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> The only solution to the underlying problem is to allow construction to meet the underlying demand. While I do think that allowing more construction would be

> The only solution to the underlying problem is to allow construction to meet the underlying demand. While I do think that allowing more construction would be great, there's probably other things that could help alleviate the problem. 1. Limit the number of units that can be rented by a single landlord in an area 2. Limit the proportion of units in an area which can be rented (maybe creates a sort of taxi-shield problem which might be it's own weird thing, but that's a problem for multi-property landowners, not single family homeowners). 3. (as OP suggests) limit the number of nights/year which can be rented to some number which would be very reasonable for a resident-owner who's out of town sometimes but very unreasonable for owner-investors. 4. Maybe some kind of hybrid approach - you can rent out space in your primary residence all you want, but your nth residence is only rentable 1/f(n)% of the time (for some reasonable f(n)) All of the above are presumably best implemented by governments rather than a well-meaning airbnb (who, even if they existed could presumably be overpowered by a less-well-meaning competitor)

maxerickson 5y ago
It'd probably work better to tax rentals (with higher taxes on short term) than to try to keep track of whether a wholly owned LLC counts as a separate landlord or not, or which owner in an area gets to rent and which one gets to eat their losses (or how to split the rent nights up). Those taxes get paid by the renters, but they also reduce the profitability of the rentals (at least if they are competing with options that don't have those taxes).
sk2020 5y ago
Where I live an AirBNB was being used as a brothel. Neighbors really didn’t care for that and they appealed to the local Planning department who gave the property owner a Morton’s Fork: cease operations of the AirBNB or rezone your residential property to match the use (subject to public comment and a hostile board). That ended the matter. It’s a good action model for our modern legal framework, where property rights basically don’t exist and the law is whatever an administrator says it is. Another option may be abolition of all commercial use of or non-private ownership of residential property in toto. Renting is illegal. Using it for your business is illegal. Apartments are illegal. Speculative ownership of housing is illegal. Housing prices implode, but you don’t have AirBNB tycoons. I’m not serious, but “stop being greedy AirBNB or, boy, you’ll be sorry” isn’t much of a serious argument.

maxerickson 5y ago

It'd probably work better to tax rentals (with higher taxes on short term) than to try to keep track of whether a wholly owned LLC counts as a separate landlord or not, or which owner in an area gets to rent and which one gets to eat their losses (or how to split the rent nights up). Those taxes get paid by the renters, but they also reduce the profitability of the rentals (at least if they are competing with options that don't have those taxes).

sk2020 5y ago

Where I live an AirBNB was being used as a brothel. Neighbors really didn’t care for that and they appealed to the local Planning department who gave the property owner a Morton’s Fork: cease operations of the AirBNB or rezone your residential property to match the use (subject to public comment and a hostile board). That ended the matter. It’s a good action model for our modern legal framework, where property rights basically don’t exist and the law is whatever an administrator says it is. Another option may be abolition of all commercial use of or non-private ownership of residential property in toto. Renting is illegal. Using it for your business is illegal. Apartments are illegal. Speculative ownership of housing is illegal. Housing prices implode, but you don’t have AirBNB tycoons. I’m not serious, but “stop being greedy AirBNB or, boy, you’ll be sorry” isn’t much of a serious argument.