technology and those who see unfair advantage through breaking the law. The problem is that both sides are right. Both Uber and AirBnB provide better/new service through new technology where the incumbents usually didn't bother to inovate and banning them would be backwards. But both also profit from not being subjected to the same regulations - and this is what we should be discussing. While some regulations add value - fire safety standards etc - other are just disguised taxes - why should taxi licences be auctioned for the price of a family house?