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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 ho

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.

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.