21 ms·

Airbnb dominated by professional landlords

212 points by frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

vermontdevil 9y ago
Not only professional landlords but professional managers too. In LA I met with a woman who told me she manages 4 condo units in one complex and many others. Meets with people like me to give me keys, parking passes and checks on the unit when I leave. Second AirBnB, same thing but he manages houses instead of condos.
- jonesdc 9y ago
  In an AirBnb we stayed at in Nashville, the house was built in the last 3 years solely to be purposed as an AirBnb unit (spacious and many social/convenient amenities)
thisisit 9y ago
Is this surprising at all? Most "sharing" apps are now overrun by professionals in their field. The apps help the professional (or company) achieve zero cost customer acquisition cost. In case the apps do catch up, these guys end up being "promoted" because they are a good fit. The pros make for much better "sales target" for these sharing apps.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  It's not zero cost it's fixed cost as they pay airbnb for it. But that's still a good deal as customer acquisition is tricky.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    They have about 20% comission, plus another 5-10 if you pay in a foreign currency.
  - thisisit 9y ago
    My bad, it is not zero. I dint account for the commissions platforms charge for using the service.
- camus2 9y ago
  A lot of occasional hosts underestimate the risks of subletting through Airbnb. If a guest starts a fire or a flood unless you have a professional insurance you're fucked for instance, and lying to your insurance will make things worse if you get caught. If the neighbors file a complain about your guests you can get evicted, if you sublet behind your landlord's back as well. So it was just a question of time before most offers in the west get fulfilled by professionals, especially when Airbnb is starting to cooperate actively with local authorities when it comes to things such as the legal status of the host and taxes. The whole grass-root share economy thing is just a PR farce.
- tootie 9y ago
  Uber started out as ride sharing, now it's an international taxi service.
  - x220 9y ago
    And an international regulation avoidance service.
    - Rjevski 9y ago
      Which I couldn't care less about as long as they improve my daily life. I can book and pay an Uber in two clicks and it arrives on time. Why should I care about an idiot politician not getting their pockets filled because Uber aren't complying with regulations forcing them to fill his pockets?
      - FridgeSeal 9y ago
        Right sure, because the regulations are only there for a politician to fill their pockets and for no other reasons, and fuck consumer protections let's just let corporations do whatever they want because "fuck you I've got mine, and I got it on time".
        Rjevski 9y ago
        Well if Uber doesn't provide consumer protection then you're not forced to use them. But personally I'd rather take the risk and give up my customer protection (and be fine 99% of the time) than deal with a conventional taxi. Judging by Uber's popularity it looks like I'm not alone.
      - dx034 9y ago
        Because it also means that you don't care if your driver doesn't have proper insurance or basic rights that workers fought for a century ago. Most regulation is not the result of "idiot politicians", it's the result of customers demanding protection.
    - matt4077 9y ago
- jackcosgrove 9y ago
  Any sort of market gradually becomes consolidated over time, until 2 or 3 big firms dominate it. Professionals practice specialization, which will always give them an advantage over amateurs. Sharing platforms at least don't lock out amateurs with high entry costs.
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  This is only true if the professional has the ability to scale. In other words, if they are selling a product (a place to rent) vs. a service (driving someone somewhere e.g. Uber)
trevyn 9y ago
This is not a problem. In my experience, professional landlords & managers offer clean, updated apartments that are a joy to check into and are a way better place to stay than hotels. I love using Airbnb for specifically this reason. It seems like in Europe, professional short-term apartment rental is a common thing anyway -- Airbnb just serves as a centralized listing platform. This is less common in the US.
- kohanz 9y ago
  I agree that I don't really see what the problem is. Curious that AirBnB would deny it though. Does it hurt their brand?
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    AirBnB market the idea that someone rents out a spare room/apartment for a couple of while they're on vacation. In general, this isn't something people would complain about. The reality, of professionals renting out multiple apartments for the whole year, is when the neighbours will complain: there's the noise of 50-100 people clunking their wheelie suitcases in and out, not knowing where to take their rubbish and leaving it in the stairwell, having a noisy party, etc. Plus, a feeling of reduced security when there are unfamiliar people in the building all the time.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- yalogin 9y ago
  Isn’t that what a family owned hotel/inn is?
  - trevyn 9y ago
    No, Airbnb typically lists actual, real everyday apartments, so you feel like you're living in the city like a local, not in a hotel. If you haven't tried it, it's a great feeling.
samstave 9y ago
Was inevitable, what I would like to know from airbnb data is what % of properties are owned by or managed by the same accounts in a given area. "Show me all the properties owned/managed by user X" How many properties are owned by actual airbnb employees? Also, wouldn't this basically result in some sort of price fixing at least among the properties under a single owner/manager?
- jaclaz 9y ago
  There was a "map" of Amsterdam somehow similar to what you asked posted a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253 it seems like in the meantime has been expanded to cover other cities: http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/ http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/ Most probably using the same data source/API/whatever it would be possible to do the searches you wish for (not the one about AirBNB enployees, but I don't think they are that many).
megamindbrian 9y ago
And now it's just as annoying to find a place to stay as it was dealing with conglomerate hotel chains owned by Patel's.
- nos4A2 9y ago
  *Patels (don’t generalize people, its not nice)
cletus 9y ago
Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem. None of this is a surprise, so much so that AirBnB seems to be aware of this and is acting in a way that's, at best, ethically challenged and, at worst, illegal eg deleting listings before giving data to the state of NY that "shows" most hosts only have one unit [1]. If people want to run a hotel, there's a legal structure for this. And zoning. Go do that. I personally applaud efforts to shut down illegal hotels. [1] https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-state-legislature-illegal-listings https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-state...
- exogeny 9y ago
  In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits by a large margin. And when you add on the unregulated latent racism (multiple reports, too lazy to cite) and the fact that there's next to zero safety checks in place for things like smoke detectors and so on, it's really sort of surprising that so many people defend it.
  - santoshalper 9y ago
    Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia here is staggering. The sharing economy is a tidal wave of economic change - mostly for good. You'd throw pebbles at it trying to stop it. It's both wrongheaded and comically pointless.
    - gist 9y ago
      > Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb. > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying that you have not received any upside from interacting over the years with 'a large corporation'? And that they have no value? Or that you think it just makes you a better person because your money went to an individual as if you have just donated to a person or charity in need?
throwaway413 9y ago
The last Airbnb I rented was from a dude managing 28 other properties, all listed on Airbnb.
- sisyphusprotege 9y ago
  That's the kind of pluck and industriousness that made this country great.
  - throwaway413 9y ago
    He's definitely killing it, that's for sure - owns none of them, simply partners with old, small apt complex owners that have extra units for rent. Spends all his time traveling the world while his "business partner" takes care of cleaning and maintenance.
    - sisyphusprotege 9y ago
      If he owns nothing and provides so little value, I would bet its only a matter of time until he is cut out of the pie.
      - throwaway413 9y ago
        True - however, I think he specifically targets older, tech-illiterate owners of properties who wouldn't otherwise be on Airbnb, or less so. At least that's what I've gathered from my nosey observations.
      - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
        Seems like he manages the whole reservation process and guest back and forth for a large number of properties. That's a large part of what established property managers do.
      - return0 9y ago
        Why so? Do the owners provide any value?
jonny_eh 9y ago
> Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap. Maybe that rent cap is why landlords prefer Airbnb. Rent caps are never a good idea, they have so many unforseen consequences.
- rbehrends 9y ago
  There is no rent cap in Germany. The article is wrong. Germany has only "soft" rent controls that limit YOY increases in rent and (selectively) increases in rents when changing tenants. German economic orthodoxy relies very much on the need to build housing in order to deal with housing shortages and with rising rents due to housing shortages. The "soft" rent controls simply buy time to get housing projects underway. Without new housing being built, rents would still reach market levels, it would just take a bit longer. Berlin's current problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1) from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already evolved to accommodate English speakers. Various and sundry NIMBY problems where locals oppose new housing projects also don't help.
  - tootie 9y ago
    NYC does the same rent caps disappeared in the 70s. They YOY percentage increase limits. One limit for lease renewals, higher one for new leases.
    - delphinius81 9y ago
      DC has the same rent control structure.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Berlin's currently problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1) from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already evolved to accommodate English speakers. No. Berlin problems mostly stem from the city government colluding with investor scum to build luxury apartments instead of actually affordable ones plus doing their very best to e.g. kick squats out (which help keeping down rents for all neighbors). Berlin government could easily break the necks of the investors and protect the population instead, but especially the SPD has chosen not to do so - and sell off priorly city-owned prime real estate to investors. The investors now do "Luxussanierungen" (basically, thermoclad the houses and fix the more egregious stuff like bad wiring / plumbing that the city government had neglected over decades) and price out all the lower-and-middle-income people.
ricardobeat 9y ago
'Our members own seven apartments on average, they are not big companies' Amazing how people live in distorted realities. To the vast majority of the population, owning seven apartments definitely puts you into 'big company' territory. Plus not being 'big' doesn't mean you get any exemptions.
- chris_va 9y ago
  That's more small business category. With a business plan and stable income, getting a small business loan isn't hard. In this case, there is an asset value risk, but that doesn't mean this is large company territory...
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    Of course it's small business - the point is there is little distinction between this guy and Accor for most people, they are both corporations and not someone renting out their holiday home anymore.
- santoshalper 9y ago
  Owning seven rental properties puts you squarely in the "small business" category by any definition. Big companies like Marriott have well over a million hotel rooms spread over thousands of properties.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    The vast, vast majority of "Marriott's" hotel rooms are actually owned by investment funds, or smaller investors/groups who own 2, 5, 10, 15 hotels. Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham are all similar to Airbnb in this aspect, they do not own the real estate, they just provide the platform to the real estate owners to rent the rooms on and provide the branding support in exchange for 7% to 15% royalty fees.
- amarkov 9y ago
  If you own seven apartments with an average rent of $1k, your yearly revenue (not profit!) is $84,000. That's microscopic by any reasonable standard of company size.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Is this a surprise? If you look at eBay, it's also dominated by professional sellers as well. In some sense it makes it better because you have motivated people handling the transaction, not one-off people that might not take the transaction seriously.
- solatic 9y ago
  > not one-off people that might not take the transaction seriously But this is exactly what's needed to keep costs down. Consumers have the choice of professionally managed and regulated hotels, for a higher price, or to take a chance on some guy's couch in a basement, for very cheap, because hospitality isn't couch-guy's day job and it's just a way for him to make an extra quick buck. That couch-guy is a one-off is supposed to be the entire value proposition why AirBNB can be cheaper. The moment professionals start to get involved is the moment the law needs to be careful that professionals aren't using AirBNB to skirt regulations.
  - chii 9y ago
    > using AirBNB to skirt regulations. i'd like to hear what sort of regulations that are being skirted. I keep hearing about things like fire safety laws, and escape hatches etc. Why does being used as a hotel force an apartment to be more stringent than it originally was? Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what? As for zoning laws - those are arbituary lines drawn by the city planners. As a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if airbnb brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing value. City planners cannot forsee this, and so zoning laws will be broken no matter what.
    - solatic 9y ago
      > Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what? No. Hotels are denser (in terms of people sleeping in a building) than typical apartment buildings, because apartment buildings need to devote the square footage to copies of kitchens etc. per apartment, which unnecessarily would drive up the cost of hotel rooms. But leaving that aside (after all, the argument is about apartment buildings being used in place of hotels, not hotel buildings) - there's a bigger picture than just safety regulations. How about taxes? Cities which attract tourism often like to establish high taxes on tourists, because municipalities need to draw their budget from somewhere, and tourists don't vote (well, they do, because they could decide to vacation somewhere else, but barring a very steep price increase, tourism tends to be somewhat immune from these higher taxes, by the very nature of most tourists saving up money to travel to some specific fantasy location), so municipalities will levy high taxes on hotels, knowing full well that those taxes are passed on to tourists. When hotels start to be threatened by unregulated competitors, that competition threatens that tax revenue stream. > As for zoning laws - those are arbitrary lines drawn by the city planners So what? As many objectors have pointed out, city residents have an inherent interest in developing a sense of community, which requires people to commit to living in apartments over the long-term. Ghost ownership threatens that social good, and seasonal tourism threatens local mom-and-pop shops serving local neighborhoods, which no longer get foot traffic in the off-season. That's not to say hotels are evil - it's to say that one of the central tenets of urban planning is to attempt to balance competing, mutually-exclusive interests forced to live together by inherent urban density, for the common harmony and benefit of all, and zoning is an integral tool for that purpose. > As a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if airbnb brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing value. This is a farcical argument. The highest return for urban property is turning it into illegal drug factory. By your logic, investment apartments should always be turned into illegal drug factories, because their investors have to do it, otherwise they'd be losing value. After all, what's the qualitative difference between breaking zoning laws and breaking drug enforcement laws? If you're OK with operating an illegal hotel, to the detriment of the people in the surrounding neighborhood, then why not be OK with operating an illegal drug factory, also to the detriment of the people in the surrounding neighborhood?
andr 9y ago
If AirBnB gave me the option to filter actual lived-in apartments, as opposed to professional operations, I would definitely prioritize those. I miss the original feeling of booking someone's actual apartment, sharing their history, books, way of life, even weird knock-knacks. IKEA catalog living rooms get old quickly.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  I really like this aspect too. Even just flipping through the host's collection of books to learn a little more about their perspective on the world. I've even had some hosts say help yourself to what's in the fridge. I usually don't, as that still feels a little weird to me, but generally it's really interesting to get to see how someone else that you don't really know lives.
- jordonwii 9y ago
  This would be great. I just stayed in about 10 or so Airbnbs on an extended trip. A number of them were run by someone who didn't live there, but would, for example, leave a lock box outside the door with the key, and tell us to put the key back when we left. The best stays by far were in the places where I was staying with someone who lived there. It added a lot to the experience staying there. I doubt this will ever show up as a real filter, though. Maybe a "this is this host's only listing" badge or something could happen.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  They actually offer this: you can switch to "private room" or "shared room" listings instead of looking at "entire homes".
- return0 9y ago
  Learning the knick-knacks of strangers you dont know in the slightest FOR A PRICE is a weird feeling i have with airbnb. It feels intrusive, and it's creepy, but we don't admit it because it's convenient. This is the wrong way to satisfy our need for intimacy.
  - robocat 9y ago
sisyphusprotege 9y ago
Person who bought an old triplex with a ton of deferred maintenance and has been running it as a vacation rental for a long time here. This is not an easy side gig. It's more than a full time job, and I have been living in one of the units and only renting two and my SO helps out a lot. Bringing on a third unit and I am about at the point of needing one full time employee. It is a never ending fight against entropy, as well as a not insignificant number of guests who will lie to get over on you. You have to: Manage bookings/field inquiries and sell property in these exchanges/make special offers to fill spots. Accounting/legal/tax Cleaning. This is very labor intensive. To properly clean a two bedroom apartment to hotel standards takes at least 3 hours and that's if guests left it clean. One stray hair in the wrong spot and you lose. Maintenance. Decks/trim/walls need to be patched and painted each year. Things break. A very heavy-set guest will crack a toilet seat and it needs to be replaced in the 4 or 5 hour window you have between guests. You might get some animal infestation that needs to be dealt with. Guest relations. Guests will forget things and want them mailed to them. They require handholding and strategies to keep review scores up. People will constantly be trying to negotiate your price down, even though you offer 4 times the square footage for the same price as a nice hotel in the area. I am working on automating and streamlining as much of this as possible, and there are gains to be made there. I have made gains with superior cleaning technology to save time as well. FAQs and guides can help, but guests don't read them much of the time. This is not real estate investing, its hospitality and meeting and greeting guests and chatting with the friendly ones is what gives you the good reviews where other less hands on places get the very critical ones. Professional management is where this space needs to go in my opinion. Vacation rentals have been a boutique industry for a long, long time. What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the subletting of places people rent from others. AirBnB has both made the space much more popular, and caused a lot of the ire and animosity we have seen towards the space.
- camus2 9y ago
  > What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the subletting of places people rent from others. Yet that's a minority of Airbnb's offers according to the article. The vast majority of rentals are operated by "professionals" who rent all year long, this is not like a "paid couchsurfing" service. People like you buy condos for the sole purpose of renting it on Airbnb, and that's fine, but let's not pretend like Airbnb is some grass-root charity.
geebee 9y ago
Adam Smith wrote, in the Wealth of Nations in 1776: "Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit." Airbnb is a remarkable innovation that allows landlords externalize those negatives, while keeping the profits.
3pt14159 9y ago
Look, we have a couple problems: low interest rates, large variance in productivity / earnings, really shitty hotels because they're operating on old-world assumptions. One under appreciated thing about apps like Uber and AirBnb is the star rating system. I know I'm a five star tenant. I know I never shit in the sink. I know I never leave a bunch of condoms or cigar butts all over the balcony or hotel room. But the hotel doesn't know that. They need to steam clean the sheets and install super-fat-person-proof toilets. And elevators for the disabled. And a hotel room with a stove and usable fridge? Hah! Only two times have I had that and one was in a room that cost $10k a week (don't ask, I was the +1). Then it comes to AirBnb and global housing stock. Someone like me who is currently in Kiev in an AirBnb is always going to be able to out-spend a local. The key is to align incentives. I literally would not have come to Kiev if they'd banned AirBnb. I would have gone back to Lithuania (love Vilnius) or to Turkey or Estonia. With the drive to pull in tourist money going on worldwide why should cities ban AirBnb (or Uber for that matter)? "Because it's driving up rents!" Ok, so let's solve that problem. I have no issue with cities imposing a 30% tax on AirBnbs and using the income to build up the housing stock for locals. They should do this, it makes perfect sense. "Because AirBnbers are loud and disruptive!" Make hosts responsible for noise complaint fines and pretty quick loud tenants are going to get bad ratings. "Because I want community, not a bunch of transient AirBnbers that don't even speak the local language!" If it is getting really, really bad, (say 20% or higher of housing stock in a community) maybe scale up the taxes to combat this. But let's not miss the positives either. I've met a number of cool people both hosting them in my place just before traveling or by interacting with them in areas I never would have been in had I been staying in a hotel. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water and all that.
- archagon 9y ago
  Airbnb is one of those rare products that cracked open an entire world of possibilities for me. For the first time, I've gotten the chance to live as a local all around the world, for even less money than at a hotel or sometimes even a hostel. Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past, getting to know distant cities right from the ground floor. Adjustments should be made on a city-to-city basis, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The rewards are just too sweet! (For the record, I've mostly stayed in shared accommodations, since entire apartment rentals are very expensive for prolonged travel. It seems people are mostly OK with this side of Airbnb.)
IanDrake 9y ago
According to this article I'm a professional landlord because I have more than one property on airbnb? I think that's a huge leap and was done to inflate numbers to re-enforce their point, which would otherwise be poorly made by a meaningful statistic. To be a professional landlord you need at least 20 properties. That is typically the minimum number of properties to provide a livable income.
BMorearty 9y ago
Airbnb employee here. (Software engineer; I don't speak for the company.) Personally, I like staying in listings that are owned and operated by the resident. It's more personal and it lets me connect more with some locals. One of my favorite nights at an Airbnb was a dinner with the delightful couple who rented out a room in their Paris apartment. Much less enjoyable was a night in a Seattle room--it was very clean and a five-star room, but it felt like a hotel in that I was lonely. Both of those were business trips. My vacation travel is different: I have a wife and 3 kids, so it's almost impossible for the five of us to stay in someone's private residence. For those trips, I look for places where the owner only has one property, which to my mind indicates they give it--and my family--a high level of personal attention. Sometimes it's a cottage in their backyard, like the ones I've stayed in at Tahoe and Pescadero. Those a nice because I can meet the owner and they're just 20 feet away when I need help. I am also an Airbnb host of a cottage in my own backyard. It's booked about 90% of the time but the neighbors on my street tell me they usually forget I'm even hosting because they don't even notice. But there are hosts who manage many properties and there are guests who stay in them. I personally don't like the feeling of being tricked into thinking a place is owner-occupied and then finding out it's managed by a property manager, and I will say so in a review. (We have rules for employees; I won't look at our internal systems when booking to try to see more than the usual customer would see.) The managed properties are more common in some large urban cities. That is why last year Airbnb banned owners of multiple properties in some large cities around the world. I honestly don't know the specifics of any one city such as Cologne, which is mentioned in the article.
- __strisk 9y ago
  God I hate those backyard cottages, did you label yours as a "casita" too? Some AirBnB hosts literally go to home depot, haul a shed, plant it, add crappy insulation and list it. I actually find that to be the worst aspect of AirBnB, if I go to a hotel and I do not like my room I can switch it. If I use AirBnB and the place sucks, well, I'm stuck. Unless I want to go through a lengthy customer service battle. Listings managed by professionals are pleasant on the other hand, I honestly do not want to check-in putting up a front after lining my "host"s pockets. I pay for a service and receive service. Let's not pretend they're doing this for any other reason. AirBnB damn isn't Couch Surfing.
EGreg 9y ago
And bitcoin is dominated by professional miners. Open source and the Web is dominated by large corporations like Google and Facebook. And sports tickets and restaurant reservations are scalped. I wonder if all these peer to peer marketplaces tend to become dominated by professionals and even the original industry they are supposed to disrupt. Wikipedia seems to have prevented this, as has HN. Any solutions?
- chii 9y ago
  why prevent professionals from doing anything? Professionals are professional because they do it better than an amateur. Scalping is a different issue - the ticket price is priced too low. Scalping is a sign of market inefficiency (and scalpers are there to take advantage of it). If the tickets are priced correctly (e.g., via an auction system), then there won't be any scalpers.
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Jabanga 9y ago
The discussion here reminds me of this: "We have an ingrained anti-profit bias that blinds us to the social benefits of free markets" https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-anti-profit-bias-that-blinds-us-to-the-social-benefits-of-free-markets/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-an...
paulcnichols 9y ago
"Platform that makes people money dominated by people best at making money." Shocker.
bane 9y ago
I'm one of those people who really doesn't like these kinds of x-sharing services when they're just breaking the law. But when they aren't I'm all for the competition and additional money making opportunities it creates for participants. I'm getting ready to go on my 3rd multi-week trip with housing provided almost entirely by airBnB. So far I've been generally very pleased with most of the hosts. In general, I've found the ones outside of the U.S. tend to provide a better experience per dollar than in the U.S. I've also found myself at some delightful B&B's who just list on AirBnB instead of other methods. On the other hand, I've also found myself in some sketchy group home like experiences with no owner to be found (mostly in the U.S.). The hard part of it is this, I can put together a multi-location road trip across six or seven countries in a few short hours on AirBnB because all of the "vendors" list there (many times faster than doing it with hotels), and the total price will be 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of doing it in hotels, and the quality of the experience will be about on par with any 3-star hotel I'm likely to find. I've yet to break $70/night on AirBnB (for entire flats/apartments) because there's usually so much inventory. The locations can be better than "hotel districts" and I can usually find something very custom and suited to what I want. The reviews also reinforce the honesty of the listing, whereas hotels will show pictures of a model room with idealized lighting and the reality is often not the same. Bonus, we've often gotten to talk with pretty interesting people, seen interesting neighborhoods we would have ignored before and use public transport much more fully than we would have otherwise. I think the easiest way for hotels to compete against AirBnB is to simply start listing on it and competing, room-for-room. Room 607 in the local Marriott has a noise problem? It'll show up in the reviews. Front-desk clerks rude in the Albany, NY Holiday Inn? It'll show up. Prices too high for what you get? It'll have to compete against local housing inventory. I'm also very sympathetic to many of the comments here regarding areas with very high housing prices. In terms of local housing strategy, simply banning these kinds of services should be part of a local multi-pronged strategy to reduce housing prices (along with limiting other investment options). But I'm not so sure it's a universal problem. Every time I've booked big trips on AirBnB I've always found hosts who are renting out multiple properties and don't live in most of them. However, in many cities, looking at the rates they're charging, they're not suffering from the same kind of systemic housing shortages places like SF or NYC are. One other thing to consider in tight markets. If the local municipalities aren't going to restrict investment ownership, AirBnB may end up being a better user of the investment properties than people who simply buy up properties and they lay completely abandoned for years. Because the market that AirBnB has to work in is different than say, foreign investors, it also might help better shape the kinds of properties that get built to eventually be more affordable. e.g. 432 Park Ave is going to end up mostly uninhabited even if the "tenancy" is at 100% and none of those apartments are going to end up on AirBnB. This inventory of $30million dollar apartments is not going to go anywhere. But AirBnB investory might be on the lookout for more affordable construction to invest in, knowing that someday they'll sell the property off to more regular buyers and need to rent it to normal people as well in the meanwhile.
miaklesp 9y ago
Dating websites dominated by professional hookers
jaclaz 9y ago
Let us try to look at the matter in another way. Take a city/place. Calculate how many people visited it before AirBNB. Let's say 1,000,000 stays per year, with an average expense of US$ 180 each, including night at US$ 120 at the hotel and some drinks/meals/souvenirs/whatever another 60 US$ . The city/place (globally) has had an "income" of 180,000,000. How many more people visited the city place after AirBNB became popular? Let's say 1,200,000, i.e. a 20% increase, and let's say that not only these 200,000 more stays are at AirBNB's (i.e. people that wouldn't have come if AirBNB's were not available), but that also a part of the same people that would have take a hotel room passed to AirBNB's, let's say 100,000. Now, the hotels will have lowered their prices because of the competition, and - more generally - an AirBNB user (with of course the usual exceptions) is probably less prone to spend money. So we have 900,000 nights at a "discounted" price of (say) 110 US$ i.e. 99,000,000 plus 900,000 at the same US$ 60 54,000,000 and some 300,000 AirBNB's at (say) 60 US$ , i.e. 18,000,000, plus 300,000 at a lower US$ 40, that is 12,000,000. From the 18,000,000 you have to subtract the commission AirBNB takes, which should be on average (both guest and host commission) around 15% that "goes elsewhere", i.e. 2,700,000. The city/place received (globally) 99+54+18+12-2.7=180,3 millions, i.e. roughly the same as before, while having (still globally), the increases of traffic, garbage, noise, etc. due to the 200,000 more visits. In the meantime, hotels and other trades had a roughly 10% decrease of income, apartments/flats were not available to local population at "fair" long term rent prices, the increased income from the rentals of the AirBNB's and connected services very likely went in a lower tax bracket. I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the locals.
- komaromy 9y ago
  It seems like you should take into account the cut that a hotel chain extracts from each franchise to make a fair comparison. I don't have a good sense of how much that is.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Yes, I was hypothizing local owned (not chain) hotels, but you are right, anyway nowadays there will be the 15 % or higher fee that booking.com or similar charge, at least for the bookings that went through them. If you reduce the "before" of (let's say that the chain/franchise fee is lower and that not all bookings (thankfully) go through booking.com or similar, by 10% of 120,000,000 in the "before" i.e. 12,000,000 and reduce by the same amount 10% of 99,000,000, 9,900,000, you get to a "before" of 168,000,000 and an "after" of 170,400,000, so you have a slight increase in "income" : 2,400,000/168,000,000=1,4% But anyway the "unit prices" were arbitrary and just for the sake of the reasoning.
vmarsy 9y ago
> Some 58 percent of all offers on Airbnb in Germany are entire apartments or even apartment blocks - meaning professional landlords are effectively the core of Airbnb's business. Someone working a full time job, who owns a primary residence as well as a secondary one for vacation. Does renting that secondary location means they are "a professional landlord" ? If someone who owns an apartment but is going abroad for a bit for vacation/work and have a family member take care of renting the place on AirBnB, are they "professional landlords" ? I would assume professional landlord = landlord whose full time job is to take care of the rentals, I don't understand the jump from "this listing is an entire apartment" => "This is a professional landlord"
OJFord 9y ago
Any Airbnb 'host' is a de facto 'professional landlord'. Next?
southphillyman 9y ago
At least these professional landlords own the properties and thus have some sort of stake in the matter. A friend of mine some how managed to rent multiple apartments at the same time and then rented them all out via AirBnb. He lived with his girlfriend, so he was essentially a professional landlord who didn't own any property. I like AirBnb but with time it's warts are being exposed. After being racially profiled multiple times, having a host cancel on me at the last minute and sending my money back via Western Union, and other annoyances I now consider hotels about 50% of the time after almost exclusively doing AirBnb.
- web-dev-123 9y ago
  Man I agree. AirBnB was awesome initially, a hidden gem with great prices, great properties, and great people - but now they're kind of in this make or break position I feel. Finding an amicable solution for both renters and property owners will be tough.

Not only professional landlords but professional managers too. In LA I met with a woman who told me she manages 4 condo units in one complex and many others. Meets with people like me to give me keys, parking passes and checks on the unit when I leave. Second AirBnB, same thing but he manages houses instead of condos.

jonesdc 9y ago
In an AirBnb we stayed at in Nashville, the house was built in the last 3 years solely to be purposed as an AirBnb unit (spacious and many social/convenient amenities)

thisisit 9y ago

Is this surprising at all? Most "sharing" apps are now overrun by professionals in their field. The apps help the professional (or company) achieve zero cost customer acquisition cost. In case the apps do catch up, these guys end up being "promoted" because they are a good fit. The pros make for much better "sales target" for these sharing apps.

kasey_junk 9y ago
It's not zero cost it's fixed cost as they pay airbnb for it. But that's still a good deal as customer acquisition is tricky.
- user5994461 9y ago
  They have about 20% comission, plus another 5-10 if you pay in a foreign currency.
- thisisit 9y ago
  My bad, it is not zero. I dint account for the commissions platforms charge for using the service.
camus2 9y ago
A lot of occasional hosts underestimate the risks of subletting through Airbnb. If a guest starts a fire or a flood unless you have a professional insurance you're fucked for instance, and lying to your insurance will make things worse if you get caught. If the neighbors file a complain about your guests you can get evicted, if you sublet behind your landlord's back as well. So it was just a question of time before most offers in the west get fulfilled by professionals, especially when Airbnb is starting to cooperate actively with local authorities when it comes to things such as the legal status of the host and taxes. The whole grass-root share economy thing is just a PR farce.
tootie 9y ago
Uber started out as ride sharing, now it's an international taxi service.
- x220 9y ago
  And an international regulation avoidance service.
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    Which I couldn't care less about as long as they improve my daily life. I can book and pay an Uber in two clicks and it arrives on time. Why should I care about an idiot politician not getting their pockets filled because Uber aren't complying with regulations forcing them to fill his pockets?
    - FridgeSeal 9y ago
      Right sure, because the regulations are only there for a politician to fill their pockets and for no other reasons, and fuck consumer protections let's just let corporations do whatever they want because "fuck you I've got mine, and I got it on time".
      - Rjevski 9y ago
        Well if Uber doesn't provide consumer protection then you're not forced to use them. But personally I'd rather take the risk and give up my customer protection (and be fine 99% of the time) than deal with a conventional taxi. Judging by Uber's popularity it looks like I'm not alone.
    - dx034 9y ago
      Because it also means that you don't care if your driver doesn't have proper insurance or basic rights that workers fought for a century ago. Most regulation is not the result of "idiot politicians", it's the result of customers demanding protection.
  - matt4077 9y ago
jackcosgrove 9y ago
Any sort of market gradually becomes consolidated over time, until 2 or 3 big firms dominate it. Professionals practice specialization, which will always give them an advantage over amateurs. Sharing platforms at least don't lock out amateurs with high entry costs.
CamelCaseName 9y ago
This is only true if the professional has the ability to scale. In other words, if they are selling a product (a place to rent) vs. a service (driving someone somewhere e.g. Uber)

trevyn 9y ago

This is not a problem. In my experience, professional landlords & managers offer clean, updated apartments that are a joy to check into and are a way better place to stay than hotels. I love using Airbnb for specifically this reason. It seems like in Europe, professional short-term apartment rental is a common thing anyway -- Airbnb just serves as a centralized listing platform. This is less common in the US.

kohanz 9y ago
I agree that I don't really see what the problem is. Curious that AirBnB would deny it though. Does it hurt their brand?
- Symbiote 9y ago
  AirBnB market the idea that someone rents out a spare room/apartment for a couple of while they're on vacation. In general, this isn't something people would complain about. The reality, of professionals renting out multiple apartments for the whole year, is when the neighbours will complain: there's the noise of 50-100 people clunking their wheelie suitcases in and out, not knowing where to take their rubbish and leaving it in the stairwell, having a noisy party, etc. Plus, a feeling of reduced security when there are unfamiliar people in the building all the time.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
yalogin 9y ago
Isn’t that what a family owned hotel/inn is?
- trevyn 9y ago
  No, Airbnb typically lists actual, real everyday apartments, so you feel like you're living in the city like a local, not in a hotel. If you haven't tried it, it's a great feeling.

samstave 9y ago

Was inevitable, what I would like to know from airbnb data is what % of properties are owned by or managed by the same accounts in a given area. "Show me all the properties owned/managed by user X" How many properties are owned by actual airbnb employees? Also, wouldn't this basically result in some sort of price fixing at least among the properties under a single owner/manager?

jaclaz 9y ago
There was a "map" of Amsterdam somehow similar to what you asked posted a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253 it seems like in the meantime has been expanded to cover other cities: http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/ http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/ Most probably using the same data source/API/whatever it would be possible to do the searches you wish for (not the one about AirBNB enployees, but I don't think they are that many).

megamindbrian 9y ago

And now it's just as annoying to find a place to stay as it was dealing with conglomerate hotel chains owned by Patel's.

nos4A2 9y ago
*Patels (don’t generalize people, its not nice)

cletus 9y ago

Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem. None of this is a surprise, so much so that AirBnB seems to be aware of this and is acting in a way that's, at best, ethically challenged and, at worst, illegal eg deleting listings before giving data to the state of NY that "shows" most hosts only have one unit [1]. If people want to run a hotel, there's a legal structure for this. And zoning. Go do that. I personally applaud efforts to shut down illegal hotels. [1] https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-state-legislature-illegal-listings https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-state...

exogeny 9y ago
In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits by a large margin. And when you add on the unregulated latent racism (multiple reports, too lazy to cite) and the fact that there's next to zero safety checks in place for things like smoke detectors and so on, it's really sort of surprising that so many people defend it.
- santoshalper 9y ago
  Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia here is staggering. The sharing economy is a tidal wave of economic change - mostly for good. You'd throw pebbles at it trying to stop it. It's both wrongheaded and comically pointless.
  - gist 9y ago
    > Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb. > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying that you have not received any upside from interacting over the years with 'a large corporation'? And that they have no value? Or that you think it just makes you a better person because your money went to an individual as if you have just donated to a person or charity in need?

throwaway413 9y ago

The last Airbnb I rented was from a dude managing 28 other properties, all listed on Airbnb.

sisyphusprotege 9y ago
That's the kind of pluck and industriousness that made this country great.
- throwaway413 9y ago
  He's definitely killing it, that's for sure - owns none of them, simply partners with old, small apt complex owners that have extra units for rent. Spends all his time traveling the world while his "business partner" takes care of cleaning and maintenance.
  - sisyphusprotege 9y ago
    If he owns nothing and provides so little value, I would bet its only a matter of time until he is cut out of the pie.
    - throwaway413 9y ago
      True - however, I think he specifically targets older, tech-illiterate owners of properties who wouldn't otherwise be on Airbnb, or less so. At least that's what I've gathered from my nosey observations.
    - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      Seems like he manages the whole reservation process and guest back and forth for a large number of properties. That's a large part of what established property managers do.
    - return0 9y ago
      Why so? Do the owners provide any value?

jonny_eh 9y ago

> Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap. Maybe that rent cap is why landlords prefer Airbnb. Rent caps are never a good idea, they have so many unforseen consequences.

rbehrends 9y ago
There is no rent cap in Germany. The article is wrong. Germany has only "soft" rent controls that limit YOY increases in rent and (selectively) increases in rents when changing tenants. German economic orthodoxy relies very much on the need to build housing in order to deal with housing shortages and with rising rents due to housing shortages. The "soft" rent controls simply buy time to get housing projects underway. Without new housing being built, rents would still reach market levels, it would just take a bit longer. Berlin's current problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1) from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already evolved to accommodate English speakers. Various and sundry NIMBY problems where locals oppose new housing projects also don't help.
- tootie 9y ago
  NYC does the same rent caps disappeared in the 70s. They YOY percentage increase limits. One limit for lease renewals, higher one for new leases.
  - delphinius81 9y ago
    DC has the same rent control structure.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Berlin's currently problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1) from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already evolved to accommodate English speakers. No. Berlin problems mostly stem from the city government colluding with investor scum to build luxury apartments instead of actually affordable ones plus doing their very best to e.g. kick squats out (which help keeping down rents for all neighbors). Berlin government could easily break the necks of the investors and protect the population instead, but especially the SPD has chosen not to do so - and sell off priorly city-owned prime real estate to investors. The investors now do "Luxussanierungen" (basically, thermoclad the houses and fix the more egregious stuff like bad wiring / plumbing that the city government had neglected over decades) and price out all the lower-and-middle-income people.

ricardobeat 9y ago

'Our members own seven apartments on average, they are not big companies' Amazing how people live in distorted realities. To the vast majority of the population, owning seven apartments definitely puts you into 'big company' territory. Plus not being 'big' doesn't mean you get any exemptions.

chris_va 9y ago
That's more small business category. With a business plan and stable income, getting a small business loan isn't hard. In this case, there is an asset value risk, but that doesn't mean this is large company territory...
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  Of course it's small business - the point is there is little distinction between this guy and Accor for most people, they are both corporations and not someone renting out their holiday home anymore.
santoshalper 9y ago
Owning seven rental properties puts you squarely in the "small business" category by any definition. Big companies like Marriott have well over a million hotel rooms spread over thousands of properties.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  The vast, vast majority of "Marriott's" hotel rooms are actually owned by investment funds, or smaller investors/groups who own 2, 5, 10, 15 hotels. Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Choice/Wyndham are all similar to Airbnb in this aspect, they do not own the real estate, they just provide the platform to the real estate owners to rent the rooms on and provide the branding support in exchange for 7% to 15% royalty fees.
amarkov 9y ago
If you own seven apartments with an average rent of $1k, your yearly revenue (not profit!) is $84,000. That's microscopic by any reasonable standard of company size.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Is this a surprise? If you look at eBay, it's also dominated by professional sellers as well. In some sense it makes it better because you have motivated people handling the transaction, not one-off people that might not take the transaction seriously.

solatic 9y ago
> not one-off people that might not take the transaction seriously But this is exactly what's needed to keep costs down. Consumers have the choice of professionally managed and regulated hotels, for a higher price, or to take a chance on some guy's couch in a basement, for very cheap, because hospitality isn't couch-guy's day job and it's just a way for him to make an extra quick buck. That couch-guy is a one-off is supposed to be the entire value proposition why AirBNB can be cheaper. The moment professionals start to get involved is the moment the law needs to be careful that professionals aren't using AirBNB to skirt regulations.
- chii 9y ago
  > using AirBNB to skirt regulations. i'd like to hear what sort of regulations that are being skirted. I keep hearing about things like fire safety laws, and escape hatches etc. Why does being used as a hotel force an apartment to be more stringent than it originally was? Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what? As for zoning laws - those are arbituary lines drawn by the city planners. As a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if airbnb brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing value. City planners cannot forsee this, and so zoning laws will be broken no matter what.
  - solatic 9y ago
    > Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what? No. Hotels are denser (in terms of people sleeping in a building) than typical apartment buildings, because apartment buildings need to devote the square footage to copies of kitchens etc. per apartment, which unnecessarily would drive up the cost of hotel rooms. But leaving that aside (after all, the argument is about apartment buildings being used in place of hotels, not hotel buildings) - there's a bigger picture than just safety regulations. How about taxes? Cities which attract tourism often like to establish high taxes on tourists, because municipalities need to draw their budget from somewhere, and tourists don't vote (well, they do, because they could decide to vacation somewhere else, but barring a very steep price increase, tourism tends to be somewhat immune from these higher taxes, by the very nature of most tourists saving up money to travel to some specific fantasy location), so municipalities will levy high taxes on hotels, knowing full well that those taxes are passed on to tourists. When hotels start to be threatened by unregulated competitors, that competition threatens that tax revenue stream. > As for zoning laws - those are arbitrary lines drawn by the city planners So what? As many objectors have pointed out, city residents have an inherent interest in developing a sense of community, which requires people to commit to living in apartments over the long-term. Ghost ownership threatens that social good, and seasonal tourism threatens local mom-and-pop shops serving local neighborhoods, which no longer get foot traffic in the off-season. That's not to say hotels are evil - it's to say that one of the central tenets of urban planning is to attempt to balance competing, mutually-exclusive interests forced to live together by inherent urban density, for the common harmony and benefit of all, and zoning is an integral tool for that purpose. > As a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if airbnb brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing value. This is a farcical argument. The highest return for urban property is turning it into illegal drug factory. By your logic, investment apartments should always be turned into illegal drug factories, because their investors have to do it, otherwise they'd be losing value. After all, what's the qualitative difference between breaking zoning laws and breaking drug enforcement laws? If you're OK with operating an illegal hotel, to the detriment of the people in the surrounding neighborhood, then why not be OK with operating an illegal drug factory, also to the detriment of the people in the surrounding neighborhood?

andr 9y ago

If AirBnB gave me the option to filter actual lived-in apartments, as opposed to professional operations, I would definitely prioritize those. I miss the original feeling of booking someone's actual apartment, sharing their history, books, way of life, even weird knock-knacks. IKEA catalog living rooms get old quickly.

tedmiston 9y ago
I really like this aspect too. Even just flipping through the host's collection of books to learn a little more about their perspective on the world. I've even had some hosts say help yourself to what's in the fridge. I usually don't, as that still feels a little weird to me, but generally it's really interesting to get to see how someone else that you don't really know lives.
jordonwii 9y ago
This would be great. I just stayed in about 10 or so Airbnbs on an extended trip. A number of them were run by someone who didn't live there, but would, for example, leave a lock box outside the door with the key, and tell us to put the key back when we left. The best stays by far were in the places where I was staying with someone who lived there. It added a lot to the experience staying there. I doubt this will ever show up as a real filter, though. Maybe a "this is this host's only listing" badge or something could happen.
TomMarius 9y ago
They actually offer this: you can switch to "private room" or "shared room" listings instead of looking at "entire homes".
return0 9y ago
Learning the knick-knacks of strangers you dont know in the slightest FOR A PRICE is a weird feeling i have with airbnb. It feels intrusive, and it's creepy, but we don't admit it because it's convenient. This is the wrong way to satisfy our need for intimacy.
- robocat 9y ago

sisyphusprotege 9y ago

Person who bought an old triplex with a ton of deferred maintenance and has been running it as a vacation rental for a long time here. This is not an easy side gig. It's more than a full time job, and I have been living in one of the units and only renting two and my SO helps out a lot. Bringing on a third unit and I am about at the point of needing one full time employee. It is a never ending fight against entropy, as well as a not insignificant number of guests who will lie to get over on you. You have to: Manage bookings/field inquiries and sell property in these exchanges/make special offers to fill spots. Accounting/legal/tax Cleaning. This is very labor intensive. To properly clean a two bedroom apartment to hotel standards takes at least 3 hours and that's if guests left it clean. One stray hair in the wrong spot and you lose. Maintenance. Decks/trim/walls need to be patched and painted each year. Things break. A very heavy-set guest will crack a toilet seat and it needs to be replaced in the 4 or 5 hour window you have between guests. You might get some animal infestation that needs to be dealt with. Guest relations. Guests will forget things and want them mailed to them. They require handholding and strategies to keep review scores up. People will constantly be trying to negotiate your price down, even though you offer 4 times the square footage for the same price as a nice hotel in the area. I am working on automating and streamlining as much of this as possible, and there are gains to be made there. I have made gains with superior cleaning technology to save time as well. FAQs and guides can help, but guests don't read them much of the time. This is not real estate investing, its hospitality and meeting and greeting guests and chatting with the friendly ones is what gives you the good reviews where other less hands on places get the very critical ones. Professional management is where this space needs to go in my opinion. Vacation rentals have been a boutique industry for a long, long time. What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the subletting of places people rent from others. AirBnB has both made the space much more popular, and caused a lot of the ire and animosity we have seen towards the space.

camus2 9y ago
> What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the subletting of places people rent from others. Yet that's a minority of Airbnb's offers according to the article. The vast majority of rentals are operated by "professionals" who rent all year long, this is not like a "paid couchsurfing" service. People like you buy condos for the sole purpose of renting it on Airbnb, and that's fine, but let's not pretend like Airbnb is some grass-root charity.

geebee 9y ago

Adam Smith wrote, in the Wealth of Nations in 1776: "Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit." Airbnb is a remarkable innovation that allows landlords externalize those negatives, while keeping the profits.

3pt14159 9y ago

Look, we have a couple problems: low interest rates, large variance in productivity / earnings, really shitty hotels because they're operating on old-world assumptions. One under appreciated thing about apps like Uber and AirBnb is the star rating system. I know I'm a five star tenant. I know I never shit in the sink. I know I never leave a bunch of condoms or cigar butts all over the balcony or hotel room. But the hotel doesn't know that. They need to steam clean the sheets and install super-fat-person-proof toilets. And elevators for the disabled. And a hotel room with a stove and usable fridge? Hah! Only two times have I had that and one was in a room that cost $10k a week (don't ask, I was the +1). Then it comes to AirBnb and global housing stock. Someone like me who is currently in Kiev in an AirBnb is always going to be able to out-spend a local. The key is to align incentives. I literally would not have come to Kiev if they'd banned AirBnb. I would have gone back to Lithuania (love Vilnius) or to Turkey or Estonia. With the drive to pull in tourist money going on worldwide why should cities ban AirBnb (or Uber for that matter)? "Because it's driving up rents!" Ok, so let's solve that problem. I have no issue with cities imposing a 30% tax on AirBnbs and using the income to build up the housing stock for locals. They should do this, it makes perfect sense. "Because AirBnbers are loud and disruptive!" Make hosts responsible for noise complaint fines and pretty quick loud tenants are going to get bad ratings. "Because I want community, not a bunch of transient AirBnbers that don't even speak the local language!" If it is getting really, really bad, (say 20% or higher of housing stock in a community) maybe scale up the taxes to combat this. But let's not miss the positives either. I've met a number of cool people both hosting them in my place just before traveling or by interacting with them in areas I never would have been in had I been staying in a hotel. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water and all that.

archagon 9y ago
Airbnb is one of those rare products that cracked open an entire world of possibilities for me. For the first time, I've gotten the chance to live as a local all around the world, for even less money than at a hotel or sometimes even a hostel. Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past, getting to know distant cities right from the ground floor. Adjustments should be made on a city-to-city basis, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The rewards are just too sweet! (For the record, I've mostly stayed in shared accommodations, since entire apartment rentals are very expensive for prolonged travel. It seems people are mostly OK with this side of Airbnb.)

IanDrake 9y ago

According to this article I'm a professional landlord because I have more than one property on airbnb? I think that's a huge leap and was done to inflate numbers to re-enforce their point, which would otherwise be poorly made by a meaningful statistic. To be a professional landlord you need at least 20 properties. That is typically the minimum number of properties to provide a livable income.

BMorearty 9y ago

Airbnb employee here. (Software engineer; I don't speak for the company.) Personally, I like staying in listings that are owned and operated by the resident. It's more personal and it lets me connect more with some locals. One of my favorite nights at an Airbnb was a dinner with the delightful couple who rented out a room in their Paris apartment. Much less enjoyable was a night in a Seattle room--it was very clean and a five-star room, but it felt like a hotel in that I was lonely. Both of those were business trips. My vacation travel is different: I have a wife and 3 kids, so it's almost impossible for the five of us to stay in someone's private residence. For those trips, I look for places where the owner only has one property, which to my mind indicates they give it--and my family--a high level of personal attention. Sometimes it's a cottage in their backyard, like the ones I've stayed in at Tahoe and Pescadero. Those a nice because I can meet the owner and they're just 20 feet away when I need help. I am also an Airbnb host of a cottage in my own backyard. It's booked about 90% of the time but the neighbors on my street tell me they usually forget I'm even hosting because they don't even notice. But there are hosts who manage many properties and there are guests who stay in them. I personally don't like the feeling of being tricked into thinking a place is owner-occupied and then finding out it's managed by a property manager, and I will say so in a review. (We have rules for employees; I won't look at our internal systems when booking to try to see more than the usual customer would see.) The managed properties are more common in some large urban cities. That is why last year Airbnb banned owners of multiple properties in some large cities around the world. I honestly don't know the specifics of any one city such as Cologne, which is mentioned in the article.

__strisk 9y ago
God I hate those backyard cottages, did you label yours as a "casita" too? Some AirBnB hosts literally go to home depot, haul a shed, plant it, add crappy insulation and list it. I actually find that to be the worst aspect of AirBnB, if I go to a hotel and I do not like my room I can switch it. If I use AirBnB and the place sucks, well, I'm stuck. Unless I want to go through a lengthy customer service battle. Listings managed by professionals are pleasant on the other hand, I honestly do not want to check-in putting up a front after lining my "host"s pockets. I pay for a service and receive service. Let's not pretend they're doing this for any other reason. AirBnB damn isn't Couch Surfing.

EGreg 9y ago

And bitcoin is dominated by professional miners. Open source and the Web is dominated by large corporations like Google and Facebook. And sports tickets and restaurant reservations are scalped. I wonder if all these peer to peer marketplaces tend to become dominated by professionals and even the original industry they are supposed to disrupt. Wikipedia seems to have prevented this, as has HN. Any solutions?

chii 9y ago
why prevent professionals from doing anything? Professionals are professional because they do it better than an amateur. Scalping is a different issue - the ticket price is priced too low. Scalping is a sign of market inefficiency (and scalpers are there to take advantage of it). If the tickets are priced correctly (e.g., via an auction system), then there won't be any scalpers.

deleted 9y ago

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Jabanga 9y ago

The discussion here reminds me of this: "We have an ingrained anti-profit bias that blinds us to the social benefits of free markets" https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-anti-profit-bias-that-blinds-us-to-the-social-benefits-of-free-markets/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-an...

paulcnichols 9y ago

"Platform that makes people money dominated by people best at making money." Shocker.

bane 9y ago

I'm one of those people who really doesn't like these kinds of x-sharing services when they're just breaking the law. But when they aren't I'm all for the competition and additional money making opportunities it creates for participants. I'm getting ready to go on my 3rd multi-week trip with housing provided almost entirely by airBnB. So far I've been generally very pleased with most of the hosts. In general, I've found the ones outside of the U.S. tend to provide a better experience per dollar than in the U.S. I've also found myself at some delightful B&B's who just list on AirBnB instead of other methods. On the other hand, I've also found myself in some sketchy group home like experiences with no owner to be found (mostly in the U.S.). The hard part of it is this, I can put together a multi-location road trip across six or seven countries in a few short hours on AirBnB because all of the "vendors" list there (many times faster than doing it with hotels), and the total price will be 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of doing it in hotels, and the quality of the experience will be about on par with any 3-star hotel I'm likely to find. I've yet to break $70/night on AirBnB (for entire flats/apartments) because there's usually so much inventory. The locations can be better than "hotel districts" and I can usually find something very custom and suited to what I want. The reviews also reinforce the honesty of the listing, whereas hotels will show pictures of a model room with idealized lighting and the reality is often not the same. Bonus, we've often gotten to talk with pretty interesting people, seen interesting neighborhoods we would have ignored before and use public transport much more fully than we would have otherwise. I think the easiest way for hotels to compete against AirBnB is to simply start listing on it and competing, room-for-room. Room 607 in the local Marriott has a noise problem? It'll show up in the reviews. Front-desk clerks rude in the Albany, NY Holiday Inn? It'll show up. Prices too high for what you get? It'll have to compete against local housing inventory. I'm also very sympathetic to many of the comments here regarding areas with very high housing prices. In terms of local housing strategy, simply banning these kinds of services should be part of a local multi-pronged strategy to reduce housing prices (along with limiting other investment options). But I'm not so sure it's a universal problem. Every time I've booked big trips on AirBnB I've always found hosts who are renting out multiple properties and don't live in most of them. However, in many cities, looking at the rates they're charging, they're not suffering from the same kind of systemic housing shortages places like SF or NYC are. One other thing to consider in tight markets. If the local municipalities aren't going to restrict investment ownership, AirBnB may end up being a better user of the investment properties than people who simply buy up properties and they lay completely abandoned for years. Because the market that AirBnB has to work in is different than say, foreign investors, it also might help better shape the kinds of properties that get built to eventually be more affordable. e.g. 432 Park Ave is going to end up mostly uninhabited even if the "tenancy" is at 100% and none of those apartments are going to end up on AirBnB. This inventory of $30million dollar apartments is not going to go anywhere. But AirBnB investory might be on the lookout for more affordable construction to invest in, knowing that someday they'll sell the property off to more regular buyers and need to rent it to normal people as well in the meanwhile.

miaklesp 9y ago

Dating websites dominated by professional hookers

jaclaz 9y ago

Let us try to look at the matter in another way. Take a city/place. Calculate how many people visited it before AirBNB. Let's say 1,000,000 stays per year, with an average expense of US$ 180 each, including night at US$ 120 at the hotel and some drinks/meals/souvenirs/whatever another 60 US$ . The city/place (globally) has had an "income" of 180,000,000. How many more people visited the city place after AirBNB became popular? Let's say 1,200,000, i.e. a 20% increase, and let's say that not only these 200,000 more stays are at AirBNB's (i.e. people that wouldn't have come if AirBNB's were not available), but that also a part of the same people that would have take a hotel room passed to AirBNB's, let's say 100,000. Now, the hotels will have lowered their prices because of the competition, and - more generally - an AirBNB user (with of course the usual exceptions) is probably less prone to spend money. So we have 900,000 nights at a "discounted" price of (say) 110 US$ i.e. 99,000,000 plus 900,000 at the same US$ 60 54,000,000 and some 300,000 AirBNB's at (say) 60 US$ , i.e. 18,000,000, plus 300,000 at a lower US$ 40, that is 12,000,000. From the 18,000,000 you have to subtract the commission AirBNB takes, which should be on average (both guest and host commission) around 15% that "goes elsewhere", i.e. 2,700,000. The city/place received (globally) 99+54+18+12-2.7=180,3 millions, i.e. roughly the same as before, while having (still globally), the increases of traffic, garbage, noise, etc. due to the 200,000 more visits. In the meantime, hotels and other trades had a roughly 10% decrease of income, apartments/flats were not available to local population at "fair" long term rent prices, the increased income from the rentals of the AirBNB's and connected services very likely went in a lower tax bracket. I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the locals.

komaromy 9y ago
It seems like you should take into account the cut that a hotel chain extracts from each franchise to make a fair comparison. I don't have a good sense of how much that is.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Yes, I was hypothizing local owned (not chain) hotels, but you are right, anyway nowadays there will be the 15 % or higher fee that booking.com or similar charge, at least for the bookings that went through them. If you reduce the "before" of (let's say that the chain/franchise fee is lower and that not all bookings (thankfully) go through booking.com or similar, by 10% of 120,000,000 in the "before" i.e. 12,000,000 and reduce by the same amount 10% of 99,000,000, 9,900,000, you get to a "before" of 168,000,000 and an "after" of 170,400,000, so you have a slight increase in "income" : 2,400,000/168,000,000=1,4% But anyway the "unit prices" were arbitrary and just for the sake of the reasoning.

vmarsy 9y ago

> Some 58 percent of all offers on Airbnb in Germany are entire apartments or even apartment blocks - meaning professional landlords are effectively the core of Airbnb's business. Someone working a full time job, who owns a primary residence as well as a secondary one for vacation. Does renting that secondary location means they are "a professional landlord" ? If someone who owns an apartment but is going abroad for a bit for vacation/work and have a family member take care of renting the place on AirBnB, are they "professional landlords" ? I would assume professional landlord = landlord whose full time job is to take care of the rentals, I don't understand the jump from "this listing is an entire apartment" => "This is a professional landlord"

OJFord 9y ago

Any Airbnb 'host' is a de facto 'professional landlord'. Next?

southphillyman 9y ago

At least these professional landlords own the properties and thus have some sort of stake in the matter. A friend of mine some how managed to rent multiple apartments at the same time and then rented them all out via AirBnb. He lived with his girlfriend, so he was essentially a professional landlord who didn't own any property. I like AirBnb but with time it's warts are being exposed. After being racially profiled multiple times, having a host cancel on me at the last minute and sending my money back via Western Union, and other annoyances I now consider hotels about 50% of the time after almost exclusively doing AirBnb.

web-dev-123 9y ago
Man I agree. AirBnB was awesome initially, a hidden gem with great prices, great properties, and great people - but now they're kind of in this make or break position I feel. Finding an amicable solution for both renters and property owners will be tough.