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Articles like this are supremely annoying. The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren’t building enough housing. The problem is not the demand

Articles like this are supremely annoying. The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren’t building enough housing. The problem is not the demand for housing, it’s the supply. Don’t blame Airbnb when you refuse to build enough housing, the markets going to figure out how to market.

LegitShady 3y ago
canada is building housing like crazy, but also allowing massive immigration numbers, and airbnb is icing on the cake. Its not just one problem. But airbnb is garbage and should be banned.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  ... So they need to build more housing.
  - DamnYuppie 3y ago
    Or reduce immigration.
  - nkjnlknlk 3y ago
    There being one significant factor does not mean there are no other significant factors. The same goes for solutions.
  - gadders 3y ago
    Er, no. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/29/world/politics/canada-student-trafficking-industry-trudeau/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/29/world/politics/...
  - stanleykm 3y ago
    are you guys really so invested in airbnb being present in Canadian cities? “Just build more housing”, “Just reduce immigration” all for airbnb’s benefit?
    - selectodude 3y ago
      AirBNB provides a service to out of towners who want to arrive, use very little social services, spend a bunch of money, and then leave. How is this bad? I don’t understand.
      - bongodongobob 3y ago
        Because a lot of these houses sit there vacant for big percentages of the year. For example (easy numbers) if your mortgage is 1k/month, you can afford to rent it out for 200/night a leave it vacant the other 25 days of the month. You ever see a hotel on a Tuesday? No one is there. Now stretch that across all the airbnbs in a city. I don't understand how someone can't see how that isn't bad and is crating artificial scarcity. Homes are not hotels.
        stanleykm 3y ago
        Because this site is full of free market absolutists and they have no interest in considering the downstream effects.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      Canada would need to increase housing faster than population regardless; Airbnb is just a red herring.
      - LegitShady 3y ago
        airbnb contributes to the problem but doesn't create it. It also makes for bad neighbourhoods.
- hodder 3y ago
  We are not building housing like crazy. https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030 https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-ho... https://assets.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/sites/cmhc/professional/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/research-reports/2023/housing-shortages-canada-updating-how-much-we-need-by-2030-en.pdf?rev=3b66f87d-0bec-44d6-aa54-f8af71f9b2c4&_gl=1*19b9kpi*_ga*MTQ4NTc2NTg4MS4xNzA5OTIwNDI5*_ga_CY7T7RT5C4*MTcwOTkyMDQzMC4xLjAuMTcwOTkyMDQzNS41NS4wLjA.*_gcl_au*MTI1NjM3NjUxMS4xNzA5OTIwNDI5 https://assets.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/sites/cmhc/professional/housi...
- adamduren 3y ago
  Wouldn't a more sustainable solution other than banning Airbnb involve coming up with regulations that prevent empire-building? The problem is not the hosts on Airbnb that are listing spare bedrooms or their vacation homes. It's corporations and ambitious individuals that are depleting the supply.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
The problem is when your government is in the business of guaranteeing house prices go up a ton - and everyone is leveraged housing - that turns housing into a speculative meme stock and not something for people to live in - which turns out to supremely suck for anyone that doesn't own a house and doesn't want to rent progressively shittier apartments for the rest of their lives. Canada is building plenty of housing. It's the entire economy besides oil and gas. Sure, you might be under-building slightly in B.C. and Toronto (mostly due to your gov's immigration policy specifically to prop up your housing bubble) - but that doesn't explain why prices have been going ape-shit literally everywhere in Canada for 30 years...
- wubrr 3y ago
  Canada is not building enough housing, but you're 100% right about the government propping up the housing prices any way it can.
  - pstrateman 3y ago
    Nearly 7% of the entire Canadian work force is building new houses. That's double the next closest industrial country. Canada doesn't have a supply issue, it has a demand issue.
    - selectodude 3y ago
      There’s no such thing as a demand issue. Canada should consider importing immigrants who can work in construction in addition to the billions of dirty Chinese money. Problem solved.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
        If your government creates artificial demand - that's a demand problem. The demand isn't real. It's synthesized from unsustainable government policies. Set interest rates to -100% - see what happens to housing demand. Is that a supply problem? Should Canada build 800 trillion houses to fill the appetite for free government money that will eventually implode? Or is it a demand problem because your government is dumb?
wubrr 3y ago
The problem is that most new housing in Canada is being bought up by investors, and the government refuses to do anything to disincentivize this, and continues to prop up the bubble any way it can. That might be because the majority of the federal government MPs are real estate investors themselves...
- zamfi 3y ago
  Isn't Vancouver famous for instituting a vacant-housing tax? https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy...
  - wubrr 3y ago
    Most investors don't keep their housing vacant, and getting around this specific tax is trivial. This is mostly for show, similar to the foreign buyers tax - the vast majority of investment properties are bought by local investors, but they're going to completely ignore that and blame everything on the tiny portion of foreign investors.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      > Most investors don't keep their housing vacant So who is in the housing then?
      - Tiktaalik 3y ago
        renters. Vancouver has near ~0% rental vacancy as does many, many other cities across the country. Most cities in BC are below 3% vacancy. The fact that so much housing in Canada is being bought by investors is unsurprising. There's enormous demand for rentals and incredibly low supply.
        HWR_14 3y ago
        Doesn't "rental vacancy" just measure rentals on the market? A unit owned by a foreign investor intentionally left vacant doesn't show up in those numbers.
bobthepanda 3y ago
One way to reduce demand is to ban Airbnb, which has happened in some markets. Unlike residents, tourists do not vote, and are not really entitled to cheap accomodations wherever they go.
- pitaj 3y ago
  There's little to no evidence that banning short-term rentals materially decreases rental or housing prices.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > Unlike residents, tourists do not vote... Do landlords vote? Are they residents? Many normal people are landlords. You will never be a billionaire. Some people will never be guilded professionals or make it to the Ivy League. Many of the normal people who "make it" in life will be landlords. Everyone's income is someone else's expense. In San Francisco, where I live, the idea to drive out the "techies" couldn't be more boneheaded. Where are those agitators now? Careful what you wish for. I don't know how to convince people to lean less into the aesthetics of a political position. If you feel like you are saying something that boils down to, "the right people get all the things, and the wrong people got nothing," it's an easy position to take when charts are going up, when interest rates are low, and when you happen to be part of the group of "right people."
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    While a lot of people are landlords, most properties on free AirBnB markets are hosted by professional, multi-property landlords, and I don’t personally think that creating a new class of feudal landlords is a great idea. My local area simply put in the restriction that only one property can be listed on AirBnB by one person, and that the property must be the person’s primary tax residence, and so now the local market has nearly entirely dried up even though that was allegedly the original purpose of AirBnB.
    - danlugo92 3y ago
      > most properties on free AirBnB markets are hosted by professional, multi-property landlords You cannot know whether this is true for all tourist/nomad hotspots (by being a hotspot they're actually suffering), e.g. Portugal/Colombia/Vietnam. However... I still support whatever the people in those cities decide... so if they decide "no tourism" then they should be heard...
andy99 3y ago
Airbnb is a convenient scapegoat especially for interests that don't want to change the bigger levers - housing development and immigration (and as mentioned elsewhere, housing prices can't go down for political reasons). So Airbnb gets pushed as a problem. This is basically propaganda.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  It's not the only factor, but Airbnb certainly has provided an easy alternative to putting a home up for sale. Supply shortage, i.e., fewer units for sale, is a real contributor to rapidly increasing housing prices.
- bredren 3y ago
  Does Airbnb take a public stance lobbying for change on these big levers? The company is powerful enough to transparently fund and back political action on these other areas.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  I agree that Airbnb is used as a scapegoat, and that it is not the problem, but it still is a thing causing real issues for cities. There's no real reason to not to bring in reasonable regulations that limit the worst sort of Airbnb uses.
Sebguer 3y ago
Airbnb doesn't service 'demand for housing', it artificially decreases supply for the benefit of tourists.
- rottencupcakes 3y ago
  Why do you call that artificial? Isn’t the market clearing amount of housing when both long and short term needs are met? Are you against all tourism or travel?
  - trgn 3y ago
    but tourist could use a hotel, no? landlords are using actual houses to service tourists, whereas a new hotel would do just fine as well and not take 100s of units out the rental market. If housing affordability is a function of supply/demand, then lowering demand - e.g. by not allowing tourists to stay in houses that could be rented out - should certainly help just as well as increasing supply.
    - Kalium 3y ago
      Depending on what you're doing, a hotel can be a poor fit for your needs. I've spent weeks in hotels at once, and for me it got absolutely miserable quickly. A studio apartment instead was much, much better.
      - trgn 3y ago
        fair enough. but that seems more like a furnished unit business type rental thing than for tourism. i don't think this is the bulk of airbnb usage (maybe it is). plus, hotels are starting to accommodate that more too, extended stay hotels, they have very commodious rooms.
        Kalium 3y ago
        It's my experience that housing exists on a spectrum, rather than being strictly for business or tourism or long-term living. Any space that could rent furnished apartments by the week to business travelers could also be renting unfurnished by the year to residents. I've seen hotels turned into apartments and the reverse. Housing, like money, is often fungible. It's not something we should expect to strictly classify away into wildly different categories in every case, even if this is pretty convenient from a governance perspective.
tippytippytango 3y ago
Yep, artificially constrained supply creates ample opportunity for bad actors to exploit the inefficiency.
jimbob45 3y ago
If you ban AirBNB, you'll immediately get 50,000 (or however many) houses back on the market. You would otherwise need to build 50,000 houses, which would surely require a great deal more effort. Why would you not reach for the lowest-hanging fruit first when attempting to increase the housing supply?
- pitaj 3y ago
  Because it's been tried and there's little evidence it actually works.
- jeduan 3y ago
  where did you get this 50,000 housing units number from? This article quotes that New York got 15,000 units from their ban. Are you saying that Montreal has 3x as many short term rentals as New York? https://www.wired.com/story/6-months-after-new-york-banned-airbnb-new-jersey/ https://www.wired.com/story/6-months-after-new-york-banned-a...
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    The article quotes has a 15,000 unit delta after closing a loophole, not after banning short-term rentals. The article also claims enforcement on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, etc. is still lacking.
- j45 3y ago
  Because housing supply has been needed to increase for 20 years and builders won’t do it to maintain or grow their margins. The disruption is needed on the supply side to build more.
- asdff 3y ago
  Because you do that, and a decade goes by and you need 50,000 homes again to meet demand, and then what? Its better to put in a mechanism from the start that will allow for this many homes to be built to meet demand. In most high demand markets, they are already built out to the limits of the zoned capacity and cannot add much of any new units of housing until zoning limits are eased. Zoning is the real low hanging fruit here. Back that off and the market will start to right the ship before long building capacity to match demand incurred by job growth.
light_hue_1 3y ago
That's a really confused way of looking at the issue. That the only thing we should look at is supply. Demand matters of course too. Airbnb created massive new demand for housing for people that don't live there. Those people can afford to pay more than locals. That takes away large amounts of supply from locals. Therefore AirBnb's effect is devastating. AirBnb should be completely banned everywhere in the world immediately.
- com2kid 3y ago
  > Airbnb created massive new demand for housing for people that don't live there. That is debatable, does the existence of Airbnb increase the number of tourists visiting a city? If Airbnb's reduced cost of overnight lodging causes more tourists to visit a city, then yes Airbnb increased demand. There are a few other possibilities: 1. Tourism demand was growing, and hotels failed to keep up. 2. Airbnb shifted traffic away from hotels and to Airbnb hosts. 3. Airbnb induced demand from people who otherwise wouldn't travel using traditional hotel accommodations. IMHO Airbnb demonstrated that there was an unfulfilled market for certain types of overnight accommodations (ones with a kitchen and laundry service) that existing hotels were failing to fulfill. The fact is, at the same $ I'll choose an Airbnb over a hotel for anything more than 1 or 2 nights due to laundry services alone. Basically the entire time I've travelled as an adult has been while Airbnb has existed and as such I've had laundry on site, no way do I want to manage the logistics of a 2 week vacation using just hotels in various cities[1]. If I'm hitting up a bunch of different cities I'll maybe have a hotel for a couple nights in-between Airbnbs where I can do laundry. > AirBnb should be completely banned everywhere in the world immediately. If hotels offered better services and didn't try to charge me $5 per pair of socks I want washed, Airbnb would lose a lot of business. [1] Even more so traveling with kids, as an adult I can reasonably bring 3 or 4 sets of clothes and lots of changes of underclothes, but kids need laundry done a lot, it is not unreasonable for a toddler to cover 2 sets of clothes in filth in a single day!
throwaway5752 3y ago
Do you think that well capitalized corporations (which, as non-humans, require no housing) are playing on a level playing field with regular people? I think it's possible to formally model this, but if there are no caps on rent and no attractive alternative investments, it is always the efficient and rational move for a firm with excess capital to buy real estate because they can simply raise the rates until they get the return they want. People will require houses and you can see that in historically high multi-job holding statistics. People will work themselves to death to have a roof over their head. In my life, larger scale single unit residential REITs are a new phenomenon, and the concentration of wealth that has happened this century has made single unit housing and rental and investable alternative asset class. This is a really bad situation, it has too many parallels to feudal systems, or more recently, company towns in early 20th century America. This is a tragedy of commons dynamic that requires external intervention. I'm worried you don't have a good handle on the number of houses and the excess lumber, copper, concrete, and steel for new properties and infra supporting them. That is just ignoring geographical scarcity, and the fact that not all geographies support building up. Just "building more housing" is usually not as easy as it is to sloganeer and blame nimbys.
- theragra 3y ago
  Requirements are too high, then. For me it is a bit weird that 1. House must be fire-safe, asbestos-free, require eco heating system, etc etc. At the same time, nobody can afford to build a house (I think you need to be un top 5% in my country), and rent is really expensive 2. Same with doctors. You often not even get prescription easily, no medical advice, no own/custom medical devices etc etc, qt the same time a lot of people can't afford doctors. I guess I am with libertarians on these issues. Imo, it is better to warn people and give them choice. Just plainly denying access to housing and medicine to poor people is plain evil.
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dimask 3y ago
Tourism is a plague for local populations. The same exact thing was happening long before Airbnb in more touristic locations. Airbnb has acted as an accelerator of the same phenomenon to bigger cities. It is not just about "supply and demand". We are talking about different markets. When you profit more from real estate by renting it to tourists vs renting it to long terms residents you are gonna throw residents out and get into the tourist business. In this, supply is largely irrelevant due to the huge difference in margins. Unless the tourist business becomes oversaturated you always profit more from tourists. And outsupplying the tourist demand is extremely hard.
- j2bax 3y ago
  Tourism is the ONLY industry for many regions... I recently lived in one. Without it, the areas would likely not exist as places to live at all.
  - dimask 3y ago
    The problem is that tourism often appears to be the only industry because it creates very bad conditions for any other business or industry to exist in places where it takes hold. It tends to increase cost of living, and has so high margins that other businesses are hard to compete for space etc. It makes the living conditions hard to unlivable to workers that are not linked to the tourist business, even essential workers like teachers, nurses etc. Maybe in some places they can put more control over it and minimise this impact. In a country level, it is even worse as it makes a country totally dependent on tourists as an external flow of money, it usually ends up with most services been owned by big capital (local or foreign) in the expense of local businesses and it halts most forms and potentialities of actual development for other industries. Tourism can be some easy money at best, it is very often harmful for any other forms of activities and business in the long run.
    - danlugo92 3y ago
      I feel like if tourists weren't so "un-informed" consumers, things would "even out"... you know? Like tourists bring in "bad" consumer practices, such as buying stuff/food at "tourist traps" thus actually driving up prices, instead of them going to whenever the "locals" are used to go and still contribute to the local economy. Best example I can think of paying overpriced shitty food at some tourist trap restaurant because you don't know better because you're a tourist, meanwhile locals go to their "known" places that aren't anything remotely similar to a "trap" you know?
zamfi 3y ago
The markets for short-term housing and long-term housing have historically been different markets. People are much more willing to pay higher amounts (per unit time) for short-term housing, and this demand is primarily driven by tourism, which is influenced by things like culture, natural beauty, renown, etc. -- those things of course have an impact on long-term housing demand too, but long-term demand is primarily driven by the availability of jobs and potential career income, long-term stability, cost of living, etc. The factors overlap, but they are not the same. What AirBnB does is merge the two markets: any long-term housing can become short-term housing; owners of housing can make much more by leasing short-term rather than long-term. With this merger, the cost of long-term housing begins to approach the cost of short-term housing. This is great for short-term-housing seekers (ask anyone who had to book a hotel in NYC before AirBnB!) and not so great for long-term-housing seekers. In theory, the problem is addressable with "enough housing" -- but now, instead of building enough housing to satisfy the needs of long-term residents, you also need to build enough housing to satisfy the needs of short-term housing seekers, who are much less price-sensitive (since they're only visiting for a short amount of time), and where theoretical demand is much higher (since the market for "tourism in Vancouver", e.g., is essentially global). That is a lot more housing. And that is a problem. And that is why people blame AirBnB. But it isn't strictly speaking AirBnB's fault -- these two markets have been separated largely artificially through transaction costs and legislation. Like with local news, technology is a disruptor, but the solution can't really be "ban technology" because that cat is already out of the bag. But "build more housing" is easier said than done given the amount of new housing that would be required to satisfy demand.
- Manouchehri 3y ago
  > ask anyone who had to book a hotel in NYC before AirBnB! I've stayed in multiple hotels and Airbnb units in NYC, and every single time, the Airbnb option was terrible in comparison to my hotel bookings. This is for places of comparable prices as well. The only benefit of Airbnb, is that the units were slightly larger on average than proper hotels.. but they were usually so run-down, that I didn't want to spend any more time than the bare minimum in them anyway. I don't think it's surprising that a huge professionally run corporation can offer a better service/product than a small real estate investor.
christkv 3y ago
Canada is adding 1/2 million immigrants a year. Does not matter how much they build the demand will outstrip housing stock.
- lm411 3y ago
  It's actually much worse, as the immigration count doesn't include temporary residents -- the majority of of which will become permanent residents. "Canada's population increased by more than 1.2 million in 2023" https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco... Meanwhile YoY housing starts are down.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  All of Canada's housing issues were issues before 2015, before this current government and before the increase in immigration
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costcofries 3y ago
part of the problem is Airbnb though. We have 'investors' owning multiple properties and operating Airbnbs against local laws which does in fact decrease supply.
- Dudhbbh3343 3y ago
  That's still easily solvable by getting the government out of the way of the market building sufficient housing to meet demand.
password4321 3y ago
Airbnb is the tool. Tools enable and incentivize certain behaviors. Also, it is a matter of degree.
ameminator 3y ago
Canada is in the top end of the OECD when it comes to building housing. The problem is that the rate of new house construction has been severely outpaced by population growth. Canada has the highest rate of population growth of any developed nation and it is largely spurred by immigration.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
Maybe capitalizable markets aren't the best tool for products that are required for life? I appreciate that we have a tool like capitalizable markets, but the lack of alternatives is a red flag - every problem is a nail. An underappreciated aspect this is the legal machinery that undergirds the capitalization of housing, and as such is codified. Things that are codified are subject to change.
arp242 3y ago
High-level ideals are all fun, but this ignores the facts on the ground that people are getting evicted right now for no other reason than short-term rentals (that is: AirBnB). So even if what you say is correct – I don't know enough about the situation in Canada to judge that – then that doesn't really matter because it's pretty clear short-term rentals such as AirBnB add a lot of extra pressure, with all sorts of effects as described in the article.
DueDilligence 3y ago
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cultofmetatron 3y ago
> The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren’t building enough housing. The problem is not the demand for housing, it’s the supply. codun't agree more. just got a month long apartment in kuala lumpur. its only $800 and its luxury compared to what I can get for that price anywhere else. it didn't make sense till I realized that they have no issues building housing. there's plenty of it. and its one of the reasons this city is so aweome
ren_engineer 3y ago
>The problem is not the demand for housing, it’s the supply how do you build enough housing when the government of a country with a population of 30 million is bringing in 500K immigrants every year?
- jtuple 3y ago
  Build 600K houses a year? The fact they aren't is the supply problem. Outside of government policies and potential to tank housing prices, is there some reason you can't build 500K+ houses a year? Canada already seems to have an impressive rate, something like 220-250k housing starts/year. The entire US is only 1300K-1500K/year for comparison. Is it insurmountable to just 2.5-3x that rate? I guess the main issue is that housing lags demand. And immigration rate could also 2x on a whim by policymakers.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    How do you build 600,000 houses a year with a population of 40 million? Cancel all other jobs and redirect all labor in Canada to building housing? I'd be very surprised there are "220-250K housing starts per year" really. A lot of that might be development in the planning stage that is tied up in red tape whether it be in the investment stage, or navigating bureaucracy. I'd be very surprised if there were 100K houses per year actually being built. edit: Does "housing starts" here refer to bedrooms? E.g. a 3 bedroom house counts as 3 housing starts? If so, the 600K goal (required to keep up with population growth) is much more reasonable, though still far off.
- Manouchehri 3y ago
  One would expect/hope some of those 500,000 have skills in construction.
ForestCritter 3y ago
Montreal is a fully developed Island. Your arguement doesn't make sense.Montreal has become unaffordable for the workers who support the tourism and blue collar industries.
- Dudhbbh3343 3y ago
  > Montreal has become unaffordable for the workers who support the tourism That's a self-correcting problem: either tourists pay higher prices to keep attracting workers or the higher prices scare off tourists and fewer workers are needed.
tgv 3y ago
So you claim the markets shouldn't be regulated (what else is the point of moving the focus away from Airbnb, while it obviously is a factor contributing) while blaming the government for not regulating the market?
parthdesai 3y ago
> Don’t blame Airbnb when you refuse to build enough housing, the markets going to figure out how to market. Sure, but I can definitely blame Airbnb for enabling owners to skirt local regulations.
fassssst 3y ago
It’s both, not either or. Build more housing and regulate short term housing more so it doesn’t decrease mode badly needed long term supply.
johnea 3y ago
That's total bullshit AirBNB is an unlicensed hotel. Are you saying there's so much unoccupied land on Montreal Island that you could just build all of those AirBNBs? If you multiply this articles stated extend by 100x, then you have an idea of theproblem this is causing in the US. Many communitiees that are in vacation friendly locations are eliminating the ability to rent housing. You could build more residences, they would also be converted to AirBNB. As expected here on HN, a bunch of vulture capital appologizism...
SkyPuncher 3y ago
We moved to a booming resort town last year. We’re seeing a similar attitude among the locals. There are about 250 units of short term rentals in a city of thousands and thousands of housing units. Neighborhood are going up with more units than the entire short term rental market. To say short term rentals are driving cost is insane when there is clearly a wholesale shortage. That being said, I understand the legitimate frustration with what are commercial entities moving into residential areas.
hcknwscommenter 3y ago
Yes blame Airbnb (and copycats). There is not enough supply. So it's not good to reduce supply for housing by converting homes to short-term rentals. Also, it destroys community.
game_the0ry 3y ago
Supply is a problem, but so is demand. More specifically, speculative demand. About 20-30% of buyers in today's market are all-cash investors. [1] [1] https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/ https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-shar...
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren't building enough housing." [X] "Don't blame Airbnb when you refuse to build enough housing, the markets going to figure out how to market." AirBnB reduces the already limited supply of available housing. [Y] AirBnB makes a bad situation worse. We should ignore this because the bad situation exists? WTF. Problem X is exacerbated by Problem Y. Therefore, according to HN commenter, "Problem Y is not the problem. The problem is Problem X." Who is persuaded by such nonsensical reasoning. 1. According the study, Problem Y is a legitimate problem. HN commenter provides no evidence to counter/invalidate the findings. 2. Assuming Problem X exists and AirBnB knows it exists, then AirBnB is consciously making a bad situation worse. For profit. https://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/download/274/136/561 https://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/download/27... "Through removing housing that would otherwise be available on the long-term rental market Airbnb is reducing housing supply and, in turn, housing affordability." In other words, converting long-term rentals into short-term rentals using AirBnB reduces the effective supply of available housing. This may in turn cause long-term housing prices to increase. The study suggests the effects of AirBnB are not felt evenly across Canada. For example, some areas are adversely affected while others are not. "Five years ago, short-term rentals in cities - both in Canada and abroad - were almost universally illegal with the exception of licenced bed and breakfasts. STRs were illegal either through bans on commercial uses in residential areas, through fire codes and regulations on lodgings, or through explicit bans on rentals below a certain threshold of nights. Despite operating in a legal grey area at best, STRs facilitated by platforms such as Airbnb have proliferated."

LegitShady 3y ago

canada is building housing like crazy, but also allowing massive immigration numbers, and airbnb is icing on the cake. Its not just one problem. But airbnb is garbage and should be banned.

bongodongobob 3y ago
... So they need to build more housing.
- DamnYuppie 3y ago
  Or reduce immigration.
- nkjnlknlk 3y ago
  There being one significant factor does not mean there are no other significant factors. The same goes for solutions.
- gadders 3y ago
  Er, no. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/29/world/politics/canada-student-trafficking-industry-trudeau/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/29/world/politics/...
- stanleykm 3y ago
  are you guys really so invested in airbnb being present in Canadian cities? “Just build more housing”, “Just reduce immigration” all for airbnb’s benefit?
  - selectodude 3y ago
    AirBNB provides a service to out of towners who want to arrive, use very little social services, spend a bunch of money, and then leave. How is this bad? I don’t understand.
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      Because a lot of these houses sit there vacant for big percentages of the year. For example (easy numbers) if your mortgage is 1k/month, you can afford to rent it out for 200/night a leave it vacant the other 25 days of the month. You ever see a hotel on a Tuesday? No one is there. Now stretch that across all the airbnbs in a city. I don't understand how someone can't see how that isn't bad and is crating artificial scarcity. Homes are not hotels.
      - stanleykm 3y ago
        Because this site is full of free market absolutists and they have no interest in considering the downstream effects.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Canada would need to increase housing faster than population regardless; Airbnb is just a red herring.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      airbnb contributes to the problem but doesn't create it. It also makes for bad neighbourhoods.
hodder 3y ago
We are not building housing like crazy. https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030 https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-ho... https://assets.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/sites/cmhc/professional/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/research-reports/2023/housing-shortages-canada-updating-how-much-we-need-by-2030-en.pdf?rev=3b66f87d-0bec-44d6-aa54-f8af71f9b2c4&_gl=1*19b9kpi*_ga*MTQ4NTc2NTg4MS4xNzA5OTIwNDI5*_ga_CY7T7RT5C4*MTcwOTkyMDQzMC4xLjAuMTcwOTkyMDQzNS41NS4wLjA.*_gcl_au*MTI1NjM3NjUxMS4xNzA5OTIwNDI5 https://assets.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/sites/cmhc/professional/housi...
adamduren 3y ago
Wouldn't a more sustainable solution other than banning Airbnb involve coming up with regulations that prevent empire-building? The problem is not the hosts on Airbnb that are listing spare bedrooms or their vacation homes. It's corporations and ambitious individuals that are depleting the supply.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

The problem is when your government is in the business of guaranteeing house prices go up a ton - and everyone is leveraged housing - that turns housing into a speculative meme stock and not something for people to live in - which turns out to supremely suck for anyone that doesn't own a house and doesn't want to rent progressively shittier apartments for the rest of their lives. Canada is building plenty of housing. It's the entire economy besides oil and gas. Sure, you might be under-building slightly in B.C. and Toronto (mostly due to your gov's immigration policy specifically to prop up your housing bubble) - but that doesn't explain why prices have been going ape-shit literally everywhere in Canada for 30 years...

wubrr 3y ago
Canada is not building enough housing, but you're 100% right about the government propping up the housing prices any way it can.
- pstrateman 3y ago
  Nearly 7% of the entire Canadian work force is building new houses. That's double the next closest industrial country. Canada doesn't have a supply issue, it has a demand issue.
  - selectodude 3y ago
    There’s no such thing as a demand issue. Canada should consider importing immigrants who can work in construction in addition to the billions of dirty Chinese money. Problem solved.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      If your government creates artificial demand - that's a demand problem. The demand isn't real. It's synthesized from unsustainable government policies. Set interest rates to -100% - see what happens to housing demand. Is that a supply problem? Should Canada build 800 trillion houses to fill the appetite for free government money that will eventually implode? Or is it a demand problem because your government is dumb?

wubrr 3y ago

The problem is that most new housing in Canada is being bought up by investors, and the government refuses to do anything to disincentivize this, and continues to prop up the bubble any way it can. That might be because the majority of the federal government MPs are real estate investors themselves...

zamfi 3y ago
Isn't Vancouver famous for instituting a vacant-housing tax? https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy...
- wubrr 3y ago
  Most investors don't keep their housing vacant, and getting around this specific tax is trivial. This is mostly for show, similar to the foreign buyers tax - the vast majority of investment properties are bought by local investors, but they're going to completely ignore that and blame everything on the tiny portion of foreign investors.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    > Most investors don't keep their housing vacant So who is in the housing then?
    - Tiktaalik 3y ago
      renters. Vancouver has near ~0% rental vacancy as does many, many other cities across the country. Most cities in BC are below 3% vacancy. The fact that so much housing in Canada is being bought by investors is unsurprising. There's enormous demand for rentals and incredibly low supply.
      - HWR_14 3y ago
        Doesn't "rental vacancy" just measure rentals on the market? A unit owned by a foreign investor intentionally left vacant doesn't show up in those numbers.

bobthepanda 3y ago

One way to reduce demand is to ban Airbnb, which has happened in some markets. Unlike residents, tourists do not vote, and are not really entitled to cheap accomodations wherever they go.

pitaj 3y ago
There's little to no evidence that banning short-term rentals materially decreases rental or housing prices.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Unlike residents, tourists do not vote... Do landlords vote? Are they residents? Many normal people are landlords. You will never be a billionaire. Some people will never be guilded professionals or make it to the Ivy League. Many of the normal people who "make it" in life will be landlords. Everyone's income is someone else's expense. In San Francisco, where I live, the idea to drive out the "techies" couldn't be more boneheaded. Where are those agitators now? Careful what you wish for. I don't know how to convince people to lean less into the aesthetics of a political position. If you feel like you are saying something that boils down to, "the right people get all the things, and the wrong people got nothing," it's an easy position to take when charts are going up, when interest rates are low, and when you happen to be part of the group of "right people."
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  While a lot of people are landlords, most properties on free AirBnB markets are hosted by professional, multi-property landlords, and I don’t personally think that creating a new class of feudal landlords is a great idea. My local area simply put in the restriction that only one property can be listed on AirBnB by one person, and that the property must be the person’s primary tax residence, and so now the local market has nearly entirely dried up even though that was allegedly the original purpose of AirBnB.
  - danlugo92 3y ago
    > most properties on free AirBnB markets are hosted by professional, multi-property landlords You cannot know whether this is true for all tourist/nomad hotspots (by being a hotspot they're actually suffering), e.g. Portugal/Colombia/Vietnam. However... I still support whatever the people in those cities decide... so if they decide "no tourism" then they should be heard...

andy99 3y ago

Airbnb is a convenient scapegoat especially for interests that don't want to change the bigger levers - housing development and immigration (and as mentioned elsewhere, housing prices can't go down for political reasons). So Airbnb gets pushed as a problem. This is basically propaganda.

listenallyall 3y ago
It's not the only factor, but Airbnb certainly has provided an easy alternative to putting a home up for sale. Supply shortage, i.e., fewer units for sale, is a real contributor to rapidly increasing housing prices.
bredren 3y ago
Does Airbnb take a public stance lobbying for change on these big levers? The company is powerful enough to transparently fund and back political action on these other areas.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
I agree that Airbnb is used as a scapegoat, and that it is not the problem, but it still is a thing causing real issues for cities. There's no real reason to not to bring in reasonable regulations that limit the worst sort of Airbnb uses.

Sebguer 3y ago

Airbnb doesn't service 'demand for housing', it artificially decreases supply for the benefit of tourists.

rottencupcakes 3y ago
Why do you call that artificial? Isn’t the market clearing amount of housing when both long and short term needs are met? Are you against all tourism or travel?
- trgn 3y ago
  but tourist could use a hotel, no? landlords are using actual houses to service tourists, whereas a new hotel would do just fine as well and not take 100s of units out the rental market. If housing affordability is a function of supply/demand, then lowering demand - e.g. by not allowing tourists to stay in houses that could be rented out - should certainly help just as well as increasing supply.
  - Kalium 3y ago
    Depending on what you're doing, a hotel can be a poor fit for your needs. I've spent weeks in hotels at once, and for me it got absolutely miserable quickly. A studio apartment instead was much, much better.
    - trgn 3y ago
      fair enough. but that seems more like a furnished unit business type rental thing than for tourism. i don't think this is the bulk of airbnb usage (maybe it is). plus, hotels are starting to accommodate that more too, extended stay hotels, they have very commodious rooms.
      - Kalium 3y ago
        It's my experience that housing exists on a spectrum, rather than being strictly for business or tourism or long-term living. Any space that could rent furnished apartments by the week to business travelers could also be renting unfurnished by the year to residents. I've seen hotels turned into apartments and the reverse. Housing, like money, is often fungible. It's not something we should expect to strictly classify away into wildly different categories in every case, even if this is pretty convenient from a governance perspective.

tippytippytango 3y ago

Yep, artificially constrained supply creates ample opportunity for bad actors to exploit the inefficiency.

jimbob45 3y ago

If you ban AirBNB, you'll immediately get 50,000 (or however many) houses back on the market. You would otherwise need to build 50,000 houses, which would surely require a great deal more effort. Why would you not reach for the lowest-hanging fruit first when attempting to increase the housing supply?

pitaj 3y ago
Because it's been tried and there's little evidence it actually works.
jeduan 3y ago
where did you get this 50,000 housing units number from? This article quotes that New York got 15,000 units from their ban. Are you saying that Montreal has 3x as many short term rentals as New York? https://www.wired.com/story/6-months-after-new-york-banned-airbnb-new-jersey/ https://www.wired.com/story/6-months-after-new-york-banned-a...
- HWR_14 3y ago
  The article quotes has a 15,000 unit delta after closing a loophole, not after banning short-term rentals. The article also claims enforcement on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, etc. is still lacking.
j45 3y ago
Because housing supply has been needed to increase for 20 years and builders won’t do it to maintain or grow their margins. The disruption is needed on the supply side to build more.
asdff 3y ago
Because you do that, and a decade goes by and you need 50,000 homes again to meet demand, and then what? Its better to put in a mechanism from the start that will allow for this many homes to be built to meet demand. In most high demand markets, they are already built out to the limits of the zoned capacity and cannot add much of any new units of housing until zoning limits are eased. Zoning is the real low hanging fruit here. Back that off and the market will start to right the ship before long building capacity to match demand incurred by job growth.

light_hue_1 3y ago

That's a really confused way of looking at the issue. That the only thing we should look at is supply. Demand matters of course too. Airbnb created massive new demand for housing for people that don't live there. Those people can afford to pay more than locals. That takes away large amounts of supply from locals. Therefore AirBnb's effect is devastating. AirBnb should be completely banned everywhere in the world immediately.

com2kid 3y ago
> Airbnb created massive new demand for housing for people that don't live there. That is debatable, does the existence of Airbnb increase the number of tourists visiting a city? If Airbnb's reduced cost of overnight lodging causes more tourists to visit a city, then yes Airbnb increased demand. There are a few other possibilities: 1. Tourism demand was growing, and hotels failed to keep up. 2. Airbnb shifted traffic away from hotels and to Airbnb hosts. 3. Airbnb induced demand from people who otherwise wouldn't travel using traditional hotel accommodations. IMHO Airbnb demonstrated that there was an unfulfilled market for certain types of overnight accommodations (ones with a kitchen and laundry service) that existing hotels were failing to fulfill. The fact is, at the same $ I'll choose an Airbnb over a hotel for anything more than 1 or 2 nights due to laundry services alone. Basically the entire time I've travelled as an adult has been while Airbnb has existed and as such I've had laundry on site, no way do I want to manage the logistics of a 2 week vacation using just hotels in various cities[1]. If I'm hitting up a bunch of different cities I'll maybe have a hotel for a couple nights in-between Airbnbs where I can do laundry. > AirBnb should be completely banned everywhere in the world immediately. If hotels offered better services and didn't try to charge me $5 per pair of socks I want washed, Airbnb would lose a lot of business. [1] Even more so traveling with kids, as an adult I can reasonably bring 3 or 4 sets of clothes and lots of changes of underclothes, but kids need laundry done a lot, it is not unreasonable for a toddler to cover 2 sets of clothes in filth in a single day!

throwaway5752 3y ago

Do you think that well capitalized corporations (which, as non-humans, require no housing) are playing on a level playing field with regular people? I think it's possible to formally model this, but if there are no caps on rent and no attractive alternative investments, it is always the efficient and rational move for a firm with excess capital to buy real estate because they can simply raise the rates until they get the return they want. People will require houses and you can see that in historically high multi-job holding statistics. People will work themselves to death to have a roof over their head. In my life, larger scale single unit residential REITs are a new phenomenon, and the concentration of wealth that has happened this century has made single unit housing and rental and investable alternative asset class. This is a really bad situation, it has too many parallels to feudal systems, or more recently, company towns in early 20th century America. This is a tragedy of commons dynamic that requires external intervention. I'm worried you don't have a good handle on the number of houses and the excess lumber, copper, concrete, and steel for new properties and infra supporting them. That is just ignoring geographical scarcity, and the fact that not all geographies support building up. Just "building more housing" is usually not as easy as it is to sloganeer and blame nimbys.

theragra 3y ago
Requirements are too high, then. For me it is a bit weird that 1. House must be fire-safe, asbestos-free, require eco heating system, etc etc. At the same time, nobody can afford to build a house (I think you need to be un top 5% in my country), and rent is really expensive 2. Same with doctors. You often not even get prescription easily, no medical advice, no own/custom medical devices etc etc, qt the same time a lot of people can't afford doctors. I guess I am with libertarians on these issues. Imo, it is better to warn people and give them choice. Just plainly denying access to housing and medicine to poor people is plain evil.

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dimask 3y ago

Tourism is a plague for local populations. The same exact thing was happening long before Airbnb in more touristic locations. Airbnb has acted as an accelerator of the same phenomenon to bigger cities. It is not just about "supply and demand". We are talking about different markets. When you profit more from real estate by renting it to tourists vs renting it to long terms residents you are gonna throw residents out and get into the tourist business. In this, supply is largely irrelevant due to the huge difference in margins. Unless the tourist business becomes oversaturated you always profit more from tourists. And outsupplying the tourist demand is extremely hard.

j2bax 3y ago
Tourism is the ONLY industry for many regions... I recently lived in one. Without it, the areas would likely not exist as places to live at all.
- dimask 3y ago
  The problem is that tourism often appears to be the only industry because it creates very bad conditions for any other business or industry to exist in places where it takes hold. It tends to increase cost of living, and has so high margins that other businesses are hard to compete for space etc. It makes the living conditions hard to unlivable to workers that are not linked to the tourist business, even essential workers like teachers, nurses etc. Maybe in some places they can put more control over it and minimise this impact. In a country level, it is even worse as it makes a country totally dependent on tourists as an external flow of money, it usually ends up with most services been owned by big capital (local or foreign) in the expense of local businesses and it halts most forms and potentialities of actual development for other industries. Tourism can be some easy money at best, it is very often harmful for any other forms of activities and business in the long run.
  - danlugo92 3y ago
    I feel like if tourists weren't so "un-informed" consumers, things would "even out"... you know? Like tourists bring in "bad" consumer practices, such as buying stuff/food at "tourist traps" thus actually driving up prices, instead of them going to whenever the "locals" are used to go and still contribute to the local economy. Best example I can think of paying overpriced shitty food at some tourist trap restaurant because you don't know better because you're a tourist, meanwhile locals go to their "known" places that aren't anything remotely similar to a "trap" you know?

zamfi 3y ago

The markets for short-term housing and long-term housing have historically been different markets. People are much more willing to pay higher amounts (per unit time) for short-term housing, and this demand is primarily driven by tourism, which is influenced by things like culture, natural beauty, renown, etc. -- those things of course have an impact on long-term housing demand too, but long-term demand is primarily driven by the availability of jobs and potential career income, long-term stability, cost of living, etc. The factors overlap, but they are not the same. What AirBnB does is merge the two markets: any long-term housing can become short-term housing; owners of housing can make much more by leasing short-term rather than long-term. With this merger, the cost of long-term housing begins to approach the cost of short-term housing. This is great for short-term-housing seekers (ask anyone who had to book a hotel in NYC before AirBnB!) and not so great for long-term-housing seekers. In theory, the problem is addressable with "enough housing" -- but now, instead of building enough housing to satisfy the needs of long-term residents, you also need to build enough housing to satisfy the needs of short-term housing seekers, who are much less price-sensitive (since they're only visiting for a short amount of time), and where theoretical demand is much higher (since the market for "tourism in Vancouver", e.g., is essentially global). That is a lot more housing. And that is a problem. And that is why people blame AirBnB. But it isn't strictly speaking AirBnB's fault -- these two markets have been separated largely artificially through transaction costs and legislation. Like with local news, technology is a disruptor, but the solution can't really be "ban technology" because that cat is already out of the bag. But "build more housing" is easier said than done given the amount of new housing that would be required to satisfy demand.

Manouchehri 3y ago
> ask anyone who had to book a hotel in NYC before AirBnB! I've stayed in multiple hotels and Airbnb units in NYC, and every single time, the Airbnb option was terrible in comparison to my hotel bookings. This is for places of comparable prices as well. The only benefit of Airbnb, is that the units were slightly larger on average than proper hotels.. but they were usually so run-down, that I didn't want to spend any more time than the bare minimum in them anyway. I don't think it's surprising that a huge professionally run corporation can offer a better service/product than a small real estate investor.

christkv 3y ago

Canada is adding 1/2 million immigrants a year. Does not matter how much they build the demand will outstrip housing stock.

lm411 3y ago
It's actually much worse, as the immigration count doesn't include temporary residents -- the majority of of which will become permanent residents. "Canada's population increased by more than 1.2 million in 2023" https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco... Meanwhile YoY housing starts are down.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
All of Canada's housing issues were issues before 2015, before this current government and before the increase in immigration

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costcofries 3y ago

part of the problem is Airbnb though. We have 'investors' owning multiple properties and operating Airbnbs against local laws which does in fact decrease supply.

Dudhbbh3343 3y ago
That's still easily solvable by getting the government out of the way of the market building sufficient housing to meet demand.

password4321 3y ago

Airbnb is the tool. Tools enable and incentivize certain behaviors. Also, it is a matter of degree.

ameminator 3y ago

Canada is in the top end of the OECD when it comes to building housing. The problem is that the rate of new house construction has been severely outpaced by population growth. Canada has the highest rate of population growth of any developed nation and it is largely spurred by immigration.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

Maybe capitalizable markets aren't the best tool for products that are required for life? I appreciate that we have a tool like capitalizable markets, but the lack of alternatives is a red flag - every problem is a nail. An underappreciated aspect this is the legal machinery that undergirds the capitalization of housing, and as such is codified. Things that are codified are subject to change.

arp242 3y ago

High-level ideals are all fun, but this ignores the facts on the ground that people are getting evicted right now for no other reason than short-term rentals (that is: AirBnB). So even if what you say is correct – I don't know enough about the situation in Canada to judge that – then that doesn't really matter because it's pretty clear short-term rentals such as AirBnB add a lot of extra pressure, with all sorts of effects as described in the article.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

cultofmetatron 3y ago

> The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren’t building enough housing. The problem is not the demand for housing, it’s the supply. codun't agree more. just got a month long apartment in kuala lumpur. its only $800 and its luxury compared to what I can get for that price anywhere else. it didn't make sense till I realized that they have no issues building housing. there's plenty of it. and its one of the reasons this city is so aweome

ren_engineer 3y ago

>The problem is not the demand for housing, it’s the supply how do you build enough housing when the government of a country with a population of 30 million is bringing in 500K immigrants every year?

jtuple 3y ago
Build 600K houses a year? The fact they aren't is the supply problem. Outside of government policies and potential to tank housing prices, is there some reason you can't build 500K+ houses a year? Canada already seems to have an impressive rate, something like 220-250k housing starts/year. The entire US is only 1300K-1500K/year for comparison. Is it insurmountable to just 2.5-3x that rate? I guess the main issue is that housing lags demand. And immigration rate could also 2x on a whim by policymakers.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  How do you build 600,000 houses a year with a population of 40 million? Cancel all other jobs and redirect all labor in Canada to building housing? I'd be very surprised there are "220-250K housing starts per year" really. A lot of that might be development in the planning stage that is tied up in red tape whether it be in the investment stage, or navigating bureaucracy. I'd be very surprised if there were 100K houses per year actually being built. edit: Does "housing starts" here refer to bedrooms? E.g. a 3 bedroom house counts as 3 housing starts? If so, the 600K goal (required to keep up with population growth) is much more reasonable, though still far off.
Manouchehri 3y ago
One would expect/hope some of those 500,000 have skills in construction.

ForestCritter 3y ago

Montreal is a fully developed Island. Your arguement doesn't make sense.Montreal has become unaffordable for the workers who support the tourism and blue collar industries.

Dudhbbh3343 3y ago
> Montreal has become unaffordable for the workers who support the tourism That's a self-correcting problem: either tourists pay higher prices to keep attracting workers or the higher prices scare off tourists and fewer workers are needed.

tgv 3y ago

So you claim the markets shouldn't be regulated (what else is the point of moving the focus away from Airbnb, while it obviously is a factor contributing) while blaming the government for not regulating the market?

parthdesai 3y ago

> Don’t blame Airbnb when you refuse to build enough housing, the markets going to figure out how to market. Sure, but I can definitely blame Airbnb for enabling owners to skirt local regulations.

fassssst 3y ago

It’s both, not either or. Build more housing and regulate short term housing more so it doesn’t decrease mode badly needed long term supply.

johnea 3y ago

That's total bullshit AirBNB is an unlicensed hotel. Are you saying there's so much unoccupied land on Montreal Island that you could just build all of those AirBNBs? If you multiply this articles stated extend by 100x, then you have an idea of theproblem this is causing in the US. Many communitiees that are in vacation friendly locations are eliminating the ability to rent housing. You could build more residences, they would also be converted to AirBNB. As expected here on HN, a bunch of vulture capital appologizism...

SkyPuncher 3y ago

We moved to a booming resort town last year. We’re seeing a similar attitude among the locals. There are about 250 units of short term rentals in a city of thousands and thousands of housing units. Neighborhood are going up with more units than the entire short term rental market. To say short term rentals are driving cost is insane when there is clearly a wholesale shortage. That being said, I understand the legitimate frustration with what are commercial entities moving into residential areas.

hcknwscommenter 3y ago

Yes blame Airbnb (and copycats). There is not enough supply. So it's not good to reduce supply for housing by converting homes to short-term rentals. Also, it destroys community.

game_the0ry 3y ago

Supply is a problem, but so is demand. More specifically, speculative demand. About 20-30% of buyers in today's market are all-cash investors. [1] [1] https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/ https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-shar...

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"The devastating effect is caused by the fact that they aren't building enough housing." [X] "Don't blame Airbnb when you refuse to build enough housing, the markets going to figure out how to market." AirBnB reduces the already limited supply of available housing. [Y] AirBnB makes a bad situation worse. We should ignore this because the bad situation exists? WTF. Problem X is exacerbated by Problem Y. Therefore, according to HN commenter, "Problem Y is not the problem. The problem is Problem X." Who is persuaded by such nonsensical reasoning. 1. According the study, Problem Y is a legitimate problem. HN commenter provides no evidence to counter/invalidate the findings. 2. Assuming Problem X exists and AirBnB knows it exists, then AirBnB is consciously making a bad situation worse. For profit. https://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/download/274/136/561 https://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/download/27... "Through removing housing that would otherwise be available on the long-term rental market Airbnb is reducing housing supply and, in turn, housing affordability." In other words, converting long-term rentals into short-term rentals using AirBnB reduces the effective supply of available housing. This may in turn cause long-term housing prices to increase. The study suggests the effects of AirBnB are not felt evenly across Canada. For example, some areas are adversely affected while others are not. "Five years ago, short-term rentals in cities - both in Canada and abroad - were almost universally illegal with the exception of licenced bed and breakfasts. STRs were illegal either through bans on commercial uses in residential areas, through fire codes and regulations on lodgings, or through explicit bans on rentals below a certain threshold of nights. Despite operating in a legal grey area at best, STRs facilitated by platforms such as Airbnb have proliferated."