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But this is exactly what's happening. The natural way of progression. Landlords realized that they can earn a lot more through AirBnB vs classic renting out. Th

by dvcrn 10y ago

But this is exactly what's happening. The natural way of progression. Landlords realized that they can earn a lot more through AirBnB vs classic renting out. The only problem was the management of the places getting more annoying. The next step was then to have companies take over this missing segment. Landlords can now give their property to a AirBnB management company that makes sure it always get reposted, the key given to the right person and so on. Profit is still higher than what the landlord would make through normal renting out. I worked for a real estate startup and we had A LOT of overseas investors solely wanting to buy properties for renting them out on AirBnB. In the past I also ended up in one of these managed places by accident once. It was a big house with a bunch of walls put in between rooms to rent out each little part of the house as a separate AirBnB room. The avatar and description made it look like it's the house of a young woman trying to make an extra buck. I don't like it either and think it's a little bit sad that things progress this way, but it was unavoidable. I'm crossing my fingers that this won't harm the normal renting and guesthouse/hostel market too much. AirBnB shouldn't be a machine too make rich people even richer and the apartment search for the normal guy harder and harder.

ethanbond 10y ago
Not sure how your fifth paragraph follows. First, it is at least somewhat avoidable. Banning management companies would be one solution. Only allowing users to post their homes for a fraction of a rolling 12 month period would be another. Only allowing users to have 1 or 2 simultaneous postings with different street addresses would be another. These are the things Airbnb should do and doing so honestly probably would have prevented them from getting totally screwed by NYS/NYC legislatures, which leads to my second point. Of course it harms the normal rental market. What else could it possibly do besides that? Not only that, but the backlash against the system harms those of us who do wish to actually legitimately rent out our homes while we're not in them. Airbnb should've been more proactive about this from the get go, but I don't think it's necessarily too late. With this news, though, it seems they don't even think this is a problem despite getting them outlawed in the largest city in the US. It's really a bummer, but it's not unavoidable and not unfixable.
forgetsusername 10y ago
>Landlords realized that they can earn a lot more through AirBnB vs classic renting out. In many cases by circumventing hotel regulation. We seem to like flouting the law, provided it happens in Silicon Valley and not Wall Street. AirBnB is no longer my go-to; it's just another place I check along with travel and hotel aggregator sites. But at least with hotels I know what I'm getting.
bogomipz 10y ago
"we had A LOT of overseas investors solely wanting to buy properties for renting them out on AirBnB." Wow, so people who don't even live in the country are buying housing to rent to other people that don'e live in the country or city. Meanwhile people who live, work and pay taxes increasingly can't afford rents in their hometowns.

by dvcrn 10y ago

ethanbond 10y ago

Not sure how your fifth paragraph follows. First, it is at least somewhat avoidable. Banning management companies would be one solution. Only allowing users to post their homes for a fraction of a rolling 12 month period would be another. Only allowing users to have 1 or 2 simultaneous postings with different street addresses would be another. These are the things Airbnb should do and doing so honestly probably would have prevented them from getting totally screwed by NYS/NYC legislatures, which leads to my second point. Of course it harms the normal rental market. What else could it possibly do besides that? Not only that, but the backlash against the system harms those of us who do wish to actually legitimately rent out our homes while we're not in them. Airbnb should've been more proactive about this from the get go, but I don't think it's necessarily too late. With this news, though, it seems they don't even think this is a problem despite getting them outlawed in the largest city in the US. It's really a bummer, but it's not unavoidable and not unfixable.

forgetsusername 10y ago

>Landlords realized that they can earn a lot more through AirBnB vs classic renting out. In many cases by circumventing hotel regulation. We seem to like flouting the law, provided it happens in Silicon Valley and not Wall Street. AirBnB is no longer my go-to; it's just another place I check along with travel and hotel aggregator sites. But at least with hotels I know what I'm getting.

bogomipz 10y ago

"we had A LOT of overseas investors solely wanting to buy properties for renting them out on AirBnB." Wow, so people who don't even live in the country are buying housing to rent to other people that don'e live in the country or city. Meanwhile people who live, work and pay taxes increasingly can't afford rents in their hometowns.