3 ms·

Devastated housing costs which were on a decade long uptrend before AirBNB existed you mean? Or because its capitalized rentals to a higher extent than the norm

• joyj2nd 7y ago
  AirBnB is a great business. I actually met the founders when they were just starting, handling out Obama 'O's as marketing gifts. Maybe should have asked them to join their company. This being said. Their business and bypassing of local laws has made many housing markets in touristic city insanely expensive. I know, some win, some lose but still, it is a major concern.
• asdff 7y ago
  In the face of a housing crisis, the last thing you want to do is turn perfectly good housing stock into a de facto hotel. There are whole apartment buildings that have been turned into Airbnbs. The only work done in converting them was installing the cheapest flat screen TV possible, some futons and coffee tables from walmart, and a microwave. This maneuver can net a landlord twice as much money a month, and removes housing supply from the market in the process.
  • taurath 7y ago
    I think as long as a landlord can make twice the amount of money, its gonna be really hard to keep that down. It also creates a lot of incentives to increase housing stock though no? If suddenly I can make $4k/mo on an apartment I'm building instead of $2k, wouldn't I want to build more apartments? We've tried just about everything other than being permissive with new housing. We refuse to scale our most popular areas to live, with the idea that what makes it nice will go away if there's more people. That just makes it exclusive and expensive.