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Airbnbust? Short-term rental prices plummet in Palm Springs
- fxtentacle 3y agoCannot read without bloated app.
- chdefrene 3y agoTry this: https://archive.is/HdHaU https://archive.is/HdHaU
- SomewhatLikely 3y agoI clicked to open in the app then immediately clicked back and it showed me the whole article. EDIT: schedule I see there's an expand article option right under the button to open in app.
- ohazi 3y agoIt's the hottest summer on record, who the fuck still wants to go to Palm Springs?
- pengaru 3y agoI'm just north of Palm Springs by JTNP and the airbnb next door has been booked pretty often despite frequent highs >110F. It doesn't make sense to me either, but tourists still come here in the summer.
- wnc3141 3y agoMy guess is those vacations were booked long before checking the weather. Sure maybe a sunk cost thing but the commitment and scarcity of time off is pretty understandable
- scarby2 3y agothere's a lot of people who visit palm springs party at night and sleep through the heat of the day.
- pengaru 3y agoMaybe for some tourists it's the extreme heat and dryness that defines what's unique about the desert experience? Beats me. Even that well-known search & rescue story of the "Death Valley Germans" dated their van rental from July [0]: > The vehicle, owned by Dollar Rent a Car, had been rented to a group of four German tourists in Los Angeles on July 8, 1996. > The vehicle had been due back to the rental agency in Los Angeles on July 26, but had never been returned. [0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/introduction/ https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu... Edit: if you didn't know this story, I'm so sorry about your next N unproductive hours.
- mgerdts 3y agoApology accepted, and thank you for a pointer to such a great story.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIndoor golfing, bingo tournaments, and the last remaining shopping malls? ;-P
- apengwin 3y agoPalm Springs is awesome in the winter. It's a mecca of modern architecture!
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoFor real! I had such a blast there last February. Sometimes you can get a good deal on the golf resorts outside of town which are pretty nice places for a weekend retreat
- 1letterunixname 3y agoEveryone in Phoenix. ;-) You know the weather and climate are fucked when it's hotter than Kuwait City.
- exclusiv 3y agoEvenings in the desert are awesome in the summer.
- alfalfasprout 3y agoThe data doesn't support an Airbnb bust and it never has. Bottom line is markets were there were suddenly distorted pricing effects due to high demand and low supply are now experiencing pricing equilibrium as supply has increased and they can no longer command $1k+/night. Also, with most consumers feeling a squeeze from prices, higher interest rates, etc. it's expected that these sky high prices have to come down.
- skyzyx 3y agoAirbnbs in the desert, during the hottest summer on record, can’t find renters?
- adamredwoods 3y agoFunny, the article is full of anecdotes, all with different opinions on why the market is slumping. The takeaway is that the market CHANGES, which means anyone in the Airbnb business needs to have the same values as any business. It's not easy money for the wealthy, to solely buy a property and let it crank out cash. There was a quote in the article that reflects this "easy money" mentality.
- miguelazo 3y ago> vacation rental tax revenue for the city government was down about 11% so far in the 2022-2023 fiscal year compared to the prior one >The tax receipts since then, however, have not supported that optimistic outlook: May revenues were down by about 18% from May 2022 Those are not anecdotes, and appear very early on in the article.
- robotburrito 3y agoHopefully it continues and these homes come back on the market as long term rentals or actual homes real people can buy to live in with their families.
- paulgb 3y ago> Even as Palm Springs' tax revenue from home bookings has dropped by about 13% over the past year, hotel tax revenues are up by about 1.5%. Combined revenue from the two types of stays — known as transit occupancy tax — is down by about 3%. This backs up anecdotes I’ve been hearing about people going back from AirBnB to hotels. The consensus seems to be that the price difference is diminished and the high variance in quality is not worth whatever discount still exists. I have some good memories from the early years of talking with hosts and even having them show me around, it’s a shame that it’s become so transactional but I don’t see how it could have scaled any other way.
- hattmall 3y agoI listed a house recently and have been checking all my guests reviews before accepting a stay. I always look at what the hosts that reviewed them have listed. It is almost never a single or even 2 or 3 properties. Almost everyone had at least 10+ properties listed. Most have more 20+ or even over 100. I feel like that really changes the dynamic and foundation of Airbnb. Since I started hosting I've now heavily prioritized being a guest of hosts with a single property or small number of properties. It's a much much better experience by far.
- simfree 3y agoI have had this backfire on me when booking with a host with 3 listings (DADU in their back acreage and two rooms with seperate entries in their house). Booked the room with a King bed, ender up in the 2nd room with a small futon. Took pictures and the host was a ghost over messaging till after we had left, when he left us a negative review. AirBnB was useless when I called their support line that night, meanwhile the host left a negative review and AirBnB was unwilling to remove it despite the host leaving the platform a few months later.
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoAt that point, I would've considered involving the credit card company with a charge back. You didn't get what you paid for, snd they ghosted you instead of taking care of it.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI'm in Austin (104 F / 40 C at the moment), and there aren't many tourists around or anyone doing much of anything. We're praying to the renewable gods that ERCOT has its act together. The risk of a power outage now is a threat to human life. That said, the prices on Airbnb are cheap: $40-110/night for downtown prime locations. During SXSW last year, comparables to my place went for $900-1300/night.
- jmyeet 3y agoI don't know if AirBnB is truly in decline given these anecodtes. Any such decline doesn't seem to be reflected in their quarterly revenue yet. But, as I've said for years, I hope AirBnB dies. It's cancer. As we've seen over the last 1-2 years most places in the developed world are now entering or are in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis. The average house price in Toronto is north of C$1.1M for a country with notoriously low incomes, as one example. And that's before we even get to Vancouver. There are lots of reasons for this including a drop in new home starts (which have never recovered to their 2007 levels in the US), effective NIMBYism at every policy level and corporations moving into residential real estate. But the real problem here is that we treat housing, a basic human necessity, as a commodity--something to be bought and sold en masse and to be withheld from people so they die in the streets in the interests of profits. AirBnB is just once facet of this. Many view second or third or fourth homes as income sources and retirement accounts. Governments have become so beholden to these voters that most Wdeveloped governments see increasing house prices as an explicit policy goal and all sorts of money is thrown at homeowners. This has to stop.
- lobf 3y agoOr we could just build more housing…
- jmyeet 3y agoHomeowners in large part oppose this as decreased supply increases the nominal value is what is likely their primary asset. It’s incredibly shortsighted. If we stop treating housing as a commodity that must go up in value you’ll find that the supply increases.
- midoridensha 3y ago>But, as I've said for years, I hope AirBnB dies. It's cancer. AirBnB was great ~5 years ago. If they just restricted it to people renting out their kid's room after they left for college, it would be perfect.
- jmyeet 3y ago
- eBombzor 3y agoDidn't it reach something like 49 C two years ago? Must be hot as fuck over there.
- juujian 3y ago> This most recent run on permits came after the city council passed a new rule in November capping the number of permits in each of the city’s official neighborhoods at 20% of homes. Nine neighborhoods have already reached the 20% cap (existing permitholders were grandfathered in). So since the start of airbnb they have practically reduced the number of homes by 20%? And all to add the capacity of probably the equivalent of 5-10 large hotels?
- TylerE 3y agoEnd stage capitalism at work
- karaterobot 3y ago> But there's no doubting the squeeze many Palm Springs rental owners are feeling, in part because hundreds of new vacation rentals have entered the market. Based on personal experience, I would tend to give more credence to this line than to other speculation about AirBnB or the short-term rental industry. I know that the AirBnBs I've tried to book recently have all been both expensive and booked up. I also know that when I was shopping for a home last summer, 4 out of 5 Redfin agents pointed out which parts of the property could be potentially be converted into rental units. That made me think at the time that there is or would soon be a lot of "inventory" on the rental market.
- sharts 3y agoI've never had an experience with AirBnB that was anywhere as seamless and a decent hotel. Why do people fall for Silicon Valley polished turds? Does feces really smell better when VC funding is involved?
- sonicshadow 3y agoWe all think we’re one big idea away from #vcfunded!
- voisin 3y agoI switched back to hotels after hundreds of Airbnb stays over the last 10-12 years. The advent of corporate AirBNB hosts with dozens of units killed the charm and the pricing is no longer competitive, the customer service sucks and didn’t scale up, and they contributed to destroying the housing market as properties got snapped up by quasi-hotel operators that lacked any of the professionalism of hotels. Whenever I hear of people still using AirBNB it is always a version of “need of a kitchen” or “need space for multiple families”. I feel like both of these are simply features that a hotel chain could expand into more aggressively. AirBNB, like many tech companies of its era, has failed to consider the goodwill and loyalty of its customers as a KPI and instead alienated its users. The lack of loyalty means any sizeable hotel chain can win customers quite easily by simply providing the product-market fit that I described above.
- iJohnDoe 3y agoBook an AirBNB when you want to be recorded by hidden cameras and posted online.