9 ms·

Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" or "destroyed the dream of home ownership" as if decades of federal, state, and local government policy had

Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" or "destroyed the dream of home ownership" as if decades of federal, state, and local government policy had not already guaranteed those outcomes.

api 2y ago
Yeah I'm tired of this too. Real estate hyperinflation is almost entirely the fault of chronically under-building real estate due to regulatory capture by landlords, legacy homeowners, and speculators. The real estate market is more or less a cartel in quite a few places. AirBnB is a small factor. I suppose it drives up prices, but only because supply is so absurdly tight.
- Blackthorn 2y ago
  100% of code uses 100% of resources. Let's not downplay the role of Airbnb as both a company and a phenomena for causing inflation. But more than that, remember that a lot happens at the margins in these markets: what's actually liquid or in play is a small part of the overall stock. So anything that messes with that will have an outsized effect.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  You can define it as under-building, but that's only one side of the political effect. E.g. the UK net immigration rate has been pretty enormous, and it seems lopsided to call it under-building to have not built homes for a giant number of people coming from their previous homes elsewhere in the world to the UK. Speaking as the son of an immigrant, married to an immigrant, for the people who can only think tribally, and must assume I am doing the same.
  - arccy 2y ago
    most of these are legal immigrants, so the country decided to accept them, and yet failed to build enough to keep up with demand that they allowed.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      I agree that both things are caused by one level or government or another. I'm just saying that under building is not the only explanation. It's probably not even the most natural one. It's maybe a second or effect once you've decided to admit multiple cities' worth of people each year.
      - BlueTemplar 2y ago
        Curious, what happened to their previous homes ? Did they become Airbnb rentals on the cheap too by any chance ?
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        That would be an odd thing to assume. Net immigration has long predated AirBnB.
        BlueTemplar 2y ago
        Obviously I wonder about post-AirBnB migrants... or maybe also can we see changes in the source countries between pre- and post- ?
  - Hammershaft 2y ago
    Underutilization of land as a result on speculation on the growth of land prices is a major reason, even Manhattan has massive chunks of real estate that are vacant, a land value tax would fix this.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      That's an effect of massive demand, not a cause (or not a first-order cause). If you know (and vote for) loads more demand is coming the more you wait, you will wait. If demand were more limited to natural population growth levels, there'd be no point waiting.
sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago
Airbnb has in fact ruined communities and destroyed the dream of home ownership for an entire class of people: those who would already be buying at the limits of their budgets to stay where they were brought up. This happened even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business. The failure of government to grapple with the negative effects of Airbnb is a separate thing. Airbnb are, in fact, in control of their own morality.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  You need to explain why AirBnB did this as opposed to other factors. Renting your house out predates AirBnB.
  - sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago
    I need to? Thanks for the unnecessary correction, when it's pretty clear that my comment you are replying to includes the words "even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business". I don't know why it did not happen before. All I know is that the situation in coastal resort towns in Cornwall, Devon, and elsewhere in the UK changed utterly when Airbnb became a thing. I could guess that barrier to entry was always an issue before then; the relative complexity and process involved in listing a property with e.g. Hoseasons, who were the dominant player in the 80s and 90s, and who inspected properties and had greater requirements. But either way, Airbnb did unambiguously change things. Ask people who lived in Cornish towns whether they're even able to rent a room or a flat.
    - JackYoustra 2y ago
      I mean, usually if thing popular, make more of thing until everyone can have it? I guess we could go with your solution of deliberately killing demand with bizarre mechanisms so only a few people can enjoy a holiday instead of pointing the blame where it demands: locals fighting tooth and nail to not build more. Nimbys are basically hukou advocates in disguise. After all, it's the only solution if you don't primarily place the blame on lack of construction.
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Sure, but if someone started running heavy industrial concrete equipment in a residential zoned block 24/7, than the city wouldn't be blaming poor people for the issues. The fact is you can go to travel websites, and the first 70k listings in some cities are for commercial hotel/share services running out of residential zoned homes. Low-income people are easier to squeeze, and "with a computer" convenience doesn't make it an ethical securitization model. =3
fire_lake 2y ago
AirBnB has been shown to raise residential house prices. It’s not the only factor, or even the biggest, but still…
- kelnos 2y ago
  > It’s not the only factor, or even the biggest, but still… But that's the key, really. In most places, banning short-term rentals will not move the needle on housing affordability. It's like trying to optimize the thing that's causing 3% of the slowdown when things that are responsible for 40%, 30%, and 25% are right there, staring you in the face.
- Spivak 2y ago
  But getting rid of it doesn't lower them or even slow the increase. https://medium.com/chamber-of-progress/new-nyc-data-shows-that-airbnb-restrictions-arent-solving-housing-crunch-b835803d0040 https://medium.com/chamber-of-progress/new-nyc-data-shows-th...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nonameiguess 2y ago
When I read stuff like this, I'm left wondering if I'm the only person who actually lives in a place that has been infested with Airbnb. On paper, my neighborhood is the Hacker News dreamland. Nobody has a yard. There is train service. Many people don't have cars. There is no mandatory parking allowance. There is no zoning restriction against multifamily housing. Virtually every unit is at least attached. Multi-use is fine. Plenty of buildings contain both housing and businesses. There isn't a lot of traffic. It's walkable. The only major restriction is you can't build higher than five stories. And we've been in a construction boom for nearly a decade. But much of that boom has been tearing down multifamily apartment complexes and replacing them with luxury townhouses and condos instead. Almost nobody is actually moving into those places. They're 90% being purchased by investors, mostly out of state investors, to be used as Airbnbs. There is a significant categorical difference between investment property today and investment property before Airbnb. Before Airbnb, you rented via long-term leases, or you bought hotels and apartments in really shitty neighborhoods to use as weekly or even daily rentals for homeless people with jobs. Now you can buy as little as a single unit and the infrastructure to rent it out daily as a hotel room to much wealthier travelers exists without you needing to do anything extra. With predictable results. Even in neighorhoods with little to no zoning restrictions, with virtually nonstop construction of new housing, almost nobody lives here, the neighborhood is completely hollowed out, and all of these new luxury homes are mostly party houses used by rich college students and bachelorette parties.
- jovial_cavalier 2y ago
  That should drive your property value down, not up.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    Not until there are so many short-term rentals that they aren't profitable anymore
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I did not hear a complaint about what it was doing to their property values. I did hear: > virtually nonstop construction of new housing, almost nobody lives here, the neighborhood is completely hollowed out, and all of these new luxury homes are mostly party houses used by rich college students and bachelorette parties.
FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
If anything, there is a housing cartel that we need an Uber-like blitz (times a million) to destroy. In the same way that Uber ignored local taxi regulations, you would need to ignore local zoning regulations. Just "build, baby, build", become valuable, and then, with your fait-accompli in hand, bribe the various local governments -- just like Uber. Except -- if it took the combined might of Uber's VCs, and the disposable human battering ram that was Travis Kalanick, just to disrupt the puny little taxi industry, imagine what it would take to change housing. Ain't never gonna happen.
RiverCrochet 2y ago
I thought the original idea of Airbnb was to open a spare room in the house you already own to guests. I've used it only in this way and it really helped with a financial crunch, and given that I lived there and was present while guests where there, there was no negative impact to the community at all. I know people have been buying houses just for Airbnb rental, but that's not everyone.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" it has absolutely done so in the same way that a bunch of motels springing up in your neighborhood would completely change it and not necessarily for the better it also greatly constrained the availability of housing for locals, therefore pushing up prices, so that people not living in the city could visit for cheaper; probably ok if you're in the tourism business, otherwise not
remyp 2y ago
I live in Lisbon. Over 80% of housing units in the historic Alfama neighborhood are now vacation rentals. This is the most historically Portuguese neighborhood in the capital. It was the only neighborhood to survive the earthquake in 1755. Fado was born there. Yes, it's a failure of government policy, but I don't think it's hyperbole to say that AirBnB and its ilk destroyed that community. That is, assuming you define "community" as a group of people and not a group of buildings.

Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" or "destroyed the dream of home ownership" as if decades of federal, state, and local government policy had not already guaranteed those outcomes.

api 2y ago

Yeah I'm tired of this too. Real estate hyperinflation is almost entirely the fault of chronically under-building real estate due to regulatory capture by landlords, legacy homeowners, and speculators. The real estate market is more or less a cartel in quite a few places. AirBnB is a small factor. I suppose it drives up prices, but only because supply is so absurdly tight.

Blackthorn 2y ago
100% of code uses 100% of resources. Let's not downplay the role of Airbnb as both a company and a phenomena for causing inflation. But more than that, remember that a lot happens at the margins in these markets: what's actually liquid or in play is a small part of the overall stock. So anything that messes with that will have an outsized effect.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
robertlagrant 2y ago
You can define it as under-building, but that's only one side of the political effect. E.g. the UK net immigration rate has been pretty enormous, and it seems lopsided to call it under-building to have not built homes for a giant number of people coming from their previous homes elsewhere in the world to the UK. Speaking as the son of an immigrant, married to an immigrant, for the people who can only think tribally, and must assume I am doing the same.
- arccy 2y ago
  most of these are legal immigrants, so the country decided to accept them, and yet failed to build enough to keep up with demand that they allowed.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I agree that both things are caused by one level or government or another. I'm just saying that under building is not the only explanation. It's probably not even the most natural one. It's maybe a second or effect once you've decided to admit multiple cities' worth of people each year.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      Curious, what happened to their previous homes ? Did they become Airbnb rentals on the cheap too by any chance ?
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        That would be an odd thing to assume. Net immigration has long predated AirBnB.
        BlueTemplar 2y ago
        Obviously I wonder about post-AirBnB migrants... or maybe also can we see changes in the source countries between pre- and post- ?
- Hammershaft 2y ago
  Underutilization of land as a result on speculation on the growth of land prices is a major reason, even Manhattan has massive chunks of real estate that are vacant, a land value tax would fix this.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    That's an effect of massive demand, not a cause (or not a first-order cause). If you know (and vote for) loads more demand is coming the more you wait, you will wait. If demand were more limited to natural population growth levels, there'd be no point waiting.

sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago

Airbnb has in fact ruined communities and destroyed the dream of home ownership for an entire class of people: those who would already be buying at the limits of their budgets to stay where they were brought up. This happened even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business. The failure of government to grapple with the negative effects of Airbnb is a separate thing. Airbnb are, in fact, in control of their own morality.

robertlagrant 2y ago
You need to explain why AirBnB did this as opposed to other factors. Renting your house out predates AirBnB.
- sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago
  I need to? Thanks for the unnecessary correction, when it's pretty clear that my comment you are replying to includes the words "even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business". I don't know why it did not happen before. All I know is that the situation in coastal resort towns in Cornwall, Devon, and elsewhere in the UK changed utterly when Airbnb became a thing. I could guess that barrier to entry was always an issue before then; the relative complexity and process involved in listing a property with e.g. Hoseasons, who were the dominant player in the 80s and 90s, and who inspected properties and had greater requirements. But either way, Airbnb did unambiguously change things. Ask people who lived in Cornish towns whether they're even able to rent a room or a flat.
  - JackYoustra 2y ago
    I mean, usually if thing popular, make more of thing until everyone can have it? I guess we could go with your solution of deliberately killing demand with bizarre mechanisms so only a few people can enjoy a holiday instead of pointing the blame where it demands: locals fighting tooth and nail to not build more. Nimbys are basically hukou advocates in disguise. After all, it's the only solution if you don't primarily place the blame on lack of construction.

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

Sure, but if someone started running heavy industrial concrete equipment in a residential zoned block 24/7, than the city wouldn't be blaming poor people for the issues. The fact is you can go to travel websites, and the first 70k listings in some cities are for commercial hotel/share services running out of residential zoned homes. Low-income people are easier to squeeze, and "with a computer" convenience doesn't make it an ethical securitization model. =3

fire_lake 2y ago

AirBnB has been shown to raise residential house prices. It’s not the only factor, or even the biggest, but still…

kelnos 2y ago
> It’s not the only factor, or even the biggest, but still… But that's the key, really. In most places, banning short-term rentals will not move the needle on housing affordability. It's like trying to optimize the thing that's causing 3% of the slowdown when things that are responsible for 40%, 30%, and 25% are right there, staring you in the face.
Spivak 2y ago
But getting rid of it doesn't lower them or even slow the increase. https://medium.com/chamber-of-progress/new-nyc-data-shows-that-airbnb-restrictions-arent-solving-housing-crunch-b835803d0040 https://medium.com/chamber-of-progress/new-nyc-data-shows-th...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nonameiguess 2y ago

When I read stuff like this, I'm left wondering if I'm the only person who actually lives in a place that has been infested with Airbnb. On paper, my neighborhood is the Hacker News dreamland. Nobody has a yard. There is train service. Many people don't have cars. There is no mandatory parking allowance. There is no zoning restriction against multifamily housing. Virtually every unit is at least attached. Multi-use is fine. Plenty of buildings contain both housing and businesses. There isn't a lot of traffic. It's walkable. The only major restriction is you can't build higher than five stories. And we've been in a construction boom for nearly a decade. But much of that boom has been tearing down multifamily apartment complexes and replacing them with luxury townhouses and condos instead. Almost nobody is actually moving into those places. They're 90% being purchased by investors, mostly out of state investors, to be used as Airbnbs. There is a significant categorical difference between investment property today and investment property before Airbnb. Before Airbnb, you rented via long-term leases, or you bought hotels and apartments in really shitty neighborhoods to use as weekly or even daily rentals for homeless people with jobs. Now you can buy as little as a single unit and the infrastructure to rent it out daily as a hotel room to much wealthier travelers exists without you needing to do anything extra. With predictable results. Even in neighorhoods with little to no zoning restrictions, with virtually nonstop construction of new housing, almost nobody lives here, the neighborhood is completely hollowed out, and all of these new luxury homes are mostly party houses used by rich college students and bachelorette parties.

jovial_cavalier 2y ago
That should drive your property value down, not up.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  Not until there are so many short-term rentals that they aren't profitable anymore
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  I did not hear a complaint about what it was doing to their property values. I did hear: > virtually nonstop construction of new housing, almost nobody lives here, the neighborhood is completely hollowed out, and all of these new luxury homes are mostly party houses used by rich college students and bachelorette parties.

FooBarBizBazz 2y ago

If anything, there is a housing cartel that we need an Uber-like blitz (times a million) to destroy. In the same way that Uber ignored local taxi regulations, you would need to ignore local zoning regulations. Just "build, baby, build", become valuable, and then, with your fait-accompli in hand, bribe the various local governments -- just like Uber. Except -- if it took the combined might of Uber's VCs, and the disposable human battering ram that was Travis Kalanick, just to disrupt the puny little taxi industry, imagine what it would take to change housing. Ain't never gonna happen.

RiverCrochet 2y ago

I thought the original idea of Airbnb was to open a spare room in the house you already own to guests. I've used it only in this way and it really helped with a financial crunch, and given that I lived there and was present while guests where there, there was no negative impact to the community at all. I know people have been buying houses just for Airbnb rental, but that's not everyone.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" it has absolutely done so in the same way that a bunch of motels springing up in your neighborhood would completely change it and not necessarily for the better it also greatly constrained the availability of housing for locals, therefore pushing up prices, so that people not living in the city could visit for cheaper; probably ok if you're in the tourism business, otherwise not

remyp 2y ago

I live in Lisbon. Over 80% of housing units in the historic Alfama neighborhood are now vacation rentals. This is the most historically Portuguese neighborhood in the capital. It was the only neighborhood to survive the earthquake in 1755. Fado was born there. Yes, it's a failure of government policy, but I don't think it's hyperbole to say that AirBnB and its ilk destroyed that community. That is, assuming you define "community" as a group of people and not a group of buildings.