4 ms·

Gee, how about having a parade of random people showing up at all hours of the day/night just to start? The erosion of community. Further commodification of hou

Gee, how about having a parade of random people showing up at all hours of the day/night just to start? The erosion of community. Further commodification of housing so that only the rich and upper middle class can buy a house in any city?

zbrozek 4y ago
That last point - that housing is too expensive - is not something that airbnb causes or can fix. That's a supply side problem and the solution is housing construction. It may marginally exacerbate the symptom by providing liquidity.
- jerjerjer 4y ago
  It removes liquidity from housing market, by repurposing flats/houses into hotels.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    It's creating liquidity, just not the kind you value. It's liquidity of short term housing rather than long term housing.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      Ok, then more accurately it’s moving liquidity. The next question is which is more valuable to society?
      - zbrozek 4y ago
        The United States is short O(10M) housing units[0], primarily due to anti-construction policies. Airbnb has O(100k) listings[1] in the US. Banning short-term rentals is a 1% solution. That's a policy distraction, not a useful lever to pull. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing-gap-cost-affordability-big-cities/672184/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing... [1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/
        miguelazo 4y ago
        There are plenty of empty luxury condos in every major city. They mostly serve as bank accounts for foreign investors. There's plenty of construction, just the wrong type.
        zbrozek 4y ago
        Maybe so, but can you show any data that it's a significant or meaningful problem and not a visible scapegoat? The data I found (above) makes clear that deleting the short-term rental market would not even dent the housing shortage problem in the United States. I could believe (and maybe someone in this thread has data!) that in some extremely over-constrained markets that units are disproportionately used for short-term rentals. But I haven't seen any numbers. And in those cases, you still should be building homes to solve the root cause problem. Americans persistently seem to want to find any reason at all to absolve themselves of responsibility for the housing crisis. It's investors! It's short-term rentals! It's corporate landlords! But it's never the locals who oppose construction.
        tekknik 4y ago
        Adding more houses to the market certainly will decrease pricing pressure. Nobody said banning Airbnb was suddenly going to make housing affordable but decrease prices. And my question remains, which is more valuable to society, short term rentals or homes?
        zbrozek 4y ago
        It's not a zero-sum game. You can have both, but you need to build enough to have it. Regulating the use of a thing is a mark of market failure. How would you feel if the government told you that you could only use a pencil for writing because that has more social value than its use in making a model log cabin? You're also failing to process my point: that banning short-term rentals is an ineffective lever, not that it won't have an epsilon of impact. Yes, you will increase supply by a tiny amount relative to the shortage. It will have near-zero pricing impact because the magnitude pales against the problem.
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      Liquidity for short term housing is valuable to who? Do you think most people here or otherwise care about speculators? We don't.
thefounder 4y ago
I think the ownership is not encouraged anymore. Instead we have social mobility so that we can move anytime when better opportunities arise. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on which side you are.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Moving every time a better opportunity comes up is a privilege enjoyed by a small section of the population. The vast majority of people move rarely, and when they do move it's usually within the same locality.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Even for people who can, family (spouse, kids in school, nearby relatives, etc.), friends, and so forth tend to make moving cities a pretty significant decision at some point.
    - thefounder 4y ago
      It's a cultural issue. Give it 1-2 generations and people won't care that much about nearby relatives, friends etc.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Th trend line has been toward significantly less mobility relative to past decades--though you'd probably want to correct the numbers for demographics given that 20 somethings move the most (as one would expect).
        miguelazo 4y ago
        Exactly-- the number of young people still living at home has surged in the last decade. This is not surprising given that "starter homes" are one of the main targets of housing speculators. People who would buy their first house rent longer, driving up rental rates and putting the transition from family to independence further out of reach for many.

zbrozek 4y ago

That last point - that housing is too expensive - is not something that airbnb causes or can fix. That's a supply side problem and the solution is housing construction. It may marginally exacerbate the symptom by providing liquidity.

jerjerjer 4y ago
It removes liquidity from housing market, by repurposing flats/houses into hotels.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  It's creating liquidity, just not the kind you value. It's liquidity of short term housing rather than long term housing.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    Ok, then more accurately it’s moving liquidity. The next question is which is more valuable to society?
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      The United States is short O(10M) housing units[0], primarily due to anti-construction policies. Airbnb has O(100k) listings[1] in the US. Banning short-term rentals is a 1% solution. That's a policy distraction, not a useful lever to pull. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing-gap-cost-affordability-big-cities/672184/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing... [1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/
      - miguelazo 4y ago
        There are plenty of empty luxury condos in every major city. They mostly serve as bank accounts for foreign investors. There's plenty of construction, just the wrong type.
        zbrozek 4y ago
        Maybe so, but can you show any data that it's a significant or meaningful problem and not a visible scapegoat? The data I found (above) makes clear that deleting the short-term rental market would not even dent the housing shortage problem in the United States. I could believe (and maybe someone in this thread has data!) that in some extremely over-constrained markets that units are disproportionately used for short-term rentals. But I haven't seen any numbers. And in those cases, you still should be building homes to solve the root cause problem. Americans persistently seem to want to find any reason at all to absolve themselves of responsibility for the housing crisis. It's investors! It's short-term rentals! It's corporate landlords! But it's never the locals who oppose construction.
        tekknik 4y ago
        Adding more houses to the market certainly will decrease pricing pressure. Nobody said banning Airbnb was suddenly going to make housing affordable but decrease prices. And my question remains, which is more valuable to society, short term rentals or homes?
        zbrozek 4y ago
        It's not a zero-sum game. You can have both, but you need to build enough to have it. Regulating the use of a thing is a mark of market failure. How would you feel if the government told you that you could only use a pencil for writing because that has more social value than its use in making a model log cabin? You're also failing to process my point: that banning short-term rentals is an ineffective lever, not that it won't have an epsilon of impact. Yes, you will increase supply by a tiny amount relative to the shortage. It will have near-zero pricing impact because the magnitude pales against the problem.
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Liquidity for short term housing is valuable to who? Do you think most people here or otherwise care about speculators? We don't.

thefounder 4y ago

I think the ownership is not encouraged anymore. Instead we have social mobility so that we can move anytime when better opportunities arise. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on which side you are.

rootusrootus 4y ago
Moving every time a better opportunity comes up is a privilege enjoyed by a small section of the population. The vast majority of people move rarely, and when they do move it's usually within the same locality.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Even for people who can, family (spouse, kids in school, nearby relatives, etc.), friends, and so forth tend to make moving cities a pretty significant decision at some point.
  - thefounder 4y ago
    It's a cultural issue. Give it 1-2 generations and people won't care that much about nearby relatives, friends etc.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Th trend line has been toward significantly less mobility relative to past decades--though you'd probably want to correct the numbers for demographics given that 20 somethings move the most (as one would expect).
      - miguelazo 4y ago
        Exactly-- the number of young people still living at home has surged in the last decade. This is not surprising given that "starter homes" are one of the main targets of housing speculators. People who would buy their first house rent longer, driving up rental rates and putting the transition from family to independence further out of reach for many.