4 ms·

Why should government make it harder to go on vacation?

mym1990 4y ago
It’s very easy to go on vacation: rent from a motel or hotel, which is infrastructure that is in place specifically for vacationing. Go camping. Go rent a van or RV. Single family housing should not be seen as an investment vehicle apart from the equity one builds in their own home. There are zoning laws in place for a reason and when you bypass those laws to turn residential areas into businesses, it does not end in a positive experience for either side.
- itake 4y ago
  I have multiple friends that rent out rooms and ADUs to support their mortgages on Airbnb in their own home so they can afford to live near work. People should do what they want in their own home
  - mym1990 4y ago
    Again, if you read my comment, you would understand that I think it is totally fine that humans are acting towards what is incentivized. But for those that see this behavior as detrimental, it is no use to point fingers at the owners of those properties, but instead to aim at the overarching structures.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      In concept Airbnb is fine. Renting out spare rooms, renting unused time on your holiday pad at Cape cod, all make complete sense. It's making more space available, at a cheaper rate, while maximizing utilisation, and return, on an existing asset. Equally there's some place for buy-to-rent investing to exist. There is, and will always be, a segment of the population who cannot, or doesn't want to, buy and this segment rely on rental for housing. If there was no invest-to-rent then that segment would be homeless. The problem happens when there's an imbalance. When there's too much Airbnb (like Barcelona), locals get squeezed out of their own city. Some supply is good, too much is bad. The solution to this is regulation. By regulating supply (prioritize in-home, limited permits for others etc) one can balance the three markets such that ultimately everyone wins.
      - mym1990 4y ago
        Agreed, I would say once the threshold was crossed where people specifically sought out to buy 2-10 properties in different cities to make a business out of it, it was time to scale back. Renting a room in a place one lives or while one is on vacation seems reasonable enough.
        elguyosupremo 4y ago
        I think short-term rental rules really need to be determined on a community by community basis. In some places (like beach towns, or ski resorts) it might be ok to have 50% (just pulling that number out of nowhere) houses be short-term rentals. In NYC or San Francisco it might make more sense to limit short-term rentals more (a certain number of nights per unit per year), the policing of such a policy though, oi!
        vanilla_nut 4y ago
        Tricky. I live in a region that contains a lot of ski communities. AirBnB has trashed the rental market. I'm working on a deep-dive blog post on this, but basically local blue collar workers are being squeezed out entirely by short term rentals. I work remotely in tech, but I want to continue living here year-round, contributing to the community. Short term rentals are simply too lucrative compared to owning and long term renting. Much of this is the government's fault -- the tax system has a lot of loopholes, like mortgage interest deductions, depreciation, business cost deductions, and untaxed fees that make short term renting even mire lucrative. I hope the government steps in soon to remedy this, but considering their response to the housing crises in the past I am not hopeful.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- jtbayly 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - mym1990 4y ago
    This is incredibly backwards: people on vacation tend to go to places to explore or be on the beach or whatever, they will typically opt for smaller spaces because a) it’s usually a place to sleep and b) it’s not permanent. People like house because it is where families spend a majority of their time, so have more space makes sense. I also think you missed the part of owning property…because you don’t actually own it…just try not paying your taxes :) How many people would you say be okay with having a homeowner run a meth lab next door? So back track from there and at some point there does need to be a line. I am not against building more housing, I think that would actually be fantastic, but if you think that people having total free reign over their properties ends up in a sunny picture, there are plenty of global examples of how it doesn’t. If we extend your idea over total freedom in home ownership, why have building codes? Why have regulation on the mortgage/loan process? Why have anything that supports trust in the market?
dghlsakjg 4y ago
It shouldn't. But it should enact rules that govern certain types of goods, like local housing. Housing and rentals are different because unlike most goods, there really isn't a good alternative to not purchasing the good, and because the supply side of the market is necessarily slow, and constrained by geography. In other words housing in your local area is an entirely different good than housing 100 miles away, and we should recognize that ensuring the opportunity for shelter to all people is a moral necessity higher than ensuring that pleasure travelers can stay in any given place. We place a mountain of restrictions on real estate in most of the western world. Requiring that housing be used as housing is a pretty reasonable take. If you think that people should be able to use their property for anything they want, fine, but don't get upset when someone wants to open a 24 hour go kart track nextdoor.

mym1990 4y ago

It’s very easy to go on vacation: rent from a motel or hotel, which is infrastructure that is in place specifically for vacationing. Go camping. Go rent a van or RV. Single family housing should not be seen as an investment vehicle apart from the equity one builds in their own home. There are zoning laws in place for a reason and when you bypass those laws to turn residential areas into businesses, it does not end in a positive experience for either side.

itake 4y ago
I have multiple friends that rent out rooms and ADUs to support their mortgages on Airbnb in their own home so they can afford to live near work. People should do what they want in their own home
- mym1990 4y ago
  Again, if you read my comment, you would understand that I think it is totally fine that humans are acting towards what is incentivized. But for those that see this behavior as detrimental, it is no use to point fingers at the owners of those properties, but instead to aim at the overarching structures.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    In concept Airbnb is fine. Renting out spare rooms, renting unused time on your holiday pad at Cape cod, all make complete sense. It's making more space available, at a cheaper rate, while maximizing utilisation, and return, on an existing asset. Equally there's some place for buy-to-rent investing to exist. There is, and will always be, a segment of the population who cannot, or doesn't want to, buy and this segment rely on rental for housing. If there was no invest-to-rent then that segment would be homeless. The problem happens when there's an imbalance. When there's too much Airbnb (like Barcelona), locals get squeezed out of their own city. Some supply is good, too much is bad. The solution to this is regulation. By regulating supply (prioritize in-home, limited permits for others etc) one can balance the three markets such that ultimately everyone wins.
    - mym1990 4y ago
      Agreed, I would say once the threshold was crossed where people specifically sought out to buy 2-10 properties in different cities to make a business out of it, it was time to scale back. Renting a room in a place one lives or while one is on vacation seems reasonable enough.
      - elguyosupremo 4y ago
        I think short-term rental rules really need to be determined on a community by community basis. In some places (like beach towns, or ski resorts) it might be ok to have 50% (just pulling that number out of nowhere) houses be short-term rentals. In NYC or San Francisco it might make more sense to limit short-term rentals more (a certain number of nights per unit per year), the policing of such a policy though, oi!
        vanilla_nut 4y ago
        Tricky. I live in a region that contains a lot of ski communities. AirBnB has trashed the rental market. I'm working on a deep-dive blog post on this, but basically local blue collar workers are being squeezed out entirely by short term rentals. I work remotely in tech, but I want to continue living here year-round, contributing to the community. Short term rentals are simply too lucrative compared to owning and long term renting. Much of this is the government's fault -- the tax system has a lot of loopholes, like mortgage interest deductions, depreciation, business cost deductions, and untaxed fees that make short term renting even mire lucrative. I hope the government steps in soon to remedy this, but considering their response to the housing crises in the past I am not hopeful.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jtbayly 4y ago
[flagged]
- mym1990 4y ago
  This is incredibly backwards: people on vacation tend to go to places to explore or be on the beach or whatever, they will typically opt for smaller spaces because a) it’s usually a place to sleep and b) it’s not permanent. People like house because it is where families spend a majority of their time, so have more space makes sense. I also think you missed the part of owning property…because you don’t actually own it…just try not paying your taxes :) How many people would you say be okay with having a homeowner run a meth lab next door? So back track from there and at some point there does need to be a line. I am not against building more housing, I think that would actually be fantastic, but if you think that people having total free reign over their properties ends up in a sunny picture, there are plenty of global examples of how it doesn’t. If we extend your idea over total freedom in home ownership, why have building codes? Why have regulation on the mortgage/loan process? Why have anything that supports trust in the market?

dghlsakjg 4y ago

It shouldn't. But it should enact rules that govern certain types of goods, like local housing. Housing and rentals are different because unlike most goods, there really isn't a good alternative to not purchasing the good, and because the supply side of the market is necessarily slow, and constrained by geography. In other words housing in your local area is an entirely different good than housing 100 miles away, and we should recognize that ensuring the opportunity for shelter to all people is a moral necessity higher than ensuring that pleasure travelers can stay in any given place. We place a mountain of restrictions on real estate in most of the western world. Requiring that housing be used as housing is a pretty reasonable take. If you think that people should be able to use their property for anything they want, fine, but don't get upset when someone wants to open a 24 hour go kart track nextdoor.