8 ms·

If people want to be in the hotel business buy a freaking hotel, there are plenty for sale. If you want to be in the rental business buy and apartment building

If people want to be in the hotel business buy a freaking hotel, there are plenty for sale. If you want to be in the rental business buy and apartment building, there are lots of apartment buildings available too. All these people doing Air BnB and Renting out their old house is what is skewing the market and fucking things up for everyone -the city, home owners, neighbors, hotel operators, renters and vacationers. I'm glad NYC has rental laws like they do I really wish more cities had them and actually enforced them, a lot of this bullshit would end quickly. Until them people will have to live next to unlicensed hotels, subsidize their neighbors business and generally get screwed over so Air BnB can take their 30%. Anyone that bitches that the rent is too high, here's your starting point, all those Air BnB rentals are driving the long term rental market up significantly. Adding 20% more units to the market would save you a ton of money.

kelnos 4y ago
> fucking things up for everyone - [...] vacationers. Huh? As a frequent vacationer and user of Airbnb (I'm staying in one right now, as it turns out), Airbnb has made vacationing so much better. I get to stay in a larger variety of neighborhoods and locations. Kitchens are usually standard (good luck finding one in most hotels). There's more space if I want to stay with family or friends. Prices -- even in places where Airbnb hosts are required to pay local hotel taxes -- are much more varied and, in general, better (and when I do decide to choose a hotel for whatever reason prices are often lower due to competition from Airbnb). I could go on... > Anyone that bitches that the rent is too high, here's your starting point, all those Air BnB rentals are driving the long term rental market up significantly. I hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. I don't doubt that short-term rentals are contributing to housing unaffordability, but there are much better solutions than banning them. Which brings me to: > Adding 20% more units to the market would save you a ton of money. Agreed! I've been saying that for years. Please, build 20% more units, and I think prices will indeed go down. Hell, don't stop at 20%, even. If there's demand, build!
- dorchadas 4y ago
  > I hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. I don't doubt that short-term rentals are contributing to housing unaffordability, but there are much better solutions than banning them. Which brings me to: The market for long term rentals doubled in Dublin during the pandemic due to lack of tourism. If you can't see how bringing all that supply (over 1000 units) back to the market won't help long-term rentals, that's on you. AirBnB is a cancer to cities and locals, and needs to be banned for good. Tourists aren't locals, they're not entitled to live like them, especially at the locals' expense.
- chollida1 4y ago
  > hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. Well the city of Halifax just banned airbnb in some areas and there was a flood of houses both on the market to sell and for long term renting. Clearly AirBnb is taking some long term rental stock away from the market, that can't be up for debate. if your point is that banning airbnb won't fully fix housing and therfor we shouldn't ban it, well that's an awfully high bar. What is clear is that banning airbnb will help improve the long term rental market.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
I call bullshit to your bullshit. You don't know that AirBnB is skewing the market. You just see the market sucking, AirBnB existing, and went with a Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc. There are so many things skewing the housing market. The rules on commercial mortgages, large corporate landlords engaging in cartel pricing, perverse incentives, wealthy people foreign and domestic buying space to park assets but not doing anything useful like renting it out or living in it, the list goes on and AirBnB is at the bottom. AirBnB provides an invaluable service, filling the niche of flexibly scaling housing for when its too long term for a hotel and too short term for a lease. Its the go to option for when you need to patch over a living situation issue just long enough to find a real place. AirBnB doesn't remove housing from the rental market because AirBnB is a rental market.
- dorchadas 4y ago
  AirBnB absolutely removes housing from the one rental market that matters - long term rentals. This is quite easy to see, as well as its influence on supply and thus pricing. In 2020 the number of long term let's available in Dublin doubled thanks to tourism shutting down and landlord switching. Sadly that's likely all been lost now. Short term lets are nowhere near as important as long term ones, especially vacation rentals. They're actively harmful often, especially with the way AirBnB takes supply from the long-term lets.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Wait a second. You're using the 2020 pandemic and the massive system shock it caused on (among other industries) tourism as a proxy for the impact of tourism in particular on rental availability and then extrapolating it further to the effects of AirBnB in particular? As opposed to the gigantic obvious other system shocks that happened in 2020 which also had a massive impact on housing and commuting patterns vis a vis work from home and mass exodus from urban areas in general. Pray tell have you ever tried to reject the hypothesis AirBnB is the cause of housing problems? Have you looked and failed to find data in that direction at all?
- curtisblaine 4y ago
  *Propter Hoc
sneak 4y ago
The idea that there is an arbitrary split between hotels or other rentals is, well, arbitrary. This is the same nonsense as NYC's yellow cab vs black car licensing and regulations. Let people make businesses how they choose.
- qdog 4y ago
  The split would be zoning and operating a business in a residence. Hotels usually have fire escapes, inspections, etc. Also parking, expected noise, any number of things my house doesn't conform to, and doubtful most of the Airbnb's do either. I've lived across from nightly rentals at a resort, I expected it, so no complaints to the late night partying etc. But my current neighborhood I have no expectation the house next door is going to suddenly start hosting huge gatherings every weekend, and I expect it to stay that way.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    This sounds similar to what I hear when people oppose building housing in general: people expect their neighborhood to stay exactly the same as when they bought it. That's not how the real world works, though. If you live in a city, you have to deal with noise, full stop. That's one of the trade offs of dense, urban living. Certainly there are limits to what you should have to put up with, and that's what noise complaints to the police are for. Police aren't doing their job? Well, maybe you should find a way to force them to, instead of trying to restrict what other people want to do with their property. Or move to a building or area or whatever with a neighborhood association that disallows short-term rentals.
  - sneak 4y ago
    Why should a business property with a bed be any more or less safe for human life than a residential property with a bed? If fire escapes are necessary, they should be required in both cases. If they are not, they shouldn't be. Are hotel guest lives (or resident lives) worth more or less than the other?
    - yencabulator 4y ago
anony23 4y ago
Sorry, but I don't see it. Short term rental laws in NYC are crazy strict. How is "buy a building" any different than "buy an apartment".
notch898a 4y ago
AirBnB got me an apartment for awhile in a top-3 US city because I had horrible credit and bad rental history. I don't have such issues in the cities with pretty weak tenant protections, but in places like NYC strong tenant protections make landlords nervous to rent to anyone who may take awhile to get rid of, so people end up relying on AirBnB etc. It's not purely a bunch of tourists or whatever taking up this housing and driving out the locals.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  When I first moved to SF with no history, I got a couch in SF for $10/day on Airbnb. Top notch experience!
  - toss1 4y ago
    That's great, I also had good experiences with AirBnB early on. This seems to have become a standard practice in VC-backed firms, a process clearly documented here [0] by Cory Doctorow (article covers much more than just the title-mentioned Tiktok). [0] https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979 https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df...
loeg 4y ago
> If people want to be in the hotel business buy a freaking hotel NYC is somewhat notorious for recently disallowing all new hotels. You could not enter the hotel business in NYC if you wanted to. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-new-york-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-n... https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-these-permits-no-one-got-any/ https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-...
- tecleandor 4y ago
  Well, being picky and strict, parent said "buy a hotel" not "build a hotel". I guess buying an existing hotel doesn't count as a new one ;)
  - loeg 4y ago
    To be clear, I doubt any existing operator is selling. Without the possibility of any new competition, they will be able to start jacking rates up as demand grows (see demand growth forecasts in the articles).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
awb 4y ago
Many friends and families enjoy staying under one roof. Hotels and apartments rarely offer that to even 2 families of 4. Add in Grandparents and you’re looking at 10-12 capacity. That’s 5-6 hotel rooms and typically nowhere to cook or sit at a table together to eat or play a game. Many houses sit empty when their owners are away. Why not use that space to house travelers without having to build more hotels? I think most cities have it backwards trying to regulate the hosts. Hosts aren’t at the property and aren’t usually awake at 1am when issues might occur. The renters cause the issues, so regulate the renters. Cities could mandate a 25-50% deposit that’s refunded if no noise/parking issues occur. Whoever put the deposit down will likely be at the house and self-policing their group that they invited. Makes more sense than blaming hosts when most bookings are “instant book”, or even if they do vet, it’s likely just a quick text chat or going off of previous AirBnB ratings (which many hosts rate 5/5 so the guest will return).
- Symbiote 4y ago
  In Europe there are "apartment hotels" which offer exactly this. Here are some examples: https://www.visitberlin.de/en/hotelthema/apartment-hotel https://www.visitberlin.de/en/hotelthema/apartment-hotel
- smugma 4y ago
  AirBnb is really great for families, in theory. I’ve had many great experiences with it. The problem is it is now polluted with grifters, and you don’t want to take a 15% chance that your place will have cockroaches, require digging through 8’ of snow to get to the front door, or have frozen pipes (all these have happened to me with Airbnb). Even worse, I feel that it went from a 5% bad rate to more like 35%.
- pknomad 4y ago
  This is true. But there are also people who buy up properties for AirBnB aren't trying to resource-allocate their own homes like Cloud/IAAS-style and try to use it for purely 100% hotel-like purposes. In doing so they're raising up the home prices, cheating out businesses that pay taxes for being legally allow to hotel, and cause problems for other homes that don't want a hotel in their backyard.
anovikov 4y ago
What will happen to hotel prices then?
Dreako 4y ago
[flagged]
- flangola7 4y ago
  What do you mean?

kelnos 4y ago

> fucking things up for everyone - [...] vacationers. Huh? As a frequent vacationer and user of Airbnb (I'm staying in one right now, as it turns out), Airbnb has made vacationing so much better. I get to stay in a larger variety of neighborhoods and locations. Kitchens are usually standard (good luck finding one in most hotels). There's more space if I want to stay with family or friends. Prices -- even in places where Airbnb hosts are required to pay local hotel taxes -- are much more varied and, in general, better (and when I do decide to choose a hotel for whatever reason prices are often lower due to competition from Airbnb). I could go on... > Anyone that bitches that the rent is too high, here's your starting point, all those Air BnB rentals are driving the long term rental market up significantly. I hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. I don't doubt that short-term rentals are contributing to housing unaffordability, but there are much better solutions than banning them. Which brings me to: > Adding 20% more units to the market would save you a ton of money. Agreed! I've been saying that for years. Please, build 20% more units, and I think prices will indeed go down. Hell, don't stop at 20%, even. If there's demand, build!

dorchadas 4y ago
> I hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. I don't doubt that short-term rentals are contributing to housing unaffordability, but there are much better solutions than banning them. Which brings me to: The market for long term rentals doubled in Dublin during the pandemic due to lack of tourism. If you can't see how bringing all that supply (over 1000 units) back to the market won't help long-term rentals, that's on you. AirBnB is a cancer to cities and locals, and needs to be banned for good. Tourists aren't locals, they're not entitled to live like them, especially at the locals' expense.
chollida1 4y ago
> hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. Well the city of Halifax just banned airbnb in some areas and there was a flood of houses both on the market to sell and for long term renting. Clearly AirBnb is taking some long term rental stock away from the market, that can't be up for debate. if your point is that banning airbnb won't fully fix housing and therfor we shouldn't ban it, well that's an awfully high bar. What is clear is that banning airbnb will help improve the long term rental market.

IIAOPSW 4y ago

I call bullshit to your bullshit. You don't know that AirBnB is skewing the market. You just see the market sucking, AirBnB existing, and went with a Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc. There are so many things skewing the housing market. The rules on commercial mortgages, large corporate landlords engaging in cartel pricing, perverse incentives, wealthy people foreign and domestic buying space to park assets but not doing anything useful like renting it out or living in it, the list goes on and AirBnB is at the bottom. AirBnB provides an invaluable service, filling the niche of flexibly scaling housing for when its too long term for a hotel and too short term for a lease. Its the go to option for when you need to patch over a living situation issue just long enough to find a real place. AirBnB doesn't remove housing from the rental market because AirBnB is a rental market.

dorchadas 4y ago
AirBnB absolutely removes housing from the one rental market that matters - long term rentals. This is quite easy to see, as well as its influence on supply and thus pricing. In 2020 the number of long term let's available in Dublin doubled thanks to tourism shutting down and landlord switching. Sadly that's likely all been lost now. Short term lets are nowhere near as important as long term ones, especially vacation rentals. They're actively harmful often, especially with the way AirBnB takes supply from the long-term lets.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Wait a second. You're using the 2020 pandemic and the massive system shock it caused on (among other industries) tourism as a proxy for the impact of tourism in particular on rental availability and then extrapolating it further to the effects of AirBnB in particular? As opposed to the gigantic obvious other system shocks that happened in 2020 which also had a massive impact on housing and commuting patterns vis a vis work from home and mass exodus from urban areas in general. Pray tell have you ever tried to reject the hypothesis AirBnB is the cause of housing problems? Have you looked and failed to find data in that direction at all?
curtisblaine 4y ago
*Propter Hoc

sneak 4y ago

The idea that there is an arbitrary split between hotels or other rentals is, well, arbitrary. This is the same nonsense as NYC's yellow cab vs black car licensing and regulations. Let people make businesses how they choose.

qdog 4y ago
The split would be zoning and operating a business in a residence. Hotels usually have fire escapes, inspections, etc. Also parking, expected noise, any number of things my house doesn't conform to, and doubtful most of the Airbnb's do either. I've lived across from nightly rentals at a resort, I expected it, so no complaints to the late night partying etc. But my current neighborhood I have no expectation the house next door is going to suddenly start hosting huge gatherings every weekend, and I expect it to stay that way.
- kelnos 4y ago
  This sounds similar to what I hear when people oppose building housing in general: people expect their neighborhood to stay exactly the same as when they bought it. That's not how the real world works, though. If you live in a city, you have to deal with noise, full stop. That's one of the trade offs of dense, urban living. Certainly there are limits to what you should have to put up with, and that's what noise complaints to the police are for. Police aren't doing their job? Well, maybe you should find a way to force them to, instead of trying to restrict what other people want to do with their property. Or move to a building or area or whatever with a neighborhood association that disallows short-term rentals.
- sneak 4y ago
  Why should a business property with a bed be any more or less safe for human life than a residential property with a bed? If fire escapes are necessary, they should be required in both cases. If they are not, they shouldn't be. Are hotel guest lives (or resident lives) worth more or less than the other?
  - yencabulator 4y ago

anony23 4y ago

Sorry, but I don't see it. Short term rental laws in NYC are crazy strict. How is "buy a building" any different than "buy an apartment".

notch898a 4y ago

AirBnB got me an apartment for awhile in a top-3 US city because I had horrible credit and bad rental history. I don't have such issues in the cities with pretty weak tenant protections, but in places like NYC strong tenant protections make landlords nervous to rent to anyone who may take awhile to get rid of, so people end up relying on AirBnB etc. It's not purely a bunch of tourists or whatever taking up this housing and driving out the locals.

renewiltord 4y ago
When I first moved to SF with no history, I got a couch in SF for $10/day on Airbnb. Top notch experience!
- toss1 4y ago
  That's great, I also had good experiences with AirBnB early on. This seems to have become a standard practice in VC-backed firms, a process clearly documented here [0] by Cory Doctorow (article covers much more than just the title-mentioned Tiktok). [0] https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979 https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df...

loeg 4y ago

> If people want to be in the hotel business buy a freaking hotel NYC is somewhat notorious for recently disallowing all new hotels. You could not enter the hotel business in NYC if you wanted to. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-new-york-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-n... https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-these-permits-no-one-got-any/ https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-...

tecleandor 4y ago
Well, being picky and strict, parent said "buy a hotel" not "build a hotel". I guess buying an existing hotel doesn't count as a new one ;)
- loeg 4y ago
  To be clear, I doubt any existing operator is selling. Without the possibility of any new competition, they will be able to start jacking rates up as demand grows (see demand growth forecasts in the articles).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

awb 4y ago

Many friends and families enjoy staying under one roof. Hotels and apartments rarely offer that to even 2 families of 4. Add in Grandparents and you’re looking at 10-12 capacity. That’s 5-6 hotel rooms and typically nowhere to cook or sit at a table together to eat or play a game. Many houses sit empty when their owners are away. Why not use that space to house travelers without having to build more hotels? I think most cities have it backwards trying to regulate the hosts. Hosts aren’t at the property and aren’t usually awake at 1am when issues might occur. The renters cause the issues, so regulate the renters. Cities could mandate a 25-50% deposit that’s refunded if no noise/parking issues occur. Whoever put the deposit down will likely be at the house and self-policing their group that they invited. Makes more sense than blaming hosts when most bookings are “instant book”, or even if they do vet, it’s likely just a quick text chat or going off of previous AirBnB ratings (which many hosts rate 5/5 so the guest will return).

Symbiote 4y ago
In Europe there are "apartment hotels" which offer exactly this. Here are some examples: https://www.visitberlin.de/en/hotelthema/apartment-hotel https://www.visitberlin.de/en/hotelthema/apartment-hotel
smugma 4y ago
AirBnb is really great for families, in theory. I’ve had many great experiences with it. The problem is it is now polluted with grifters, and you don’t want to take a 15% chance that your place will have cockroaches, require digging through 8’ of snow to get to the front door, or have frozen pipes (all these have happened to me with Airbnb). Even worse, I feel that it went from a 5% bad rate to more like 35%.
pknomad 4y ago
This is true. But there are also people who buy up properties for AirBnB aren't trying to resource-allocate their own homes like Cloud/IAAS-style and try to use it for purely 100% hotel-like purposes. In doing so they're raising up the home prices, cheating out businesses that pay taxes for being legally allow to hotel, and cause problems for other homes that don't want a hotel in their backyard.

anovikov 4y ago

What will happen to hotel prices then?

Dreako 4y ago

[flagged]

flangola7 4y ago
What do you mean?