4 ms·

If Airbnb operators bid higher than long-term renters, why shouldn't they get the apartments? This animus against Airbnb seems irrational to me. Property should

If Airbnb operators bid higher than long-term renters, why shouldn't they get the apartments? This animus against Airbnb seems irrational to me. Property should go to its most productive use, and the most productive use is the one for which someone is willing to pay the most money.

harimau777 7y ago
I don't think that how much someone is willing to pay is a good way to measure what something's most productive use is. For one thing, it fails to account for the degree to which people have differences in what they are able to pay.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  We use prices to ration access to scarce resources. What's the alternative? A command economy. Tons of historical experiments show that it doesn't work. And why shouldn't ability to pay affect the ability to access resources? What would be the point of money otherwise? How do you know that the most productive user a resource is something other than the highest bidder? On what basis can you make that determination? Prices are universal.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    I don't think that we can perfectly know what the best use of a resource is. However, I think that we can often perform better than price does. For example, it would generally be better to allocate a unit of food to people who are starving than to people who already have excess food. Note that in some cases that won't be the optimal way to distribute the food. For example perhaps the starving person is actively hurting society while the person with excess food wanted to use the food to perform research that promotes greater food production in the future. However, taken as a whole, allocating at least some food based on need is going to perform better than allocating all food based on price.
jacquesm 7y ago
Because people being born in some place need somewhere to live without being displaced by hordes of locusts looking to see the sights.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  You can purchase or inherit property. Nobody forces you to turn that property into an Airbnb. You have no particular right to some other property, one to which you have no ownership claim, in the city in which you happen to be born. That's not how property works. If you think property is too expensive in your city, consider building more of it instead of imposing arbitrary restrictions on demand.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Bollocks. Cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona are historically constricted by nature. Not everybody is born with wealthy parents, a home to inherit or a job that will pay for one. Those cities won't grow much bigger than they are, nor should they. And those that are born there have more right to live there than tourists have to monopolize the space. The only thing AirBnB does is to line their own pockets at the expense of the locals. Hotels were a thing long before AirBnB turned social housing and regular apartments into a source of income for those wealthy enough to buy up the property. It's un-ethical. Libertarian bullshit and 'the market' have done enough damage. See also: commercial healthcare.
  - the_gipsy 7y ago
    Building more housing increases population, which increases opportunity. Opportunity is the reason people flock to cities. More opportunity means greater income, means higher real estate prices.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
We have lots of policies with adverse incentives and terrible outcomes. We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free because homeless individuals wind up a lot sicker, etc. It's not sufficient to show that this makes more money for the owner. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it costs the rest of the world too much, no, it isn't the highest and best use by any stretch of the imagination. Edit: See for example this hospital decided to just house a few people to lower its expenses: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-novel-treatment-from-chicago-hospitals-housing/45aa031f-85b0-456f-b9fb-29b17f95e3e1 https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-n... Please note that I am not actually for "housing first models" or free housing. I'm for market-based housing that makes sense. It's just a nutshell description of the problem space to note that just giving people housing can be cheaper than leaving them to fend for themselves.
- burneraccount12 7y ago
  > We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free No. The original study that generated so much headlines in the press said this was true for _temporarily_ homeless -- it would, in fact, be exorbitantly expensive to house _all_ homeless people. This assumption also misunderstands the nature of homelessness: many homeless people, when offered places to stay, refuse it. Mental illness, personal freedom, homeless community, whatever the reason a significant segment couldn't be housed if they wanted to, much less if we could afford it. There is no permanent solution for homelessness, it's not helpful to suggest this problem could easily be solved by just giving away housing for free, if that were even feasible. But to the larger point, people blame AirBnB for 'taking away' cheap housing, as if a landlord as some moral obligation to accept low value for his or her unit. Why? Because it's cheaper for you? Do you have a moral obligation to sell your programming services for a pittance because it's cheaper for your clients? What we need is public policy that encourages the construction of high density housing units...but instead in cities across the globe the NIMBY attitude makes it stiflingly expensive to build, meaning only luxury housing gets built, because that's what's profitable for developers. You could have the state build housing...how has public housing worked out for us? Instead we just make it difficult with historic landmarks and unnecessarily long environmental reviews and endless litigation to build anything. Make it cost effective for developers to build housing instead of blaming landlords for seeking higher value for their properties.
nikanj 7y ago
I agree with you, with the massive caveat that we should also stop with the zoning and permitting shenanigans and let supply rise to meet the demand. Artificially scarce supply + bid-based pricing makes for horrible times for the average tenant.
- II2II 7y ago
  There are reasons other than zoning affecting supply. Regulations exist for a reason. While some of those reasons are of debatable merit, some are good. You probably don't want to place housing in an industrial area. There are environmental implications that can affect public health. Likewise, you probably don't want to place a ten story apartment block in a neighborhood filled with single family housing since it is going to interfere with other property owners enjoyment of their own land. Yet there is more than zoning to consider. Building codes raise the cost of construction, and ultimately cost of housing. Historically, parts of cities have been lost to flames because of how building were constructed (among other reasons). Now I am not saying that all of the regulations are good. On the contrary, I believe that they are too restrictive to meet housing needs. On the other hand, you will always have someone calling shenanigans based upon the philosophy behind those regulations and how the community views that philosophy.
  - nikanj 7y ago
    Fourty percent of the homes Manhattan would be illegal to build today. I would claim that not all of Manhattan is industrial or otherwise miserable. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html?mtrref=www.google.ca&gwh=717EA22068DC6A8C0420F255D80A100E&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...
jrd259 7y ago
Why should property go to the most (fiscally) productive use? Is this simply an axiom? I assert that it has bad consequences. In my city (Toronto) the tax rate is set on the assumption that land is put the "most productive use". This forces out non-profits, artists, theatres, dancers and in general everything that makes a city worth living in in favour of chain restaurants and condos.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  How do you know those artists and theaters are better than the restaurants and condos? Dollars reveal true preferences, and it appears that people don't actually prefer artists, theaters, and dancers like you'd prefer. Who are you to override the preferences of the public?
gjs278 7y ago
property should go to the most productive use aka someone actually living there rather than being forced to rent from someone else because all the houses are rentals

harimau777 7y ago

I don't think that how much someone is willing to pay is a good way to measure what something's most productive use is. For one thing, it fails to account for the degree to which people have differences in what they are able to pay.

quotemstr 7y ago
We use prices to ration access to scarce resources. What's the alternative? A command economy. Tons of historical experiments show that it doesn't work. And why shouldn't ability to pay affect the ability to access resources? What would be the point of money otherwise? How do you know that the most productive user a resource is something other than the highest bidder? On what basis can you make that determination? Prices are universal.
- harimau777 7y ago
  I don't think that we can perfectly know what the best use of a resource is. However, I think that we can often perform better than price does. For example, it would generally be better to allocate a unit of food to people who are starving than to people who already have excess food. Note that in some cases that won't be the optimal way to distribute the food. For example perhaps the starving person is actively hurting society while the person with excess food wanted to use the food to perform research that promotes greater food production in the future. However, taken as a whole, allocating at least some food based on need is going to perform better than allocating all food based on price.

jacquesm 7y ago

Because people being born in some place need somewhere to live without being displaced by hordes of locusts looking to see the sights.

quotemstr 7y ago
You can purchase or inherit property. Nobody forces you to turn that property into an Airbnb. You have no particular right to some other property, one to which you have no ownership claim, in the city in which you happen to be born. That's not how property works. If you think property is too expensive in your city, consider building more of it instead of imposing arbitrary restrictions on demand.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Bollocks. Cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona are historically constricted by nature. Not everybody is born with wealthy parents, a home to inherit or a job that will pay for one. Those cities won't grow much bigger than they are, nor should they. And those that are born there have more right to live there than tourists have to monopolize the space. The only thing AirBnB does is to line their own pockets at the expense of the locals. Hotels were a thing long before AirBnB turned social housing and regular apartments into a source of income for those wealthy enough to buy up the property. It's un-ethical. Libertarian bullshit and 'the market' have done enough damage. See also: commercial healthcare.
- the_gipsy 7y ago
  Building more housing increases population, which increases opportunity. Opportunity is the reason people flock to cities. More opportunity means greater income, means higher real estate prices.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

We have lots of policies with adverse incentives and terrible outcomes. We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free because homeless individuals wind up a lot sicker, etc. It's not sufficient to show that this makes more money for the owner. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it costs the rest of the world too much, no, it isn't the highest and best use by any stretch of the imagination. Edit: See for example this hospital decided to just house a few people to lower its expenses: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-novel-treatment-from-chicago-hospitals-housing/45aa031f-85b0-456f-b9fb-29b17f95e3e1 https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/homeless-patients-get-n... Please note that I am not actually for "housing first models" or free housing. I'm for market-based housing that makes sense. It's just a nutshell description of the problem space to note that just giving people housing can be cheaper than leaving them to fend for themselves.

burneraccount12 7y ago
> We routinely spend more money in the US on homeless services than it would cost to provide homes for free No. The original study that generated so much headlines in the press said this was true for _temporarily_ homeless -- it would, in fact, be exorbitantly expensive to house _all_ homeless people. This assumption also misunderstands the nature of homelessness: many homeless people, when offered places to stay, refuse it. Mental illness, personal freedom, homeless community, whatever the reason a significant segment couldn't be housed if they wanted to, much less if we could afford it. There is no permanent solution for homelessness, it's not helpful to suggest this problem could easily be solved by just giving away housing for free, if that were even feasible. But to the larger point, people blame AirBnB for 'taking away' cheap housing, as if a landlord as some moral obligation to accept low value for his or her unit. Why? Because it's cheaper for you? Do you have a moral obligation to sell your programming services for a pittance because it's cheaper for your clients? What we need is public policy that encourages the construction of high density housing units...but instead in cities across the globe the NIMBY attitude makes it stiflingly expensive to build, meaning only luxury housing gets built, because that's what's profitable for developers. You could have the state build housing...how has public housing worked out for us? Instead we just make it difficult with historic landmarks and unnecessarily long environmental reviews and endless litigation to build anything. Make it cost effective for developers to build housing instead of blaming landlords for seeking higher value for their properties.

nikanj 7y ago

I agree with you, with the massive caveat that we should also stop with the zoning and permitting shenanigans and let supply rise to meet the demand. Artificially scarce supply + bid-based pricing makes for horrible times for the average tenant.

II2II 7y ago
There are reasons other than zoning affecting supply. Regulations exist for a reason. While some of those reasons are of debatable merit, some are good. You probably don't want to place housing in an industrial area. There are environmental implications that can affect public health. Likewise, you probably don't want to place a ten story apartment block in a neighborhood filled with single family housing since it is going to interfere with other property owners enjoyment of their own land. Yet there is more than zoning to consider. Building codes raise the cost of construction, and ultimately cost of housing. Historically, parts of cities have been lost to flames because of how building were constructed (among other reasons). Now I am not saying that all of the regulations are good. On the contrary, I believe that they are too restrictive to meet housing needs. On the other hand, you will always have someone calling shenanigans based upon the philosophy behind those regulations and how the community views that philosophy.
- nikanj 7y ago
  Fourty percent of the homes Manhattan would be illegal to build today. I would claim that not all of Manhattan is industrial or otherwise miserable. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html?mtrref=www.google.ca&gwh=717EA22068DC6A8C0420F255D80A100E&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

jrd259 7y ago

Why should property go to the most (fiscally) productive use? Is this simply an axiom? I assert that it has bad consequences. In my city (Toronto) the tax rate is set on the assumption that land is put the "most productive use". This forces out non-profits, artists, theatres, dancers and in general everything that makes a city worth living in in favour of chain restaurants and condos.

quotemstr 7y ago
How do you know those artists and theaters are better than the restaurants and condos? Dollars reveal true preferences, and it appears that people don't actually prefer artists, theaters, and dancers like you'd prefer. Who are you to override the preferences of the public?

gjs278 7y ago

property should go to the most productive use aka someone actually living there rather than being forced to rent from someone else because all the houses are rentals