5 ms·

Whether you like it or not, the world is becoming more connected and global. If you don't like that, don't pretend that it's one company ruining the world for y

Whether you like it or not, the world is becoming more connected and global. If you don't like that, don't pretend that it's one company ruining the world for you. Just admit that you don't want to share your neighborhood with tourists.

matkoniecz 6y ago
I am happily admitting that! Though strictly speaking I have no problem with tourists (except hen parties/stag parties), I have problem with city spending more effort on keeping tourists happy than residents happy. And for example refusing to fix sidewalks and having funds to advertise city as a tourism destination. While hotels take over local cinemas, shops, apartments, restaurants and other objects used by local residents. Airbnb and similar is making it more problematic - as something that was constructed as apartments may easily turn into a de facto hotel. What is especially irritating for real residents in the same building.
stevehawk 6y ago
most of us also dont want home prices driven up by hedge funds and 2nd/3rd/4th mortgagers buying a house just to airbnb
- lend000 6y ago
  Ah, yes, the hedge funds, too. So many evil groups conspiring to ruin your weekend. What you describe is only profitable if lots of people want to travel to the destination and they can keep the properties busy (it's a lot of work). What I hear is "I don't like to travel as much as other people so I don't want to be inconvenienced by them, and I'd rather they don't get to travel."
  - jhrmnn 6y ago
    That residential property is increasingly bought as investment by both small and large players and this is one of the factors driving prices up is a fact. See for example Figure 1.3 here [open access] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11674-3_1 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11674-3_...
  - baq 6y ago
    real estate has always been an asset class, nothing evil there. it's just a fact.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Poor families can already not really afford to live in the city where they work as cleaning staff, in retail, as handymen, etc. These people keep the city running, not the AirBnB landlords or hedge funds.
  - ath92 6y ago
    Before Airbnb, your neighbour couldn't just start renting out (a part of) their house to tourists. In many European cities, and I imagine other places too, zoning laws and permits were in place that prevented that from happening. Then Airbnb came along and disrupted the market by rewriting the rules, or rather selectively forgetting about some of them. This has a real impact on the people that live in those cities. Without it, there would still have been plenty of people that wanted to travel to these places, but without part of the housing supply meant for citizens going to tourism, the price of a room would simply go up.
  - conradev 6y ago
    It is true that the Airbnb needs to be in a place people want to travel to. But a lot of people want to travel to a lot of places – almost any city is included in this criteria. It is a lot of work, but not for the property owner if you just hire someone to manage the property. Short term rentals are far more profitable than long term rentals (even though most of it is adjusting for risk, for both vacancy and property damage). It is a serious problem, especially in the current housing market, that people with marginally more access to capital are able to buy investment properties and take priority over people looking to buy their primary residence. Sellers are incentivized to take cash offers instead of financed ones.
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  Yes--this is my fear. We alll know corporations sole existence is making money, and most show zero restraint. In the USA, foreigners can buy real estate with a click, or a phone call. (I don't believe foreigners should be able to buy our land. Become a citizen first, but that's another matter.) And yes---I don't want to live next to tourists, and short term renters. There's a delicate balance in most neighborhoods. The last thing Americans need is rich guys buying up housing to rent short term. The rentals are never near the mansions, so they don't care who's there. In my county, one, or two towns (Sausalito, and Belvedere) stopped short term rentals. (I believe it's still in effect, but to tired to look it up?).
thenaturalist 6y ago
AirBnB is the single biggest external lever on - already short supplied - residential living in most Western cities with tourism, wouldn't you agree? In a world with 10 years of pretty much global Quantitative Easing policies it's certainly not one company driving the trend here, but if it's a single company who happens to have an outsized negative effect for local residents with quasi institutional, short term rent which outprices any local regular rents.... yeah, I'd say that is an issue very well worth addressing.
- lend000 6y ago
  The issue is always a shortage of housing caused by zoning. Case closed. But let's pretend for some reason we can't build. As you say, there are two housing supplies in a city. One for long term residents and one for short term residents. The larger the ratio of short term supply to long term supply, the lower the prices and the more people will have an opportunity to visit the city, while prices will rise for property overall (assuming the city refuses to build). The more you constrict the supply, you start pricing out visitors from poorer areas who could never afford to live in that city, even if short term housing was banned altogether. Everyone wants to use an example to show how your policy helps the little guy, but the reality is that there are winners and losers on both sides. Arguably, the poorest are those who could never afford to live in the idyllic tourist hotspot in the first place, so you don't want them to ever get a chance to see it? The people making the biggest fuss about AirBnB always seem to be middle class NIMBY's.
  - thenaturalist 6y ago
    I actually fully agree with your point on zoning and building, and your conclusion that the poorest on both sides are being hit is also 100% on point. Though, let's be realistic: zoning exists and building regulations are - very much unfortunately - a hot mess, and I guess it is a complex topic. As a society, we don't benefit from hyper growth which eventually and inevitably collapses, externalizing the cost of the cleanup to everyone. I guess the Financial Crisis - caused by housing (!) - showed that quite clearly. I hear your NIMBY sentiment and again, agree on that one, but I guess it's clear that both extremes are not beneficial: Neither totally uncontrolled building nor totally forbidden short term renting is optimal. So what about finding a compromise of limiting short term rentals to allow for the possibility, but make it unattractive for institutional business sharks and probably much more attractive for the average Jane and Joe? Still not perfect, but I can much more get behind that idea.
miohtama 6y ago
This is exactly true. I live in one of tourist destination cities. Some property owners in my building tried to make quick bucks in short term rental market. Last summer, police had to show up to calm down British blokes who were playing it a notch too loud. I do not know who cleaned up the puke in the elevator, but hopefully the property owner got hit by a decent bill. AirBnb is all about making profit by externalitising the cost to someone else.
Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
Please don't impute bad faith on the part of others.
_rpd 6y ago
The thing is though, the reason a place is a tourist destination is because it is special in some way. It’s appropriate for the government of a tourist-driven economy to act to preserve that specialness. Sometimes that means less tourists but higher revenue per tourist.
arnvald 6y ago
> Just admit that you don't want to share your neighborhood with tourists. I do not mind sharing neighborhood with tourists. I'm happy to have a hotel across the street, in fact I had 2 hotels within 50m of my last place and I didn't mind it, even if it was occasionally quite noisy in the evenings. What I do not want to share with tourists is the floor in the residential building where I live, and that's a big difference.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Most people don't want to live in flophouses, and they certainly didn't pay to live in them, either.

matkoniecz 6y ago

I am happily admitting that! Though strictly speaking I have no problem with tourists (except hen parties/stag parties), I have problem with city spending more effort on keeping tourists happy than residents happy. And for example refusing to fix sidewalks and having funds to advertise city as a tourism destination. While hotels take over local cinemas, shops, apartments, restaurants and other objects used by local residents. Airbnb and similar is making it more problematic - as something that was constructed as apartments may easily turn into a de facto hotel. What is especially irritating for real residents in the same building.

stevehawk 6y ago

most of us also dont want home prices driven up by hedge funds and 2nd/3rd/4th mortgagers buying a house just to airbnb

lend000 6y ago
Ah, yes, the hedge funds, too. So many evil groups conspiring to ruin your weekend. What you describe is only profitable if lots of people want to travel to the destination and they can keep the properties busy (it's a lot of work). What I hear is "I don't like to travel as much as other people so I don't want to be inconvenienced by them, and I'd rather they don't get to travel."
- jhrmnn 6y ago
  That residential property is increasingly bought as investment by both small and large players and this is one of the factors driving prices up is a fact. See for example Figure 1.3 here [open access] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11674-3_1 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11674-3_...
- baq 6y ago
  real estate has always been an asset class, nothing evil there. it's just a fact.
- foepys 6y ago
  Poor families can already not really afford to live in the city where they work as cleaning staff, in retail, as handymen, etc. These people keep the city running, not the AirBnB landlords or hedge funds.
- ath92 6y ago
  Before Airbnb, your neighbour couldn't just start renting out (a part of) their house to tourists. In many European cities, and I imagine other places too, zoning laws and permits were in place that prevented that from happening. Then Airbnb came along and disrupted the market by rewriting the rules, or rather selectively forgetting about some of them. This has a real impact on the people that live in those cities. Without it, there would still have been plenty of people that wanted to travel to these places, but without part of the housing supply meant for citizens going to tourism, the price of a room would simply go up.
- conradev 6y ago
  It is true that the Airbnb needs to be in a place people want to travel to. But a lot of people want to travel to a lot of places – almost any city is included in this criteria. It is a lot of work, but not for the property owner if you just hire someone to manage the property. Short term rentals are far more profitable than long term rentals (even though most of it is adjusting for risk, for both vacancy and property damage). It is a serious problem, especially in the current housing market, that people with marginally more access to capital are able to buy investment properties and take priority over people looking to buy their primary residence. Sellers are incentivized to take cash offers instead of financed ones.
hellbannedguy 6y ago
Yes--this is my fear. We alll know corporations sole existence is making money, and most show zero restraint. In the USA, foreigners can buy real estate with a click, or a phone call. (I don't believe foreigners should be able to buy our land. Become a citizen first, but that's another matter.) And yes---I don't want to live next to tourists, and short term renters. There's a delicate balance in most neighborhoods. The last thing Americans need is rich guys buying up housing to rent short term. The rentals are never near the mansions, so they don't care who's there. In my county, one, or two towns (Sausalito, and Belvedere) stopped short term rentals. (I believe it's still in effect, but to tired to look it up?).

thenaturalist 6y ago

AirBnB is the single biggest external lever on - already short supplied - residential living in most Western cities with tourism, wouldn't you agree? In a world with 10 years of pretty much global Quantitative Easing policies it's certainly not one company driving the trend here, but if it's a single company who happens to have an outsized negative effect for local residents with quasi institutional, short term rent which outprices any local regular rents.... yeah, I'd say that is an issue very well worth addressing.

lend000 6y ago
The issue is always a shortage of housing caused by zoning. Case closed. But let's pretend for some reason we can't build. As you say, there are two housing supplies in a city. One for long term residents and one for short term residents. The larger the ratio of short term supply to long term supply, the lower the prices and the more people will have an opportunity to visit the city, while prices will rise for property overall (assuming the city refuses to build). The more you constrict the supply, you start pricing out visitors from poorer areas who could never afford to live in that city, even if short term housing was banned altogether. Everyone wants to use an example to show how your policy helps the little guy, but the reality is that there are winners and losers on both sides. Arguably, the poorest are those who could never afford to live in the idyllic tourist hotspot in the first place, so you don't want them to ever get a chance to see it? The people making the biggest fuss about AirBnB always seem to be middle class NIMBY's.
- thenaturalist 6y ago
  I actually fully agree with your point on zoning and building, and your conclusion that the poorest on both sides are being hit is also 100% on point. Though, let's be realistic: zoning exists and building regulations are - very much unfortunately - a hot mess, and I guess it is a complex topic. As a society, we don't benefit from hyper growth which eventually and inevitably collapses, externalizing the cost of the cleanup to everyone. I guess the Financial Crisis - caused by housing (!) - showed that quite clearly. I hear your NIMBY sentiment and again, agree on that one, but I guess it's clear that both extremes are not beneficial: Neither totally uncontrolled building nor totally forbidden short term renting is optimal. So what about finding a compromise of limiting short term rentals to allow for the possibility, but make it unattractive for institutional business sharks and probably much more attractive for the average Jane and Joe? Still not perfect, but I can much more get behind that idea.

miohtama 6y ago

This is exactly true. I live in one of tourist destination cities. Some property owners in my building tried to make quick bucks in short term rental market. Last summer, police had to show up to calm down British blokes who were playing it a notch too loud. I do not know who cleaned up the puke in the elevator, but hopefully the property owner got hit by a decent bill. AirBnb is all about making profit by externalitising the cost to someone else.

Doctor_Fegg 6y ago

Please don't impute bad faith on the part of others.

_rpd 6y ago

The thing is though, the reason a place is a tourist destination is because it is special in some way. It’s appropriate for the government of a tourist-driven economy to act to preserve that specialness. Sometimes that means less tourists but higher revenue per tourist.

arnvald 6y ago

> Just admit that you don't want to share your neighborhood with tourists. I do not mind sharing neighborhood with tourists. I'm happy to have a hotel across the street, in fact I had 2 hotels within 50m of my last place and I didn't mind it, even if it was occasionally quite noisy in the evenings. What I do not want to share with tourists is the floor in the residential building where I live, and that's a big difference.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Most people don't want to live in flophouses, and they certainly didn't pay to live in them, either.