8 ms·

"Compared to your typical Airbnb, no one “lives” in Sonder apartments except for its guests. Each rental comes with a living room space and kitchen so people ca

"Compared to your typical Airbnb, no one “lives” in Sonder apartments except for its guests. Each rental comes with a living room space and kitchen so people can cook and relax like they would in their own home. Units range from studios in a heart of a city to sprawling a six-bedroom unit in downtown Montreal." This is bad news for cities that are already short on housing. You're taking what could have been space for housing and erasing it with larger, lower-density hotel suites. Very luxurious and pleasant for the travelers, sure, but you're ballooning the space taken up by the "hotel" and magnifying the market pressures on everyone else in the process. What's pretty surprising about this article is the breathless, unquestioned enthusiasm for these kind of ideas. Is this really a sustainable model for urban centers and hotels? Is this how we want to conduct our cities and use our most precious, economically productive spaces? I'm pro Airbnb--when the room is actually rented out by the renter, everyone including the little guy wins. But this is a very "rich get richer" style of tourism with the fig-leaf of the share economy strapped to its extravagance, right?

samclearman 8y ago
Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. You could have your guests stay at a hotel but typically that will be really far from your home which sucks for everybody. Having Sonder or Airbnb style short term rentals distributed throughout cities could allow people to live in smaller apartments, eliminating bedrooms that sit unused most nights creating more space for everybody. To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. I'm talking about full time airbnb studios / 1BR's obviating the need for guest bedrooms.
- ordinaryradical 8y ago
  That's remarkably optimistic. But people also have guest bedrooms so that family members can stay with them, not away from them. And so that they can have part-time home offices. And simply to increase the overall value of their home investment. I think expecting the presence of Sonder in the market to efficiently trade space with houses by obviating the need for guest rooms seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of how the housing market works, particularly why people buy houses larger than what they need or utilize.
- kgc 8y ago
  This already exists in apartment buildings. Typically a few suites near the ground floor are reserved for rent by tenants for their guests.
- tommymachine 8y ago
  OK but who’s going to convert all the larger units the small ones
- jMyles 8y ago
  > To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. Demonstrably false - there are many thousands of such rooms available on AirBnb: https://www.airbnb.com/s/homes?refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhomes&room_types%5B%5D=Private%20room&allow_override%5B%5D=&s_tag=i8tJ8cL- https://www.airbnb.com/s/homes?refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhom... I often prefer to stay in this configuration, especially in a city where I don't know the local language. This way you have a host and a cozy, lived-in place to stay instead of some sterile suite that makes you feel like you never left your own city.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    I've used Airbnb a lot, and in my experience at best it's 50% of the listings that are actually like that. Demonstrably false, yes, but also not as much like that as most people think.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      50% of all listings seems significant to me.
- untog 8y ago
  > Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. I'd venture that most Americans living in the dense urban environments the OP was talking absolutely do not have a spare room kicking around for guests. Certainly, living in NYC, I don't and neither does anyone I know.
  - ajspencer 8y ago
    I'd venture that this statement also fails in general, not just urban environment. Seems like a very privileged perspective.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      It's very common in suburban homes to have both an unused guest bedroom and an unused dining room solely for the two times a year the owner entertains. Since this wasn't really logical in the first place I doubt more short-term rentals would make much difference.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I think it depends a lot on how old you are. My parents have 3 spare rooms, because my siblings and I have moved out and they haven't downsized to a smaller house. But I wouldn't expect a young family to have a spare room. When I was younger and we needed a spare room, I was always relegated to the couch to make room for guests.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        I don't expect it's super common to have a dedicated guest bedroom in a house unless it's, as you say, a kid's room who has moved out. On the other hand, quite a few homeowners have a room they use as a part-time office, for hobbies, etc. that has a sofabed in it. That's more or less the case with me. I have a "spare" room that I use for various things but I can make up a bed if I have guests.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I've never had a spare bedroom for guests. I've known people who did. I saw them as unusually well off. I would like to know where you get this idea that a majority of Americans have such. Is this merely anecdotal observation or is there a study you can cite?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. No, they don't. Some Americans do, but it's a minority; most that have a room that loosely serves this purpose have another non-bedroom function for the room that is not significantly impaired by occasional use as a guest bedroom, and a large number, probably a majority, have no guest bedroom at all, putting guests up on a couch (possibly convertible, but maybe not) or temporary cot, etc. in a common room (or displacing a resident, likely a child, to such an arrangement to free up a bed) when hosting overnight guests.
pathseeker 8y ago
>use our most precious, economically productive spaces? If that space is more economically productive doing something else, then it will be easy to outbid Sonder.
- jessedhillon 8y ago
  The free market is not in-and-of-itself a goal to be pursued. Society has aims, and often, the clearest way to achieve them is through the free market with distortions strategically applied. This isn't SimCity, where it makes sense to zone your entire city center as industrial/commercial in order to grow the tax base: the city exists to serve the needs primarily of those who live there. Otherwise, why not zone the entire city as a hotel?
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    I'm totally with you on the market needing "corrected" incentives in some cases to get us what we want/need as a society. A example to me are the broken ISP market because of physical constraints. Another different category of cases are issues were the prisoner's dilemma applies where we have negative externalities like pollution. I don't see how that's the case here. I believe industrial needs to be its own, separated zone because of the pollution. Commercial and residential can be happily mixed though and if the market is telling us to build a giant apartment building somewhere because people want to live there and pay for it then why would you second guess that? Turning an entire city into hotels would of course never happen because there is no demand for that. Why not allow building of hotels everywhere though?
    - jessedhillon 8y ago
      The purpose of zoning is to segregate property bidders into classes by purpose, or willingness to pay. Otherwise, you have someone whose purpose with the property is to generate $100k/mo, bidding on the same property as someone whose purpose is simply to live with no intention to generate profit. It serves society to set aside a zone of property wherein people with residential purpose only can bid on the same property. Likewise, it serves society to have bidders who are offering a long-term lease at a monthly price for an apartment to not have to compete against a stream of tourists who are spending out of their leisure budget. If a city needs new hotels, it can zone and permit the construction of them. The answer isn't to force renters to enter bidding wars against vacationers to discover the "true" price.
gnicholas 8y ago
> everyone including the little guy wins I suppose this is true in some parts of the country, but in the areas where real estate is tight, "the little guy" probably doesn't own his home.
clay_the_ripper 8y ago
Well if you could build more housing this would be less of a problem.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  More or better? I think more apartments (condos that you own,not rent) would solve a lot of housing problems. Everyone just has to have a large single family house.
  - apsec112 8y ago
    Not even that. City governments so fetishize large, detached, widely-spaced two-story single-family houses that if you try to build anything else on 99.9% of streets, they handcuff you and haul you off to jail.
    - badrabbit 8y ago
      Hah,that's one extreme reaction.
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      It's more or less the opposite in Dublin; you generally may not build detached houses in remotely urban areas these days. Spoiler: There's still a massive housing crisis. Housing is _hard_.
- jseliger 8y ago
  Seriously. If only there were some technology that let us put a larger number of housing units on a given amount of land! https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/density-and-overcrowding-where-will-everyone-fit https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/densi... . We could solve all of our affordability problems. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/california-affordable-housing-is-no-mystery-just-build-more https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/californi....
  - 8y ago
ec109685 8y ago
What is the difference between Sonder and a hotel chain buying a piece of property and building a multi-tenant luxury hotel?
- untog 8y ago
  Sonder properties tend to be one-off apartments, not entire buildings.
  - ec109685 8y ago
    Right, but from a supply perspective, how does Sonder hurt things more than a hotel?
    - untog 8y ago
      Hotels are not in competition with long term residents for various reasons- zoning, unsuitable building types, etc etc. It is extremely uncommon for a hotel to buy an entire apartment building and turn it into a hotel because it's extremely difficult to do so. By contrast, Sonder can buy individual apartments very easy. The whole selling point is that they are apartments, so there's no need to renovate etc.
      - skybrian 8y ago
        Hmm, do you have a source for more info? I think I stayed in a boutique hotel like that in NYC. I mean sure, it's probably a complete remodel. But it's still taking an entire apartment building off the market. What it comes down to: everyone needs a place to live. Everyone takes up space. All housing space is valuable. But somehow many people think they can live somewhere without being a cause of the housing shortage. The only way to not be part of the problem is to move away.
      - emphasis 8y ago
        Actually, this is arguing for Sonder's strength compared to typical Airbnbs. Sonder is expanding with hotel licensing and from a zoning perspective is like a hotel. And yes, the units are being renovated to Sonder's standards. If you stay in a Sonder and ask about the history of the building it may be very surprising.
borne0 8y ago
>> six-bedroom unit in downtown Montreal Maybe it's selective bias but I think of all north American metropolises Montreal would be particularly difficult to implement hotels in residential areas. Renters here have very strong rights, albeit backed by an understaffed authority. Tourism provides a substantial bulk to the local economy but it's not nearly enough that the local population will accept having fly-by-night partiers in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods. The article says downtown but I strongly suspect they mean neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown which have long been home to local workers and students, key to providing vibrancy and life which attracts the tourists to begin with (and the festivals).
anonymous5133 8y ago
Only people to blame for ballooning housing prices are the politicians who have purposefully implemented restrictive building codes to make sure housing goes as sky high as possible. The reason it is like that is because we are under the impression that if housing keeps increasing then home owners will be able to spend more.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  This. Look at how many millions of square feet of real estate have been announced in NYC in the past week alone: https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/ Given that each city effectively has unlimited housing potential, the idea that tourists are driving out locals makes zero sense.
  - timr 8y ago
    Right. Because NYC is a magical fairytale-land of affordable rents. Construction does not fix the fact that tourists pay 5-10x what local residents do for the same real estate. If you want to keep that from affecting rents, there's a very effective and inexpensive way to do it: don't let people turn rentals into hotels. Just like New York.
    - Alex3917 8y ago
      > Because NYC is a magical fairytale-land of affordable rents. I mean if you're willing to take the subway to work, you can get a pretty large 2BR for less than $2K / mo. Yes you need a job to be able to afford that, but not a particularly amazing job. Just not unemployed for the entire year every year.
      - timr 8y ago
        I agree that good transit is the key to affordable housing. Those kinds of apartments aren't located in dense neighborhoods: they're in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Places are well-connected to Manhattan by transit. Places that would be impractical otherwise. https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-2000%7Cbeds:2?view=map#pos=12/40.83680,-73.93661 https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-2000%7Cbeds:2?vie...
emodendroket 8y ago
Aren't something like half of AirBnB rentals not owner-occupied? I had the distinct sense that a lot of landlords had found running an AirBnB more profitable
- thrownblown 8y ago
  i have yet to stay in an AirBnB that was the home of the owner or leaseholder.
  - steve19 8y ago
    The cheap end of the spectrum often has the owner renting out a room. After one bad experience I now only rent entire apartments.
ForHackernews 8y ago
> Compared to your typical Airbnb Are there still Airbnb flats that are owner-occupied? Every one I've stayed in seems to be operated as a full-time holiday rental. > the fig-leaf of the share economy There's never been any sharing in the so-called sharing economy. It's just about outsourcing labor costs and ducking regulations to make money.
emphasis 8y ago
Sonder provides long term housing in all of its cities and is expanding into commercial zones with proper hotel licenses. This is actually relieving housing pressure because tourists stay in Sonders that are properly zoned as a hotel instead of tourists taking up residential space that would have been used for longer term residents. Would we criticize Marriot or Hilton for making a hotel in a commercial zone?

samclearman 8y ago

Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. You could have your guests stay at a hotel but typically that will be really far from your home which sucks for everybody. Having Sonder or Airbnb style short term rentals distributed throughout cities could allow people to live in smaller apartments, eliminating bedrooms that sit unused most nights creating more space for everybody. To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. I'm talking about full time airbnb studios / 1BR's obviating the need for guest bedrooms.

ordinaryradical 8y ago
That's remarkably optimistic. But people also have guest bedrooms so that family members can stay with them, not away from them. And so that they can have part-time home offices. And simply to increase the overall value of their home investment. I think expecting the presence of Sonder in the market to efficiently trade space with houses by obviating the need for guest rooms seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of how the housing market works, particularly why people buy houses larger than what they need or utilize.
kgc 8y ago
This already exists in apartment buildings. Typically a few suites near the ground floor are reserved for rent by tenants for their guests.
tommymachine 8y ago
OK but who’s going to convert all the larger units the small ones
jMyles 8y ago
> To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. Demonstrably false - there are many thousands of such rooms available on AirBnb: https://www.airbnb.com/s/homes?refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhomes&room_types%5B%5D=Private%20room&allow_override%5B%5D=&s_tag=i8tJ8cL- https://www.airbnb.com/s/homes?refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhom... I often prefer to stay in this configuration, especially in a city where I don't know the local language. This way you have a host and a cozy, lived-in place to stay instead of some sterile suite that makes you feel like you never left your own city.
- chrischen 8y ago
  I've used Airbnb a lot, and in my experience at best it's 50% of the listings that are actually like that. Demonstrably false, yes, but also not as much like that as most people think.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    50% of all listings seems significant to me.
untog 8y ago
> Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. I'd venture that most Americans living in the dense urban environments the OP was talking absolutely do not have a spare room kicking around for guests. Certainly, living in NYC, I don't and neither does anyone I know.
- ajspencer 8y ago
  I'd venture that this statement also fails in general, not just urban environment. Seems like a very privileged perspective.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    It's very common in suburban homes to have both an unused guest bedroom and an unused dining room solely for the two times a year the owner entertains. Since this wasn't really logical in the first place I doubt more short-term rentals would make much difference.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I think it depends a lot on how old you are. My parents have 3 spare rooms, because my siblings and I have moved out and they haven't downsized to a smaller house. But I wouldn't expect a young family to have a spare room. When I was younger and we needed a spare room, I was always relegated to the couch to make room for guests.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I don't expect it's super common to have a dedicated guest bedroom in a house unless it's, as you say, a kid's room who has moved out. On the other hand, quite a few homeowners have a room they use as a part-time office, for hobbies, etc. that has a sofabed in it. That's more or less the case with me. I have a "spare" room that I use for various things but I can make up a bed if I have guests.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I've never had a spare bedroom for guests. I've known people who did. I saw them as unusually well off. I would like to know where you get this idea that a majority of Americans have such. Is this merely anecdotal observation or is there a study you can cite?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. No, they don't. Some Americans do, but it's a minority; most that have a room that loosely serves this purpose have another non-bedroom function for the room that is not significantly impaired by occasional use as a guest bedroom, and a large number, probably a majority, have no guest bedroom at all, putting guests up on a couch (possibly convertible, but maybe not) or temporary cot, etc. in a common room (or displacing a resident, likely a child, to such an arrangement to free up a bed) when hosting overnight guests.

pathseeker 8y ago

>use our most precious, economically productive spaces? If that space is more economically productive doing something else, then it will be easy to outbid Sonder.

jessedhillon 8y ago
The free market is not in-and-of-itself a goal to be pursued. Society has aims, and often, the clearest way to achieve them is through the free market with distortions strategically applied. This isn't SimCity, where it makes sense to zone your entire city center as industrial/commercial in order to grow the tax base: the city exists to serve the needs primarily of those who live there. Otherwise, why not zone the entire city as a hotel?
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  I'm totally with you on the market needing "corrected" incentives in some cases to get us what we want/need as a society. A example to me are the broken ISP market because of physical constraints. Another different category of cases are issues were the prisoner's dilemma applies where we have negative externalities like pollution. I don't see how that's the case here. I believe industrial needs to be its own, separated zone because of the pollution. Commercial and residential can be happily mixed though and if the market is telling us to build a giant apartment building somewhere because people want to live there and pay for it then why would you second guess that? Turning an entire city into hotels would of course never happen because there is no demand for that. Why not allow building of hotels everywhere though?
  - jessedhillon 8y ago
    The purpose of zoning is to segregate property bidders into classes by purpose, or willingness to pay. Otherwise, you have someone whose purpose with the property is to generate $100k/mo, bidding on the same property as someone whose purpose is simply to live with no intention to generate profit. It serves society to set aside a zone of property wherein people with residential purpose only can bid on the same property. Likewise, it serves society to have bidders who are offering a long-term lease at a monthly price for an apartment to not have to compete against a stream of tourists who are spending out of their leisure budget. If a city needs new hotels, it can zone and permit the construction of them. The answer isn't to force renters to enter bidding wars against vacationers to discover the "true" price.

gnicholas 8y ago

> everyone including the little guy wins I suppose this is true in some parts of the country, but in the areas where real estate is tight, "the little guy" probably doesn't own his home.

clay_the_ripper 8y ago

Well if you could build more housing this would be less of a problem.

badrabbit 8y ago
More or better? I think more apartments (condos that you own,not rent) would solve a lot of housing problems. Everyone just has to have a large single family house.
- apsec112 8y ago
  Not even that. City governments so fetishize large, detached, widely-spaced two-story single-family houses that if you try to build anything else on 99.9% of streets, they handcuff you and haul you off to jail.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    Hah,that's one extreme reaction.
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    It's more or less the opposite in Dublin; you generally may not build detached houses in remotely urban areas these days. Spoiler: There's still a massive housing crisis. Housing is _hard_.
jseliger 8y ago
Seriously. If only there were some technology that let us put a larger number of housing units on a given amount of land! https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/density-and-overcrowding-where-will-everyone-fit https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/densi... . We could solve all of our affordability problems. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/california-affordable-housing-is-no-mystery-just-build-more https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/californi....
- 8y ago

ec109685 8y ago

What is the difference between Sonder and a hotel chain buying a piece of property and building a multi-tenant luxury hotel?

untog 8y ago
Sonder properties tend to be one-off apartments, not entire buildings.
- ec109685 8y ago
  Right, but from a supply perspective, how does Sonder hurt things more than a hotel?
  - untog 8y ago
    Hotels are not in competition with long term residents for various reasons- zoning, unsuitable building types, etc etc. It is extremely uncommon for a hotel to buy an entire apartment building and turn it into a hotel because it's extremely difficult to do so. By contrast, Sonder can buy individual apartments very easy. The whole selling point is that they are apartments, so there's no need to renovate etc.
    - skybrian 8y ago
      Hmm, do you have a source for more info? I think I stayed in a boutique hotel like that in NYC. I mean sure, it's probably a complete remodel. But it's still taking an entire apartment building off the market. What it comes down to: everyone needs a place to live. Everyone takes up space. All housing space is valuable. But somehow many people think they can live somewhere without being a cause of the housing shortage. The only way to not be part of the problem is to move away.
    - emphasis 8y ago
      Actually, this is arguing for Sonder's strength compared to typical Airbnbs. Sonder is expanding with hotel licensing and from a zoning perspective is like a hotel. And yes, the units are being renovated to Sonder's standards. If you stay in a Sonder and ask about the history of the building it may be very surprising.

borne0 8y ago

>> six-bedroom unit in downtown Montreal Maybe it's selective bias but I think of all north American metropolises Montreal would be particularly difficult to implement hotels in residential areas. Renters here have very strong rights, albeit backed by an understaffed authority. Tourism provides a substantial bulk to the local economy but it's not nearly enough that the local population will accept having fly-by-night partiers in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods. The article says downtown but I strongly suspect they mean neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown which have long been home to local workers and students, key to providing vibrancy and life which attracts the tourists to begin with (and the festivals).

anonymous5133 8y ago

Only people to blame for ballooning housing prices are the politicians who have purposefully implemented restrictive building codes to make sure housing goes as sky high as possible. The reason it is like that is because we are under the impression that if housing keeps increasing then home owners will be able to spend more.

Alex3917 8y ago
This. Look at how many millions of square feet of real estate have been announced in NYC in the past week alone: https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/ Given that each city effectively has unlimited housing potential, the idea that tourists are driving out locals makes zero sense.
- timr 8y ago
  Right. Because NYC is a magical fairytale-land of affordable rents. Construction does not fix the fact that tourists pay 5-10x what local residents do for the same real estate. If you want to keep that from affecting rents, there's a very effective and inexpensive way to do it: don't let people turn rentals into hotels. Just like New York.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > Because NYC is a magical fairytale-land of affordable rents. I mean if you're willing to take the subway to work, you can get a pretty large 2BR for less than $2K / mo. Yes you need a job to be able to afford that, but not a particularly amazing job. Just not unemployed for the entire year every year.
    - timr 8y ago
      I agree that good transit is the key to affordable housing. Those kinds of apartments aren't located in dense neighborhoods: they're in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Places are well-connected to Manhattan by transit. Places that would be impractical otherwise. https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-2000%7Cbeds:2?view=map#pos=12/40.83680,-73.93661 https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-2000%7Cbeds:2?vie...

emodendroket 8y ago

Aren't something like half of AirBnB rentals not owner-occupied? I had the distinct sense that a lot of landlords had found running an AirBnB more profitable

thrownblown 8y ago
i have yet to stay in an AirBnB that was the home of the owner or leaseholder.
- steve19 8y ago
  The cheap end of the spectrum often has the owner renting out a room. After one bad experience I now only rent entire apartments.

ForHackernews 8y ago

> Compared to your typical Airbnb Are there still Airbnb flats that are owner-occupied? Every one I've stayed in seems to be operated as a full-time holiday rental. > the fig-leaf of the share economy There's never been any sharing in the so-called sharing economy. It's just about outsourcing labor costs and ducking regulations to make money.

emphasis 8y ago

Sonder provides long term housing in all of its cities and is expanding into commercial zones with proper hotel licenses. This is actually relieving housing pressure because tourists stay in Sonders that are properly zoned as a hotel instead of tourists taking up residential space that would have been used for longer term residents. Would we criticize Marriot or Hilton for making a hotel in a commercial zone?