10 ms·

Being a short-term rental host has become much harder

46 points by ilamont 3y ago

Mistletoe 3y ago
I'm currently living in an awesome rent house that couldn't make it as an Airbnb. The monthly rent is drastically lower than it should be for the quality of house. The owners got desperate and stuck. :) The mania has passed I think. No one has extra money to travel and stay in Airbnbs. Plus I despise the Airbnb experience. It turned into a list of chores I need to do to make them money. Nah, give me a hotel with professionals paid to clean and do those chores and that know how to do it well. When I travel I want to go out and experience the city, and I noticed that when my family would stay in an Airbnb we would just stay in the stupid house instead of experience the new city. Hotels fix this also.
- latchkey 3y ago
  ZillowGoneWild has been posting a lot of houses that look like they were 'crazy' AirBnBs, but are now for sale.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I don't know much but usually airbnb prices are higher than traditional renting. I'm surprised.
  - hx8 3y ago
    I think root comment is saying that the property is formally an Airbnb rental and is now a traditional rental.
    - agumonkey 3y ago
      Aight, thanks for clarifying both of you
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    Sorry it used to be an Airbnb, it was turned into a traditional rental I found on Zillow and jumped on. Usually I don't like renting but we are in between houses after selling ours and the mortgage on this house would be 1.6x what we are paying in rent with current interest rates, etc. It is hard to justify buying right now.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  > No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs. It depends on the location. In my experience, Airbnb seems to be booming in some places since remote work is the norm. Lots of people now use it as their main provider of housing and for longer periods.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    > Lots of people now use it as their main provider of housing Citation needed.
    - Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
      "Lots" is already ambiguous, so I'm not sure what you're expecting. I've worked remotely for 8 years and spend half my time in Airbnbs. If you go to meet ups or nightlife with other expats, you'll find many others doing the same.
    - wryanzimmerman 3y ago
      For people who travel a lot and stay in each place for less than three months at a time, it makes sense. I have had 1-2 airbnbs booked at a time almost constantly for the past two years, and know lots of people who work remote and do the same thing. Airbnb is pretty much the only option for the gap between “stay a few nights” where a hotel makes sense and “stay for 4+ months” where renting a place makes sense.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  > No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs This is categorically false in the US at least. Average disposable income in the US is $58,947 in 2023 to date (the median number is not easily found unfortunately). This number is up slightly from 2022. Disposable income was WAY up for about a year from mid 2020 to mid 2021 and people in white collar jobs had broad flexibility. I think it's broadly understood that this combined with low interest rates caused a boom in short term vacation rentals. With interest rates up and people returning to offices, it seems natural that short term rentals as a business would suffer.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Please don't quote "average" numbers for anything unless you also have the std. deviation listed too. Otherwise it is meaningless and misleading. In addition, this is the definition: > "The US Disposable Personal Income per Capita indicates American household income net of taxes for each person." This number doesn't reflect costs in any way at all. It isn't "disposable income" as most people would use it for day to day conversation i.e. the amount left after I've paid all my fixed costs (and possibly some non-fixed costs like food).
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      The claim was "No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs". Americans on average have plenty of money to do so. You're just arguing with the BEA definition of disposable income... which I guess is a perspective, but IMHO not a useful one. We could look at real household median income, which is also up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        > The claim was "No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs". (emphasis mine) If income increases, but fails to increase enough to match a parallel increase in expenses, the "extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs" has gone down.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > It turned into a list of chores I need to do to make them money. Agreed. It really irks me when a vacation home that I rented for a lot of money hands me a list of chores at the end of the stay, then has the gall to charge me a cleaning fee on top of it. These days I stick to a hotel other than for exceptional use-cases.
- acdha 3y ago
  > No one has extra money to travel and stay in Airbnbs. This is wrong as a general statement: what’s happened is that people have become more discerning about value, and it takes more than dropping $50 at IKEA to make a place cool enough to earn a premium. If your house is in a cool neighborhood close to something unique, that might work but if it’s a car-dependent suburb near a ton of hotels it’s probably not going to command much of a premium. Being near Disney is something but there are thousands of competing options capping how much you can charge.
  - JJMcJ 3y ago
    Hotel: Show up, sleep, watch TV, shower, use toilet, pay bill, leave. 99% that's it. AirBNB: All those, plus clean up, worry about neighbors, half the time it's more expensive than a hotel, with a better chance of spy cameras.
    - acdha 3y ago
      There are situations where it makes a lot of sense - for example, we just visited family where it made sense for my sister and I to share AirBnB houses since there were 3 young children and having a kitchen and separate play space was important. The problem is a lot of people got into real estate speculation thinking it’d be free money and they didn’t spend enough time thinking about what they were giving you over a hotel room.
      - JJMcJ 3y ago
        > real estate speculation I suspect many wanted an arm's length almost passive investment, and so they are putting the maintenance burden on to their guests. Expecting cleanup for a three month summer rental tenant is one thing. Expecting that for a three day guest is another.
        acdha 3y ago
        Also, I’d bet there were some very optimistic assumptions about overhead – retirees often make terrible landlords because they’re trying to hit targets for monthly profit and don’t have enough liquidity absorb cost increases. I suspect a lot of AirBnB hosts were in a similar boat where something like rates for cleaners going up really eats into the margin they are counting on.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
https://archive.li/Ot026 https://archive.li/Ot026
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> Then, in August 2022, hosts howled when Airbnb further changed its refund rules to give guests more time to make complaints and seek refunds; the company ended up amending some language that made hosts responsible for putting complaining guests up in other accommodations. Wild, it's almost as if being a landlord comes with obligations.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  I am certain there is a self-selection bias there; responsible/present landlords were probably not the majority who jumped on this bandwagon.
  - sct202 3y ago
    A lot of people chasing a 'passive' income dream becoming hosts and landlords. I'd imagine they are probably the worst because they're not understanding that they're entering a service oriented business.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      We have a spare bedroom that my wife would like to rent out (could probably get over $1k/month in revenue for it). As long as we aren't hurting for cash, I'm avoiding it because of how much I don't want to be a landlord.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The safest way to do this is to rent the room to a local business/church/school that needs regular housing for qualified visitors. Otherwise you’re dealing with random public in your house with all the issues associated with that. At least with renting to a business you have some sort of middleman.
    - polygamous_bat 3y ago
      Tell me about it! My own landlady is one of the tiktok "real estate investors" who didn't understand that she can't get out of legally mandated minimum heat requirements because "I bought an old house and it's gonna cost me $10k to redo the heating!" She also used to run an Airbnb on the floor below me until this summer, so go figure.
tech_ken 3y ago
A better title would be "low-touch real estate speculation doesn't pan out for some people". AirBnB flippers have wreaked small havoc in my city, scooping up all kinds of units that would have otherwise sold to people who would actually have lived in them (not to mention work in and contribute to the community here). I'm praying for a crash in the AirBnB market so that we can actually reuse that housing for something productive.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  That still wouldn't do all that much, given that every major US metro area has a shortage of homes in the first place [1]. At best it might reduce the rate at which home prices continue to increase. [1]: https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives/us-housing-shortage https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Unfortunately I have to agree, and our housing market is REALLY bad. I think the AirBnB issue is relatively small potatoes next to big money real estate holdings firms, who've really gone wild scooping up single family housing and renting it back to people at way above what a mortgage+taxes would cost. People are starting to realize that we need to improve the housing stock options, and there is beginning to be some political will behind it, but it's very slow going.
    - crooked-v 3y ago
      Residential estate shouldn't even be all that attractive for holding firms, though, with all the maintenance costs involved in it and the lack of economy of scale. The only reason it's such a draw is that it's in an excessive shortage, resulting in the absurd year-over-year market rate increases, and because interest rates are so low that every other investment has very low returns compared to historical results.
    - cyndicordon12 3y ago
      [dead]
oigursh 3y ago
Airbnb has absolutely wrecked most of the holiday spots in the UK. Locals can't afford to rent, so it's killing local shops - only the tourist traps remain.
- dnissley 3y ago
  With so much pent up demand there must be new properties getting built all over these holiday spots, no?
  - azornathogron 3y ago
    I hope not. A lot of holiday locations are only attractive places because they don't have a load of cheaply built urban sprawl all around them.
    - dnissley 3y ago
      Sounds like they were built to be expensive then, and never really an option for everyday people
      - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
        They were an option for the regular people of the time, hundreds of years ago, before the population grew an order of magnitude or two.
    - dionidium 3y ago
      Markets solve these problems and that remains true even when you disagree with the results. If people don't want to visit places with tall buildings and sprawl, then it won't get built and where it does it will fail. What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
      - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
        I'll bite the bullet and say sometimes "the people" are idiots and what they want is ugly and sucks.
renewiltord 3y ago
Just got an Airbnb in San Francisco for the month for my parents to visit: $7k/mo . Pretty good deal, imho. I would have gone for a Blueground if there were availability. Also, a friend of mine has a home in Palm Springs that he Airbnb'd out two years ago. Now he just has the same people pay the same rate for a month every year. Works out for all. I think the situation on the ground is actually pretty good.
ktosobcy 3y ago
Gosh, I hope that Airbnb would burn in hell for all the market damage they've caused :-/
- f6v 3y ago
  I absolutely love it and wish it all the best.
adoxyz 3y ago
AirBnB hosts are unrealistic with their expectations. The raising costs, ridiculous cleaning fees, absurd "house rules", etc. make AirBnB pretty much a no-go for me these days. Hotels have great amenities, really good customer support, and not too much BS. With AirBnB it's an absolute gamble if you're going to get a good host or a wannabe slumlord. I don't think this is AirBnB's fault though, just general human greed, wanting to make easy money by providing as little value as possible.
- biomcgary 3y ago
  If you want fast, low-variance places to stay with no research, pick a hotel. If you want something off the beaten path, try AirBnB, VRBO, etc. AirBnB is where caveat emptor rules. AirBnB becomes more of a gamble was they allow gaming reviews. However, I've had plenty of problems with hotels (e.g., mechanical noise) and rarely experience anything delightful (although I did once get a very nice blueberry mule). Hotels are almost never better than expected. Using AirBnBs, I've had some wonderful surprises (beautiful views, great human interactions) and a lot of variety. I've never had a problem, but I always make sure that the host is a superhost. My wife recently stayed at a place infested with roaches but it wasn't superhosted. . .
  - adoxyz 3y ago
    I think early on in AirBnB's existence I've had the delightful experience, interesting hosts, etc. The last 2-3 years though, it has been less than stellar with both super host and non-super hosts stays for a majority of the stays, so I stopped using AirBnB. I'm sure there are still a lot of hosts that have a property they treat properly, treat the guests good, and care about hospitality etc. but the general vibe I get is that a lot of superhosts are folks with a bunch of properties doing the bare minimum while charging the absolute maximum. Just personal experience in the US though.
acdha 3y ago
The dream was never real: the pitch was that you could make tons of money without complying with local regulations and cutting corners on services like cleaning but it turns out that markets are pretty efficient at cutting out actual inefficiencies. Once the VCs stopped subsidizing everything, it became obvious that this is not a massively profitable business but a relatively low-margin field which competitors can fairly easily enter. Everyone who went into this expecting double-digit returns for little effort is now learning a hard lesson about why you should do research before investing.
- fragmede 3y ago
  If it's finally only hitting the wall now, that seems like there's been several years of a good run. The dream doesn't have to last forever for it to have been real. It's like that saying, the stock market has predicted nine out of the last five recessions. There's been real money being made for people for years now. That may eventually dry up, but in the meanwhile, that's where it is.
  - codeTired 3y ago
    The stock market has predicted recessions? What do you mean by this?
    - neogodless 3y ago
      Read carefully: > has predicted nine out of the last five recessions It's basically a saying that people are always throwing out negative predictions that eventually come true, but that doesn't justify the excess false (poorly timed) predictions.
      - salad-tycoon 3y ago
        “The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.” -Eeyore
  - acdha 3y ago
    I guess that’s one way of looking at it but if you can only profit in a record bull market with historically unprecedentedly-low interest rates it’s probably a sign that you don’t have a viable business concept.
goodboye 3y ago
Yes it’s dead we are going into a recession . People can’t afford food and shelter . Airbnb is a pipedream for most people now vacations are a huge luxury that most can not afford . The covid money from the governments is all gone . There will be a huge crash in real estate as well due to all the BNB speculation and huge rent increase that are unsustainable .
TekMol 3y ago
In October, they put their home online https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/932495383465985171 “We have absolutely zero bookings in August,” Robertson says. “This summer is extremely slow.” The listing seems to have rendered images instead of photos. Why? And the listing shows no reviews at all. Is that possible? Why don't they at least have some friends book the apartment and write the first reviews? Personally, I never rent apartments with less than 100 reviews. That might be extreme. But I would imagine most people won't rent one with no reviews at all.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  So the only way to succeed on AirBnB is to commit review fraud?
  - TekMol 3y ago
    That's why I said "at least". The better approach would be to provide excellent service and tell the first guests "You were our first customers. It would mean the world to us if you write a review". But if that is not what they do, why don't they at least have some friends book the aprtment and write a review? After investing $295,000 - would you really go totally hands-off if you value your investment?
- Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
  They just need to discount the price enough to get a few people willing to take a risk and write the first reviews. I live in Airbnbs for half of the year, so occasionally I'll take a gamble on an unreviewed place with good pictures and a well written listing. So far I've almost always had a good experience with a 40-60% discount relative to comparable listings.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It’s almost always a pricing issue. Drop the price low enough and someone will take a risk. Hell, it can be listed as “cockroach infested shithole” and of the price and location is right someone will take it.
blastonico 3y ago
Yes
karaterobot 3y ago
> “It was made to sound like you would be booked all the time, and you could make 5, 10 grand a month,” she says. But the most she’s ever gotten has been $3,500 a month and sometimes as little as $1,000. “It’s not as much as we were expecting.” So basically it's paying the mortgage on their $295k second home, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me. I don't think middlemen promising that you will make more money off of a deal than you actually do is a new thing, or that it's limited to AirBNB. Take estimates with a healthy grain of salt.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If the deal was really good the middlemen would snap it up. Just like really good real estate offers never hit the open market because the realtors buy the property. But most people are financially bad at estimates and assume that maximum cash flow is anything close to actual cash flow - hence the laws requiring MLMs to disclose the average compensation vs the highest.
leviathant 3y ago
I'm going to stick my neck out a bit and mention that I run an Airbnb in Philadelphia, it's the second floor of my building, and I'm a fan of all the regulation that's put into place. Our cleaning fee is $50, and before we approve you, we ask - are you really just two to four people? Do you understand, this isn't a hotel, you're staying in our house, so no smoking and no parties. This filters out 99% of the people who are looking for something we're not offering. We're one of the highest rated Airbnb's in the city. Our neighbors have no complaints. And it shames me into picking up the garbage that New Jersey visitors leave on our street when they park here to go to Dave & Busters. I think it works because we're closer to the original model - sharing space in our home. These people who buy up properties to be remote landlords or run hands-free hotels, who complain about rules going into place as a reaction to bad behavior? Good riddance. Is that good for stock prices? Beats me, but as far as I'm concerned, when done right, it's good for everyone involved.
- 5555624 3y ago
  > I think it works because we're closer to the original model - sharing space in our home. Because of this, (1) you take the extra step in screening people and (2) you're there if there is a problem. When I hear of Airbnb problems, it's not when they've actually shared a room in someone's home, it's been a separate property of some sort.
  - leviathant 3y ago
    For the sake of clarity, even though it's not super important - we rent the entire second floor out. It's about 450sqft - an apartment, albeit a small one for sure. We live on the 3rd floor (1100sqft). We almost never even see our guests.
    - wryanzimmerman 3y ago
      You’re still there if you need to be and you know the situation; a lot of the time Airbnb hosts don’t even live in the same country as some of their properties. A lot of the time the “host” is just someone hired to answer the Airbnb messages and let the guests in.
Animats 3y ago
> Disney World, which is just a 10-minute drive away... Buying a house to rent to Disney World visitors was a huge mistake. Disney park traffic is way down.[1] Disney parks raised their prices to the point that they are no longer a middle class destination. Disney World prices have increased 5x in constant dollars since the place opened.[2] Disney parks have now had a total flop - "Star Cruiser Adventure", which cost US$4,800 for two people for two days and is shutting down. Turns out that LARPs don't sell at that price point. [1] https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/walt-disney-world-crowds-vanish-parks-at-their-emptiest-in-10-years-cj1/ https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/walt-disney-world-crowds-... [2] https://www.tiktok.com/@piechartpirate/video/7019616080490417413 https://www.tiktok.com/@piechartpirate/video/701961608049041...
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  iirc from the article, they bought the second house as their winter destination; renting it out was just one way they were going to offset their mortgage.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Disney is on the profit-price spiral greed bandwagon still thinking they own Osceola County and people are stupid and will pay anything. Newsflash: Most people are losing real wealth and nominal income as America increasingly becomes a perversely unequal country.
itbeho 3y ago
We have Airbnb homes on either side of us. We have weekly problems with trespassing, trash, expletive laden screaming arguments, speeding and loud music. We're in wine country and the amount of obvious drunk driving is alarming. The entire neighborhood has complained to law enforcement, county government (we're just outside city limits), Airbnb and VRBO hundreds of times. Nothing has been done by any of them. Anyone else been in this situation and had any reasonable solution?
- darknavi 3y ago
  This is perhaps one of the few reasons for HOAs to exist.
- codeTired 3y ago
  Start creating a paper trail. Research local laws. Our town has ordinance in place that prevent such behavior even during day time. Email mayor, chief of police and start talking to neighbors. At some point you might be able to sue the owners, sue city/policy if they are not taking action to enforce rules(if they exist). Call cops whenever rules are broken and document.
  - itbeho 3y ago
    Thanks. We've pretty much done all you suggested up to getting a lawyer. My 10 neighbors and I are meeting up to discuss and it sounds like we'll just have to pool our resources and hire a lawyer.
    - codeTired 3y ago
      Best of luck. Awful situation to deal with.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Go offensive. Coordinate with your real neighbors as to what the absolute legal things you can do that make the Airbnbs useless. Eg, start a backyard hog farm. Check local regulations on outdoor lighting and light your yard brighter than the sun. Incorporate a church and hold classical music revivals at appropriate times. Park exceptionally ugly and large equipment anywhere you legally can. This is the nuclear option but sometimes nuking it from orbit is the only way to be sure.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Airbnb was cool when it started, no doubt. Then hosts gradually got impersonal, complacent, arrogant, and cash-grubbing as time went on. And then guests invaded private apartment complexes and acted like Americans on spring break. It's the arc of many things, and no different.
thedougd 3y ago
I’m expecting quite a few AirBNB landlords to exit when they hit their first milestone maintenance expense. HVAC, roof, special assessments, septic, well, there are some big ones.
- bombcar 3y ago
  There will be money to be made snapping these up once they’re done playing hotel.
Gud 3y ago
Every time these threads pop up on HN there is very little sympathy for us who use these services. They say, why can’t you just stay in a hotel??? Well, why don’t you live in a hotel? I travel 300+ days a year for work. On occasion I book a regular hotel. Maybe one week per two months or something. It’s not too bad, but longer than that and I want to get out and live like a normal person.

46 points by ilamont 3y ago

I'm currently living in an awesome rent house that couldn't make it as an Airbnb. The monthly rent is drastically lower than it should be for the quality of house. The owners got desperate and stuck. :) The mania has passed I think. No one has extra money to travel and stay in Airbnbs. Plus I despise the Airbnb experience. It turned into a list of chores I need to do to make them money. Nah, give me a hotel with professionals paid to clean and do those chores and that know how to do it well. When I travel I want to go out and experience the city, and I noticed that when my family would stay in an Airbnb we would just stay in the stupid house instead of experience the new city. Hotels fix this also.

latchkey 3y ago
ZillowGoneWild has been posting a lot of houses that look like they were 'crazy' AirBnBs, but are now for sale.
agumonkey 3y ago
I don't know much but usually airbnb prices are higher than traditional renting. I'm surprised.
- hx8 3y ago
  I think root comment is saying that the property is formally an Airbnb rental and is now a traditional rental.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    Aight, thanks for clarifying both of you
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  Sorry it used to be an Airbnb, it was turned into a traditional rental I found on Zillow and jumped on. Usually I don't like renting but we are in between houses after selling ours and the mortgage on this house would be 1.6x what we are paying in rent with current interest rates, etc. It is hard to justify buying right now.
totallywrong 3y ago
> No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs. It depends on the location. In my experience, Airbnb seems to be booming in some places since remote work is the norm. Lots of people now use it as their main provider of housing and for longer periods.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  > Lots of people now use it as their main provider of housing Citation needed.
  - Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
    "Lots" is already ambiguous, so I'm not sure what you're expecting. I've worked remotely for 8 years and spend half my time in Airbnbs. If you go to meet ups or nightlife with other expats, you'll find many others doing the same.
  - wryanzimmerman 3y ago
    For people who travel a lot and stay in each place for less than three months at a time, it makes sense. I have had 1-2 airbnbs booked at a time almost constantly for the past two years, and know lots of people who work remote and do the same thing. Airbnb is pretty much the only option for the gap between “stay a few nights” where a hotel makes sense and “stay for 4+ months” where renting a place makes sense.
ch4s3 3y ago
> No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs This is categorically false in the US at least. Average disposable income in the US is $58,947 in 2023 to date (the median number is not easily found unfortunately). This number is up slightly from 2022. Disposable income was WAY up for about a year from mid 2020 to mid 2021 and people in white collar jobs had broad flexibility. I think it's broadly understood that this combined with low interest rates caused a boom in short term vacation rentals. With interest rates up and people returning to offices, it seems natural that short term rentals as a business would suffer.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Please don't quote "average" numbers for anything unless you also have the std. deviation listed too. Otherwise it is meaningless and misleading. In addition, this is the definition: > "The US Disposable Personal Income per Capita indicates American household income net of taxes for each person." This number doesn't reflect costs in any way at all. It isn't "disposable income" as most people would use it for day to day conversation i.e. the amount left after I've paid all my fixed costs (and possibly some non-fixed costs like food).
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    The claim was "No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs". Americans on average have plenty of money to do so. You're just arguing with the BEA definition of disposable income... which I guess is a perspective, but IMHO not a useful one. We could look at real household median income, which is also up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      > The claim was "No one has extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs". (emphasis mine) If income increases, but fails to increase enough to match a parallel increase in expenses, the "extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs" has gone down.
gottorf 3y ago
> It turned into a list of chores I need to do to make them money. Agreed. It really irks me when a vacation home that I rented for a lot of money hands me a list of chores at the end of the stay, then has the gall to charge me a cleaning fee on top of it. These days I stick to a hotel other than for exceptional use-cases.
acdha 3y ago
> No one has extra money to travel and stay in Airbnbs. This is wrong as a general statement: what’s happened is that people have become more discerning about value, and it takes more than dropping $50 at IKEA to make a place cool enough to earn a premium. If your house is in a cool neighborhood close to something unique, that might work but if it’s a car-dependent suburb near a ton of hotels it’s probably not going to command much of a premium. Being near Disney is something but there are thousands of competing options capping how much you can charge.
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  Hotel: Show up, sleep, watch TV, shower, use toilet, pay bill, leave. 99% that's it. AirBNB: All those, plus clean up, worry about neighbors, half the time it's more expensive than a hotel, with a better chance of spy cameras.
  - acdha 3y ago
    There are situations where it makes a lot of sense - for example, we just visited family where it made sense for my sister and I to share AirBnB houses since there were 3 young children and having a kitchen and separate play space was important. The problem is a lot of people got into real estate speculation thinking it’d be free money and they didn’t spend enough time thinking about what they were giving you over a hotel room.
    - JJMcJ 3y ago
      > real estate speculation I suspect many wanted an arm's length almost passive investment, and so they are putting the maintenance burden on to their guests. Expecting cleanup for a three month summer rental tenant is one thing. Expecting that for a three day guest is another.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Also, I’d bet there were some very optimistic assumptions about overhead – retirees often make terrible landlords because they’re trying to hit targets for monthly profit and don’t have enough liquidity absorb cost increases. I suspect a lot of AirBnB hosts were in a similar boat where something like rates for cleaners going up really eats into the margin they are counting on.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

https://archive.li/Ot026 https://archive.li/Ot026

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> Then, in August 2022, hosts howled when Airbnb further changed its refund rules to give guests more time to make complaints and seek refunds; the company ended up amending some language that made hosts responsible for putting complaining guests up in other accommodations. Wild, it's almost as if being a landlord comes with obligations.

polygamous_bat 3y ago
I am certain there is a self-selection bias there; responsible/present landlords were probably not the majority who jumped on this bandwagon.
- sct202 3y ago
  A lot of people chasing a 'passive' income dream becoming hosts and landlords. I'd imagine they are probably the worst because they're not understanding that they're entering a service oriented business.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    We have a spare bedroom that my wife would like to rent out (could probably get over $1k/month in revenue for it). As long as we aren't hurting for cash, I'm avoiding it because of how much I don't want to be a landlord.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The safest way to do this is to rent the room to a local business/church/school that needs regular housing for qualified visitors. Otherwise you’re dealing with random public in your house with all the issues associated with that. At least with renting to a business you have some sort of middleman.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    Tell me about it! My own landlady is one of the tiktok "real estate investors" who didn't understand that she can't get out of legally mandated minimum heat requirements because "I bought an old house and it's gonna cost me $10k to redo the heating!" She also used to run an Airbnb on the floor below me until this summer, so go figure.

tech_ken 3y ago

A better title would be "low-touch real estate speculation doesn't pan out for some people". AirBnB flippers have wreaked small havoc in my city, scooping up all kinds of units that would have otherwise sold to people who would actually have lived in them (not to mention work in and contribute to the community here). I'm praying for a crash in the AirBnB market so that we can actually reuse that housing for something productive.

crooked-v 3y ago
That still wouldn't do all that much, given that every major US metro area has a shortage of homes in the first place [1]. At best it might reduce the rate at which home prices continue to increase. [1]: https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives/us-housing-shortage https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...
- tech_ken 3y ago
  Unfortunately I have to agree, and our housing market is REALLY bad. I think the AirBnB issue is relatively small potatoes next to big money real estate holdings firms, who've really gone wild scooping up single family housing and renting it back to people at way above what a mortgage+taxes would cost. People are starting to realize that we need to improve the housing stock options, and there is beginning to be some political will behind it, but it's very slow going.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    Residential estate shouldn't even be all that attractive for holding firms, though, with all the maintenance costs involved in it and the lack of economy of scale. The only reason it's such a draw is that it's in an excessive shortage, resulting in the absurd year-over-year market rate increases, and because interest rates are so low that every other investment has very low returns compared to historical results.
  - cyndicordon12 3y ago
    [dead]

oigursh 3y ago

Airbnb has absolutely wrecked most of the holiday spots in the UK. Locals can't afford to rent, so it's killing local shops - only the tourist traps remain.

dnissley 3y ago
With so much pent up demand there must be new properties getting built all over these holiday spots, no?
- azornathogron 3y ago
  I hope not. A lot of holiday locations are only attractive places because they don't have a load of cheaply built urban sprawl all around them.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    Sounds like they were built to be expensive then, and never really an option for everyday people
    - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      They were an option for the regular people of the time, hundreds of years ago, before the population grew an order of magnitude or two.
  - dionidium 3y ago
    Markets solve these problems and that remains true even when you disagree with the results. If people don't want to visit places with tall buildings and sprawl, then it won't get built and where it does it will fail. What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
    - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      I'll bite the bullet and say sometimes "the people" are idiots and what they want is ugly and sucks.

renewiltord 3y ago

Just got an Airbnb in San Francisco for the month for my parents to visit: $7k/mo . Pretty good deal, imho. I would have gone for a Blueground if there were availability. Also, a friend of mine has a home in Palm Springs that he Airbnb'd out two years ago. Now he just has the same people pay the same rate for a month every year. Works out for all. I think the situation on the ground is actually pretty good.

ktosobcy 3y ago

Gosh, I hope that Airbnb would burn in hell for all the market damage they've caused :-/

f6v 3y ago
I absolutely love it and wish it all the best.

adoxyz 3y ago

AirBnB hosts are unrealistic with their expectations. The raising costs, ridiculous cleaning fees, absurd "house rules", etc. make AirBnB pretty much a no-go for me these days. Hotels have great amenities, really good customer support, and not too much BS. With AirBnB it's an absolute gamble if you're going to get a good host or a wannabe slumlord. I don't think this is AirBnB's fault though, just general human greed, wanting to make easy money by providing as little value as possible.

biomcgary 3y ago
If you want fast, low-variance places to stay with no research, pick a hotel. If you want something off the beaten path, try AirBnB, VRBO, etc. AirBnB is where caveat emptor rules. AirBnB becomes more of a gamble was they allow gaming reviews. However, I've had plenty of problems with hotels (e.g., mechanical noise) and rarely experience anything delightful (although I did once get a very nice blueberry mule). Hotels are almost never better than expected. Using AirBnBs, I've had some wonderful surprises (beautiful views, great human interactions) and a lot of variety. I've never had a problem, but I always make sure that the host is a superhost. My wife recently stayed at a place infested with roaches but it wasn't superhosted. . .
- adoxyz 3y ago
  I think early on in AirBnB's existence I've had the delightful experience, interesting hosts, etc. The last 2-3 years though, it has been less than stellar with both super host and non-super hosts stays for a majority of the stays, so I stopped using AirBnB. I'm sure there are still a lot of hosts that have a property they treat properly, treat the guests good, and care about hospitality etc. but the general vibe I get is that a lot of superhosts are folks with a bunch of properties doing the bare minimum while charging the absolute maximum. Just personal experience in the US though.

acdha 3y ago

The dream was never real: the pitch was that you could make tons of money without complying with local regulations and cutting corners on services like cleaning but it turns out that markets are pretty efficient at cutting out actual inefficiencies. Once the VCs stopped subsidizing everything, it became obvious that this is not a massively profitable business but a relatively low-margin field which competitors can fairly easily enter. Everyone who went into this expecting double-digit returns for little effort is now learning a hard lesson about why you should do research before investing.

fragmede 3y ago
If it's finally only hitting the wall now, that seems like there's been several years of a good run. The dream doesn't have to last forever for it to have been real. It's like that saying, the stock market has predicted nine out of the last five recessions. There's been real money being made for people for years now. That may eventually dry up, but in the meanwhile, that's where it is.
- codeTired 3y ago
  The stock market has predicted recessions? What do you mean by this?
  - neogodless 3y ago
    Read carefully: > has predicted nine out of the last five recessions It's basically a saying that people are always throwing out negative predictions that eventually come true, but that doesn't justify the excess false (poorly timed) predictions.
    - salad-tycoon 3y ago
      “The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.” -Eeyore
- acdha 3y ago
  I guess that’s one way of looking at it but if you can only profit in a record bull market with historically unprecedentedly-low interest rates it’s probably a sign that you don’t have a viable business concept.

goodboye 3y ago

Yes it’s dead we are going into a recession . People can’t afford food and shelter . Airbnb is a pipedream for most people now vacations are a huge luxury that most can not afford . The covid money from the governments is all gone . There will be a huge crash in real estate as well due to all the BNB speculation and huge rent increase that are unsustainable .

TekMol 3y ago

In October, they put their home online https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/932495383465985171 “We have absolutely zero bookings in August,” Robertson says. “This summer is extremely slow.” The listing seems to have rendered images instead of photos. Why? And the listing shows no reviews at all. Is that possible? Why don't they at least have some friends book the apartment and write the first reviews? Personally, I never rent apartments with less than 100 reviews. That might be extreme. But I would imagine most people won't rent one with no reviews at all.

aidenn0 3y ago
So the only way to succeed on AirBnB is to commit review fraud?
- TekMol 3y ago
  That's why I said "at least". The better approach would be to provide excellent service and tell the first guests "You were our first customers. It would mean the world to us if you write a review". But if that is not what they do, why don't they at least have some friends book the aprtment and write a review? After investing $295,000 - would you really go totally hands-off if you value your investment?
Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
They just need to discount the price enough to get a few people willing to take a risk and write the first reviews. I live in Airbnbs for half of the year, so occasionally I'll take a gamble on an unreviewed place with good pictures and a well written listing. So far I've almost always had a good experience with a 40-60% discount relative to comparable listings.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It’s almost always a pricing issue. Drop the price low enough and someone will take a risk. Hell, it can be listed as “cockroach infested shithole” and of the price and location is right someone will take it.

blastonico 3y ago

Yes

karaterobot 3y ago

> “It was made to sound like you would be booked all the time, and you could make 5, 10 grand a month,” she says. But the most she’s ever gotten has been $3,500 a month and sometimes as little as $1,000. “It’s not as much as we were expecting.” So basically it's paying the mortgage on their $295k second home, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me. I don't think middlemen promising that you will make more money off of a deal than you actually do is a new thing, or that it's limited to AirBNB. Take estimates with a healthy grain of salt.

bombcar 3y ago
If the deal was really good the middlemen would snap it up. Just like really good real estate offers never hit the open market because the realtors buy the property. But most people are financially bad at estimates and assume that maximum cash flow is anything close to actual cash flow - hence the laws requiring MLMs to disclose the average compensation vs the highest.

leviathant 3y ago

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit and mention that I run an Airbnb in Philadelphia, it's the second floor of my building, and I'm a fan of all the regulation that's put into place. Our cleaning fee is $50, and before we approve you, we ask - are you really just two to four people? Do you understand, this isn't a hotel, you're staying in our house, so no smoking and no parties. This filters out 99% of the people who are looking for something we're not offering. We're one of the highest rated Airbnb's in the city. Our neighbors have no complaints. And it shames me into picking up the garbage that New Jersey visitors leave on our street when they park here to go to Dave & Busters. I think it works because we're closer to the original model - sharing space in our home. These people who buy up properties to be remote landlords or run hands-free hotels, who complain about rules going into place as a reaction to bad behavior? Good riddance. Is that good for stock prices? Beats me, but as far as I'm concerned, when done right, it's good for everyone involved.

5555624 3y ago
> I think it works because we're closer to the original model - sharing space in our home. Because of this, (1) you take the extra step in screening people and (2) you're there if there is a problem. When I hear of Airbnb problems, it's not when they've actually shared a room in someone's home, it's been a separate property of some sort.
- leviathant 3y ago
  For the sake of clarity, even though it's not super important - we rent the entire second floor out. It's about 450sqft - an apartment, albeit a small one for sure. We live on the 3rd floor (1100sqft). We almost never even see our guests.
  - wryanzimmerman 3y ago
    You’re still there if you need to be and you know the situation; a lot of the time Airbnb hosts don’t even live in the same country as some of their properties. A lot of the time the “host” is just someone hired to answer the Airbnb messages and let the guests in.

Animats 3y ago

> Disney World, which is just a 10-minute drive away... Buying a house to rent to Disney World visitors was a huge mistake. Disney park traffic is way down.[1] Disney parks raised their prices to the point that they are no longer a middle class destination. Disney World prices have increased 5x in constant dollars since the place opened.[2] Disney parks have now had a total flop - "Star Cruiser Adventure", which cost US$4,800 for two people for two days and is shutting down. Turns out that LARPs don't sell at that price point. [1] https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/walt-disney-world-crowds-vanish-parks-at-their-emptiest-in-10-years-cj1/ https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/walt-disney-world-crowds-... [2] https://www.tiktok.com/@piechartpirate/video/7019616080490417413 https://www.tiktok.com/@piechartpirate/video/701961608049041...

pavel_lishin 3y ago
iirc from the article, they bought the second house as their winter destination; renting it out was just one way they were going to offset their mortgage.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Disney is on the profit-price spiral greed bandwagon still thinking they own Osceola County and people are stupid and will pay anything. Newsflash: Most people are losing real wealth and nominal income as America increasingly becomes a perversely unequal country.

itbeho 3y ago

We have Airbnb homes on either side of us. We have weekly problems with trespassing, trash, expletive laden screaming arguments, speeding and loud music. We're in wine country and the amount of obvious drunk driving is alarming. The entire neighborhood has complained to law enforcement, county government (we're just outside city limits), Airbnb and VRBO hundreds of times. Nothing has been done by any of them. Anyone else been in this situation and had any reasonable solution?

darknavi 3y ago
This is perhaps one of the few reasons for HOAs to exist.
codeTired 3y ago
Start creating a paper trail. Research local laws. Our town has ordinance in place that prevent such behavior even during day time. Email mayor, chief of police and start talking to neighbors. At some point you might be able to sue the owners, sue city/policy if they are not taking action to enforce rules(if they exist). Call cops whenever rules are broken and document.
- itbeho 3y ago
  Thanks. We've pretty much done all you suggested up to getting a lawyer. My 10 neighbors and I are meeting up to discuss and it sounds like we'll just have to pool our resources and hire a lawyer.
  - codeTired 3y ago
    Best of luck. Awful situation to deal with.
bombcar 3y ago
Go offensive. Coordinate with your real neighbors as to what the absolute legal things you can do that make the Airbnbs useless. Eg, start a backyard hog farm. Check local regulations on outdoor lighting and light your yard brighter than the sun. Incorporate a church and hold classical music revivals at appropriate times. Park exceptionally ugly and large equipment anywhere you legally can. This is the nuclear option but sometimes nuking it from orbit is the only way to be sure.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Airbnb was cool when it started, no doubt. Then hosts gradually got impersonal, complacent, arrogant, and cash-grubbing as time went on. And then guests invaded private apartment complexes and acted like Americans on spring break. It's the arc of many things, and no different.

thedougd 3y ago

I’m expecting quite a few AirBNB landlords to exit when they hit their first milestone maintenance expense. HVAC, roof, special assessments, septic, well, there are some big ones.

bombcar 3y ago
There will be money to be made snapping these up once they’re done playing hotel.

Gud 3y ago

Every time these threads pop up on HN there is very little sympathy for us who use these services. They say, why can’t you just stay in a hotel??? Well, why don’t you live in a hotel? I travel 300+ days a year for work. On occasion I book a regular hotel. Maybe one week per two months or something. It’s not too bad, but longer than that and I want to get out and live like a normal person.