7 ms·

What does a world without Airbnb look like?

17 points by kelnos 2y ago

seoulmetro 2y ago
[flagged]
a_bonobo 2y ago
>"There are many groups for whom hotels as the only option simply doesn't work," she says. "While the hotel industry has done legwork to be accommodating to families, the room layouts and prices don't work for the majority of families (especially those with 2+ kids) trying to take short breaks to cities. There has to be a way to balance the goals of the city while still catering to this segment of travellers – it's a huge loss to parents who want to introduce their children to the world." As someone who occasionally travels with his two children: this ignores pricing completely. The second you need a family-sized AirBnb you might as well go for a hotel; at least here in Australia family-sized rooms are cheaper in hotels than on AirBnb, where you generally need half a house. I'd rather my children live in a world where they can afford rent.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  If your kids can't afford rent, that's because your city/county isn't building enough new housing units. It's not because of AirBnB. The way I see it, AirBnB is simply taking advantage of the fact that, in many cities, there's too few hotel rooms, and the prices are much too high for various reasons (excessive taxes, lack of supply, etc.). It shouldn't be cheaper for an individual to buy a whole house and rent it out on a per-day basis (esp. at the crazy prices houses cost in those same places) than for a person to just get a hotel room for a few nights from a big company that's built a large building full of separate rooms for this specific purpose, but it frequently is. That means something is deeply wrong with the market. The problem isn't AirBnB, the problem is the local (or national) government and its policies and regulation.
  - capitooth 2y ago
    Or, private equity buys up all the homes and rents them or AirBNBs them (or both) and then uses their massive asset equity to buy more homes. This natural pressure raises the prices, and thus their asset value which lets them acquire more and more. Build more houses? Feed the beast. FIRST prevent housing investment in all forms. Then build more homes.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Sorry, economics don't work that way. If you build more houses, and build them more densely, it increases the supply. If corporations buy them up, they're still competing with each other and won't be able to raise the prices too much. They're only able to keep raising prices because supply is limited, so stop limiting supply. You don't need to ban housing investment. We don't have any such laws here in Japan. The only reason they're able to treat housing as an investment in other places is because of a lack of supply. Here, there's lots of supply, because the laws don't forbid development the way they do everywhere else. There, housing values increase over time because of the shortage. Here, housing values decrease over time: buying a house is never a lucrative investment, just a way to avoid rent increases (or having to move), to have control over your own home, because you think the land might increase in value (maybe they're going to build a new subway station nearby in 10 years), etc.
      - stephenr 2y ago
        > they're still competing with each other and won't be able to raise the prices too much. That only works if (a) there are multiple companies rather than one doing this and (b) they are operating independently and (c) there is a surplus of housing available; Take away any of those scenarios and there is not real competition, and thus they charge what they want.
        kelnos 2y ago
        > there is a surplus of housing available That's the entire point. You need to satisfy demand. If you have more demand than supply, you are always going to have housing unaffordability. > Take away any of those scenarios... Not really. Even if there's only one company that owns a lot of the housing stock, they can't just set prices wherever they want. People still have the choice not to live there, if the pricing isn't to their liking. And if there's equilibrium, or a surplus of housing, landlords have to meet renters on price. (Certainly the ideal is that you have many many landlords, rather than just one, of course.)
- lolinder 2y ago
  It depends on where you're going and I'll usually price both, but in the US I've usually found that a full-home Airbnb with two bedrooms is as cheap as an acceptably sized hotel room, with the added benefit of an easier checkin and checkout, no next-wall neighbors to worry about, and a full suite including kitchen and living room. The only time lately where a hotel has made more sense for us has been when we're intentionally choosing the cheapest possible motel because we're arriving late and leaving early (a stop on a road trip). Edit: I should probably clarify that my kids are light sleepers and won't go down easily while there's movement in the room, so the standard cramped-quarters 2xQueen arrangement that hotels offer isn't really viable for us for a longer stay. We need a space where the adults can go while the kids go to sleep.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Yup, agreed. In many places I'll end up with a 2- or 3-bedroom Airbnb for only myself and my wife, and it's comparable or cheaper than a hotel. So much more room, and a full kitchen, to boot. Rare that a hotel room even has a microwave, let alone a stove, oven, etc. in a dedicated kitchen space.
- alanbernstein 2y ago
  The point of that quote seems quite clear to me: an Airbnb with 2+ separated rooms is qualitatively different than an extra large hotel room.
- HWR_14 2y ago
  I think a more important question is what is the value in "catering to this segment of travellers"? The article goes into that near the end, but it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city. Whereas living next to an AirBnB does impose costs on me.
  - voisin 2y ago
    > it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city Not sure where you live, but generally tourists allow for a greater amount of restaurants, bars and cultural institutions than the same size city without much tourism. Not to mention hotels! Those things are employers and tax payers which helps the local economy. Often they are in core areas subject to business improvement area (BIA) levies that pay for public events and public art. In short: tourists can be annoying but they generally are positive.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city That's unlikely to be true. Any city with tourists benefits from increased economic activity that helps fund city services through hotel or short-term rental taxes, as well as tourists spending their money in the city and paying sales taxes. Cities with a healthy tourist economy can also support more museums, bars, restaurants, and other kinds of amenities; without tourists there just isn't the customer base to support as much.
- bnralt 2y ago
  I think you're talking about cramming an entire family into one larger hotel room vs. renting an entire apartment/house, right? The thing is if you need two or more rooms, then renting an entire house/apartment often becomes substantially cheaper (I just checked for Sydney, Australia, and it's the case there), you get much more common space, and also the ability to cook/wash clothes. There are some caveats - the hotel has daily maid service, but most people don't need a maid to clean their room on a daily basis. The AirBnB one time cleaning fees make it so that the longer you stay in the AirBnB, the cheaper the cost of the stay is on a per-day basis.
29athrowaway 2y ago
[flagged]
alwa 2y ago
I’m skeptical of the claim that short-term rental clampdown is the main factor influencing NYC’s $300-a-night average hotel room rate these days. It seems likely also to have to do with the decision [0] to convert 20% of the city’s stock of hotels to shelters even as demand rebounded post-COVID. Primarily the stock on the cheaper end of the market. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/nyregion/hotels-prices-migrants-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/nyregion/hotels-prices-mi...?
- amy-petrik-214 2y ago
  I agree with this thinking. Funny the city is using short term housing as long term shelters, but then bans using long term housing for short term rental because that distorts the market so! Hypocritical, yes, but the winner of the hypocritical scenario is the local citizen, and the loser, the tourist, which is typical of NYC and many other cities.
  - caustic-view 2y ago
    > but the winner of the hypocritical scenario is the local citizen, and the loser, the tourist, which is typical of NYC and many other cities. We aren’t talking about war crimes, so yeah this all sounds completely normal and kind of a truism? Why would or should a local polity put the interests of outsiders ahead of those of its own citizens, especially with regards to housing?
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Because people don't always understand the whole picture when it comes to their interests. Perhaps it's a city where tourism is incredibly important for prosperity. Maybe making things harder on tourists will result in problems for local businesses, or lower tax revenue that impacts the services the city can provide to its residents. And maybe not -- but it's plausible, and city officials need to take this sort of thing into account.
  - jihiggins 2y ago
    is that a problem...? should a city not prioritize its citizens over random vacationers?
daft_pink 2y ago
No more long list of chores to do when I go to my hotel?
fred_is_fred 2y ago
I travel places with one or zero hotels. Remote areas near skiing or parks, the other option is not going. Also I’ve found even if a hotel is a bit cheaper we can save hundreds by cooking ourselves. Especially with two teens. This is doable in some hotels but not well. The insane cleaning fees and chores are the downsides and requires me to be vigilant. For places I go a lot, I connect with the LL offline and do it privately. ToS be darned.
lolinder 2y ago
Barcelona has a population of 1.6 million people and Spain has an average household size of 2.5. This means that the 10k rentals that will return to the housing market will house about 25k people, or 1.5% of the current population of Barcelona. That's not nothing, but it's pretty clearly not going to make a substantial impact on housing prices.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Exactly. The problem there is the same as the problem in every city where housing costs have gone way up: they aren't building enough new units. It's really as simple as that; it's a simply supply-and-demand issue. And generally the reason they aren't building new units is because of zoning restrictions.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    So destroy demand for uses that are discretionary instead of non discretionary. Vacation travel accommodations aren’t a right, and tourists aren’t part of the local electorate. Airbnb isn’t going to magically put more supply on the market, only cause existing supply to be used for short term rentals. The benefit of a ban need not be extraordinary to justify, only a net positive.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Why do you need to regulate it at all? If you allow land to be used for hotels or housing equally, and don't slap huge taxes on hotel rooms just to pay for sports stadiums, then the market will sort things out and it won't be cheaper to stay in an AirBnB instead of a hotel. It works fine here in Japan: AirBnB isn't a big thing here except maybe in rural places not well served by hotels.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        Because it is the right of the local citizens and community to choose to do so if they deem the action to be appropriate. They do not need to justify the bans to anyone outside of their community or voting boundaries. The evidence is robust that “the market will sort things out” is not accurate. Capital and regulatory evasion will always move faster.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

17 points by kelnos 2y ago

[flagged]

>"There are many groups for whom hotels as the only option simply doesn't work," she says. "While the hotel industry has done legwork to be accommodating to families, the room layouts and prices don't work for the majority of families (especially those with 2+ kids) trying to take short breaks to cities. There has to be a way to balance the goals of the city while still catering to this segment of travellers – it's a huge loss to parents who want to introduce their children to the world." As someone who occasionally travels with his two children: this ignores pricing completely. The second you need a family-sized AirBnb you might as well go for a hotel; at least here in Australia family-sized rooms are cheaper in hotels than on AirBnb, where you generally need half a house. I'd rather my children live in a world where they can afford rent.

shiroiushi 2y ago
If your kids can't afford rent, that's because your city/county isn't building enough new housing units. It's not because of AirBnB. The way I see it, AirBnB is simply taking advantage of the fact that, in many cities, there's too few hotel rooms, and the prices are much too high for various reasons (excessive taxes, lack of supply, etc.). It shouldn't be cheaper for an individual to buy a whole house and rent it out on a per-day basis (esp. at the crazy prices houses cost in those same places) than for a person to just get a hotel room for a few nights from a big company that's built a large building full of separate rooms for this specific purpose, but it frequently is. That means something is deeply wrong with the market. The problem isn't AirBnB, the problem is the local (or national) government and its policies and regulation.
- capitooth 2y ago
  Or, private equity buys up all the homes and rents them or AirBNBs them (or both) and then uses their massive asset equity to buy more homes. This natural pressure raises the prices, and thus their asset value which lets them acquire more and more. Build more houses? Feed the beast. FIRST prevent housing investment in all forms. Then build more homes.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Sorry, economics don't work that way. If you build more houses, and build them more densely, it increases the supply. If corporations buy them up, they're still competing with each other and won't be able to raise the prices too much. They're only able to keep raising prices because supply is limited, so stop limiting supply. You don't need to ban housing investment. We don't have any such laws here in Japan. The only reason they're able to treat housing as an investment in other places is because of a lack of supply. Here, there's lots of supply, because the laws don't forbid development the way they do everywhere else. There, housing values increase over time because of the shortage. Here, housing values decrease over time: buying a house is never a lucrative investment, just a way to avoid rent increases (or having to move), to have control over your own home, because you think the land might increase in value (maybe they're going to build a new subway station nearby in 10 years), etc.
    - stephenr 2y ago
      > they're still competing with each other and won't be able to raise the prices too much. That only works if (a) there are multiple companies rather than one doing this and (b) they are operating independently and (c) there is a surplus of housing available; Take away any of those scenarios and there is not real competition, and thus they charge what they want.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        > there is a surplus of housing available That's the entire point. You need to satisfy demand. If you have more demand than supply, you are always going to have housing unaffordability. > Take away any of those scenarios... Not really. Even if there's only one company that owns a lot of the housing stock, they can't just set prices wherever they want. People still have the choice not to live there, if the pricing isn't to their liking. And if there's equilibrium, or a surplus of housing, landlords have to meet renters on price. (Certainly the ideal is that you have many many landlords, rather than just one, of course.)
lolinder 2y ago
It depends on where you're going and I'll usually price both, but in the US I've usually found that a full-home Airbnb with two bedrooms is as cheap as an acceptably sized hotel room, with the added benefit of an easier checkin and checkout, no next-wall neighbors to worry about, and a full suite including kitchen and living room. The only time lately where a hotel has made more sense for us has been when we're intentionally choosing the cheapest possible motel because we're arriving late and leaving early (a stop on a road trip). Edit: I should probably clarify that my kids are light sleepers and won't go down easily while there's movement in the room, so the standard cramped-quarters 2xQueen arrangement that hotels offer isn't really viable for us for a longer stay. We need a space where the adults can go while the kids go to sleep.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Yup, agreed. In many places I'll end up with a 2- or 3-bedroom Airbnb for only myself and my wife, and it's comparable or cheaper than a hotel. So much more room, and a full kitchen, to boot. Rare that a hotel room even has a microwave, let alone a stove, oven, etc. in a dedicated kitchen space.
alanbernstein 2y ago
The point of that quote seems quite clear to me: an Airbnb with 2+ separated rooms is qualitatively different than an extra large hotel room.
HWR_14 2y ago
I think a more important question is what is the value in "catering to this segment of travellers"? The article goes into that near the end, but it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city. Whereas living next to an AirBnB does impose costs on me.
- voisin 2y ago
  > it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city Not sure where you live, but generally tourists allow for a greater amount of restaurants, bars and cultural institutions than the same size city without much tourism. Not to mention hotels! Those things are employers and tax payers which helps the local economy. Often they are in core areas subject to business improvement area (BIA) levies that pay for public events and public art. In short: tourists can be annoying but they generally are positive.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > it doesn't benefit me to have tourists come to my city That's unlikely to be true. Any city with tourists benefits from increased economic activity that helps fund city services through hotel or short-term rental taxes, as well as tourists spending their money in the city and paying sales taxes. Cities with a healthy tourist economy can also support more museums, bars, restaurants, and other kinds of amenities; without tourists there just isn't the customer base to support as much.
bnralt 2y ago
I think you're talking about cramming an entire family into one larger hotel room vs. renting an entire apartment/house, right? The thing is if you need two or more rooms, then renting an entire house/apartment often becomes substantially cheaper (I just checked for Sydney, Australia, and it's the case there), you get much more common space, and also the ability to cook/wash clothes. There are some caveats - the hotel has daily maid service, but most people don't need a maid to clean their room on a daily basis. The AirBnB one time cleaning fees make it so that the longer you stay in the AirBnB, the cheaper the cost of the stay is on a per-day basis.

29athrowaway 2y ago

[flagged]

alwa 2y ago

I’m skeptical of the claim that short-term rental clampdown is the main factor influencing NYC’s $300-a-night average hotel room rate these days. It seems likely also to have to do with the decision [0] to convert 20% of the city’s stock of hotels to shelters even as demand rebounded post-COVID. Primarily the stock on the cheaper end of the market. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/nyregion/hotels-prices-migrants-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/nyregion/hotels-prices-mi...?

amy-petrik-214 2y ago
I agree with this thinking. Funny the city is using short term housing as long term shelters, but then bans using long term housing for short term rental because that distorts the market so! Hypocritical, yes, but the winner of the hypocritical scenario is the local citizen, and the loser, the tourist, which is typical of NYC and many other cities.
- caustic-view 2y ago
  > but the winner of the hypocritical scenario is the local citizen, and the loser, the tourist, which is typical of NYC and many other cities. We aren’t talking about war crimes, so yeah this all sounds completely normal and kind of a truism? Why would or should a local polity put the interests of outsiders ahead of those of its own citizens, especially with regards to housing?
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Because people don't always understand the whole picture when it comes to their interests. Perhaps it's a city where tourism is incredibly important for prosperity. Maybe making things harder on tourists will result in problems for local businesses, or lower tax revenue that impacts the services the city can provide to its residents. And maybe not -- but it's plausible, and city officials need to take this sort of thing into account.
- jihiggins 2y ago
  is that a problem...? should a city not prioritize its citizens over random vacationers?

daft_pink 2y ago

No more long list of chores to do when I go to my hotel?

fred_is_fred 2y ago

I travel places with one or zero hotels. Remote areas near skiing or parks, the other option is not going. Also I’ve found even if a hotel is a bit cheaper we can save hundreds by cooking ourselves. Especially with two teens. This is doable in some hotels but not well. The insane cleaning fees and chores are the downsides and requires me to be vigilant. For places I go a lot, I connect with the LL offline and do it privately. ToS be darned.

lolinder 2y ago

Barcelona has a population of 1.6 million people and Spain has an average household size of 2.5. This means that the 10k rentals that will return to the housing market will house about 25k people, or 1.5% of the current population of Barcelona. That's not nothing, but it's pretty clearly not going to make a substantial impact on housing prices.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Exactly. The problem there is the same as the problem in every city where housing costs have gone way up: they aren't building enough new units. It's really as simple as that; it's a simply supply-and-demand issue. And generally the reason they aren't building new units is because of zoning restrictions.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  So destroy demand for uses that are discretionary instead of non discretionary. Vacation travel accommodations aren’t a right, and tourists aren’t part of the local electorate. Airbnb isn’t going to magically put more supply on the market, only cause existing supply to be used for short term rentals. The benefit of a ban need not be extraordinary to justify, only a net positive.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Why do you need to regulate it at all? If you allow land to be used for hotels or housing equally, and don't slap huge taxes on hotel rooms just to pay for sports stadiums, then the market will sort things out and it won't be cheaper to stay in an AirBnB instead of a hotel. It works fine here in Japan: AirBnB isn't a big thing here except maybe in rural places not well served by hotels.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Because it is the right of the local citizens and community to choose to do so if they deem the action to be appropriate. They do not need to justify the bans to anyone outside of their community or voting boundaries. The evidence is robust that “the market will sort things out” is not accurate. Capital and regulatory evasion will always move faster.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]