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Having stayed in AirBnB-type listings when traveling with my family, it’s clear to me that there is a huge market need for short term home rentals, and we shoul
by zaroth 8y ago
Having stayed in AirBnB-type listings when traveling with my family, it’s clear to me that there is a huge market need for short term home rentals, and we should figure out how to do this without stomping on neighbors or pricing out locals in the process.
There are a lot of positive externalities to families and larger groups coming to a city and spending their money.
When I need 3 adjoining bedrooms and a space that will take dogs, a hotel is going to cost an absolute fortune in comparison or be actually impossible to find.
Here’s to hoping there’s a happy medium to be found with the right combination of technology and regulation.
For example, what about a condo bylaws which granted the right to rent a unit but with a 20% per night fee which goes to reducing condo fees for the rest of the building. There’s a reasonable number which covers the externality.
As far as housing stock is concerned, that’s perhaps a trickier problem. I think it’s probably easier to quantify how many units are not available for a local rental and harder to quantify the economic positive value of the rental to locals, and so it’s an easy scapegoat for property prices which were probably overly high to begin with.
- brianwawok 8y agoHow though? What is the proposal to not hit NIMBYism? I am generally very liberal with what I think homeowners should be allowed to do. But an apartment or condo next to, or above mine with a rotating crew of guests? I shouldn't need to put up with that unless I agree to it in writing before starting my lease. There IS existing space marked out for hotels. If it were a profitable business, why has no one starting build hotel 'houses' to rent for visitors? The reason is IMO price, it would be very expensive to rent out a hotel "house". The reason the AirBnB is cheap is that you are making others eat your negative externalities (i.e. the guys under you get to deal with 2am stomping).
- dillondoyle 8y agoPlus I'm sure there are a lot of regulations for hotels in a city like NYC that probably cost a lot of money.
- beerlord 8y agoNo, the reason is that to-date there had not been a global platform available. AirBNB benefits from a massive global economy of scale. I can use the same platform in America, Germany, Australia, Bulgaria. First one to scale wins.
- mvid 8y agoThere are plenty of global apps for hotels. In theory they could also have been used for houses. So that clearly was not the differentiator
- kuhhk 8y agoWasn’t VRBO available (globally) long before AirBnB? I thought AirBnB just stole the idea and had the VC capital to scale it
- brianwawok 8y agoCorrect, VRBO has been around a while. They do not aggressively go after getting units in towns that do not allow short term rentals, like AirBnB does.
- brandonmenc 8y ago> When I need 3 adjoining bedrooms and a space that will take dogs, a hotel is going to cost an absolute fortune in comparison or be actually impossible to find. Board your dogs at home. It's impossible to penalize dog owners for not cleaning up after themselves when they're skipping town in a few days. This is why zoning laws prohibit renting in residential areas - because you can't threaten people who don't live there into good behavior, because they're not around long enough to actually be punished.
- zaroth 8y agoBut that’s exactly my point. Under the current system it’s impossible to penalize bad behavior of any kind on the part of the short term tenant, except by fining the landlord. Whether it’s not cleaning up after a dog, or playing music too loud, or being rude in the hallway, or littering in the street. So what’s the solution — other than pervasive tracking — that allows good people behaving well (e.g. a middle class family) to be able to find a place to stay in a nice city?
- kaffee 8y agoDon't neglect the possibility that there is no solution. Market failures happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- brandonmenc 8y agoThe solution is zoning laws, which we already have. It's a solved problem. Maybe the people who actually live in these cities you want to visit have decided they don't want more tourists, and their zoning laws reflect that. You don't, like, have a "right" to affordable lodging in a city you don't pay taxes in.