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Spain fines Airbnb €65M: Why the government is cracking down on illegal rentals

121 points by robtherobber 10mo ago

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ihsw 10mo ago
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probably_wrong 10mo ago
As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. [1] https://www.leonidasmartin.net/artes/no-vas-a-tener-una-casa-en-la-puta-vida https://www.leonidasmartin.net/artes/no-vas-a-tener-una-casa... (in Spanish)
- dazc 10mo ago
  They don't want to upset the high number of middle-class Spaniards who have all of their money invested in airbnbs.
- rdtsc 10mo ago
  > I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. I am totally unfamiliar with Spain, but wondering what would government have to do to improve the situation? They wouldn’t build government owned and operated houses? Or is it that they do not issue permits for builders, or tax incentives are all wrong?
  - bsoql 10mo ago
    https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg How much effect will 65000 flats have on this?
    - igtztorrero 10mo ago
      Everyone likes the warmth of Spain in winter
      - bsoql 10mo ago
        Those coming overwhelmingly come from places that are hotter than Spain.
        embedding-shape 10mo ago
        https://www.statista.com/statistics/445784/foreign-population-in-spain-by-nationality/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/445784/foreign-populatio... Not really true, Romania, Italy, UK, Ukraine, Peru, Germany, France and more are not hotter than Spain. Is there something else you're trying to hint at that you don't dare to say out loud perhaps?
  - dylan604 10mo ago
    Typically, government can step in by changing zoning ordinances that would allow for larger multi-family buildings. At least from my US perspective and assuming other countries would have something similar. There's a city near me that has an ordinance stating no buildings taller than four stories are allowed. If that was modified to allow up to ten story buildings, you could drastically increase number of units available.
  - jillesvangurp 10mo ago
    All of that probably. Also not that familiar with Spain. But the same issue is visible all over Europe. Basically apartments in nice areas are rented out to tourists for much more than would be affordable for locals. The advantage for the property owner is that these are short term rentals that are very lucrative. With long term renters, they basically the rental prices are highly regulated and in many countries it's very hard to terminate rental contracts. In some places renting out property is now so unattractive that landlords just sell off the property which removes it from the market entirely. That's what happened in the Netherlands in recent years. And meanwhile, getting any kind of building permits is super hard so there's only a trickle of new property being built that lags behind demand. There's a real estate bubble where real estate value outgrows inflation structurally. So housing is getting more and more expensive. To the point where a normal person with a normal income has basically no chance at all at finding anything decent on the market. The solution of building more housing and making it easier for property owners to rent out their property are consistently not happening. The Netherlands actually has large amounts of empty property where the owners prefer to not rent it out and keep their investment liquid because it's such a PITA to get out of an agreement. There's also a history of privatized housing corporations selling off their property to make some quick money for the share holders. The net result is a huge mess of private property that is either not rented out or rented out at extortion prices. At the same time there's also growing amount of empty commercial real estate. Because people work from home now. Converting that for housing is another regulation challenge. The problem isn't greed but broken policy. The reflex of "protecting" renters has had the opposite negative effects on the rental market. Things like Airbnb are more like a symptom than the cause of this. The way I see it, house construction should not be expensive. It's artificial scarcity. A 50K camper can be pretty comfortable. But forget about having the right to use that as a place to live. You are instead expected to pay extortion rents or buy your own 500K piece of shit tiny apartment that is actually smaller and less comfortable than the bloody camper. A camper is just a house with wheels. Those are mass produced in factories. Houses without wheels should be much simpler to make. This never was a technical problem. Prefab housing is kind of a solved problem. It's not that hard. Any idiot can construct a garden shed in an afternoon. If the rules were different, most big cities would have huge slums with campers and other improvised housing. Regulation is what keeps this under control. But when policy breaks down, slums like that become the next logical level of this crisis. A good example of exemptions in the Netherlands are so-called holiday homes where people live permanently; despite this clearly being illegal. Evicting people would create an unsolvable problem for bureaucrats. So, a lot of people that live like that got their situation legalized. And of course recreational units tend to be in nice places too. So, it's a popular thing. If tens of thousands of people start parking their campers on the edge of town bureaucrats would struggle to address the issue without creating a bigger crisis. Probably something like this will force a solution eventually.
- maeln 10mo ago
  > Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city. Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but this creates challenges with public transportation and other public services. And it can be slow since it means having to expel industry and agriculture further to rezone area into constructible home/office area. So the other option is to build up, which means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint. This would be bad for tourism (and people who live here might not like it either), since this is a big reason why people even come to visit. In the past, cities had simple way to deal with this. With zoning and hotel licences, the city could have a real urban plan on how it wanted to evolve and how much space it wanted to dedicate to tourism vs industry vs offices vs homes. But AirBnb came and just said "fuck that" and bypass complitely the licence système and or building and operating permit usually needed for tourism. Greed and capitalism took advantage of that and the number of place to rent or buy descreased significantly in favour of short term tourism rental, making living in the city slowly unaffordable. Building more is not that simple. AirBnb respecting the law is a simple solution. It won't complitely solve the issue of the availaibility of affordable home, but it sures as hell help.
  - namdnay 10mo ago
    if building up is bad for tourism, it kills two birds with one stone: more housing and less tourists who want airbnbs. so slowly build up until you stabilise the tourism at the level you want!
    - maeln 10mo ago
      Locals in cities do not necessarily like high rise neither. And tourism brings a lot of money and jobs. People won't really like making their city uglier and losing their jobs just to have more housing.
      - concinds 10mo ago
- pezgrande 10mo ago
  Did Airbnb really affect house market that much? Hotels got wayyy more expensive now there so I expect less tourism in the future, wonder if it was a good trade off.
- sct202 10mo ago
  They've been expanding their airports over those 20 years; Barcelona's passenger air arrivals has doubled in that time and there is another expansion being planned. Barcelona is not a large city and they should really be coupling every airport capacity increase with an equal increase in tourist accommodations or they end up in an even worse situation.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > Barcelona is not a large city By what measure? Granted, I now live outside of Barcelona after moving here from an island with ~700 people on it, so for me pretty much any city is big, but I'm fairly sure Barcelona is within top 100 worldwide in terms of population living in it, so I'm guessing you're saying "not a large city" by some other metric?
  - everfrustrated 10mo ago
    Spain's airports are quite interesting. They're all owned by a monopoly which sets the same landing fee to land at any airport. So high volume airports are effectively cross subsiding building very good airports in the smaller regional areas. Not great for prices (Ryanair is complaining about high landing fees) but it does mean tourists have a good job being dispersed into the countryside and having a good experience.
blitzar 10mo ago
Another senseless EU attack on the greatest nation on earth (/s?)
boblawbomb 10mo ago
[flagged]
- friendzis 10mo ago
  > Perhaps this is me being an ignorant American, but the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well. Yes, it's you being both ignorant and american. This argument quite directly, without any slopes (slippery or not), extends to for example acquiring a piece of land, building some housing at premium costs and then slapping a factory (and waste landifill, for a good measure) on the rest of the lot. Housing regulations exists for many abundant reasons. Living quarters vs short-time rentals drastically change requirements for and load on surrounding infrastructure, which is built out based on established zoning.
- dazc 10mo ago
  Housing used to be relatively cheap in Spain which has resulted in huge swathes of the main cities and tourist resorts becoming almost entirely airbnbs. The social/economic implications could have been predicted long ago.
- yardie 10mo ago
  > the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well Between zoning, easements, nuisance laws, government has a lot of say in how you use your private property. Owners even stepped it up a notch and invited HOAs, a quasi-government that has even more say about your property. Unfortunately, people love telling their neighbors how they should live.
daedrdev 10mo ago
The main issue with going after airbnb is that its a true bandaid fix: the gains in supply are often offset by just a few years or months progression of the underbuilding of supply
- KeplerBoy 10mo ago
  Still necessary though. If the economics work out for landlords, a city can lose a lot of apartments to short term rentals way faster than it could increase supply. Especially in central districts where significant new construction is barely possible.
- worksonmime 10mo ago
  in this case tourist-driven demand is a completely different beast than local housing needs, and no city can (or should) build enough to satisfy global tourism. Regulation may be the only realistic lever
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  Sure, but the article is specifically about that subject, while the government been working and continues to work on many other fixes too. Limiting rent increases, among other things, is constantly being talked and enacted right now, so at least it's going in the right direction. Airbnb is one of many problems, and all of them require something done about it. But one does not exclude the other, if you look up the "Spain" tag on your favorite international news source I'm sure you can dig out the other measures being taken currently.
  - socalgal2 10mo ago
    How does limiting rent increases help the issue? all that does is reduce the incentive to build more housing. It’s also a bandaid fix that sounds good today but in the end makes things worse.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      Because now people aren't priced out of their current place where they live simply because the landlord wants more money each month, now it's limited to increases by an index. And landlords can also not just kick out a tenant, raise the rent price and find someone else. Again, many small streams make a big river. Not one single action or new law will instantly fix the issue, you patch what you can and incrementally work towards something better.
IG_Semmelweiss 10mo ago
I distincly recall many articles stating that for ridiculous EUR like 50k you could buy housing in spain right after 2007 the crisis, for many years afterward. Because it was so overbuilt , at least outside of the big metros) that the builders and sellers were desperate to move. I wonder if they all wiped out by the crisis (subprime really hit spain hard), and what we are seeing now is the consequence of that wipeout, and bankruptcies.
- tokai 10mo ago
  You can get houses even cheaper now. The two things are not related though. Huge areas of Spain are barren empty places, with no jobs, transport, or anything. Nobody really can or want to live these places. Thats why the houses are so cheap.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  In large parts of Spain, that is still true. Entire rural villages for sale in some cases even. Problem is that it's in areas where people don't want to live. In the areas people want to live, the problem is the opposite, there isn't nearly enough housing, so you end up with some of the highest population densities in EU (#2 and #3 are both in Spain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_proper_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... in "density per km2" for example, 50% of top 10 on that list is in Spain!) and prices keep going up. Add in that salaries are pretty low so cost of living is subsequently low, so you end up with a ton of "expats" and other fun folks like "foreign investors" who purchase up all the livable/rentable properties with their "higher value" money, because everything is so cheap for them. Owners realize this, and while the government is (now at least) trying to put a stop to all of this with limiting rent increases and more, owners still try to take advantage of it as much as they can. Personally, I think we need to temporarily put a complete halt to non-residents buying any sort of properties or even land here, at least for a short period of time so the people who actually live and work here can recover from the situation. For the average person with a normal job here and not working for foreign companies with a higher salary, it's short of impossible to be able to afford to eventually buy a house.
igtztorrero 10mo ago
[flagged]
- Arainach 10mo ago
  "Let's break the law and hope that we get rich enough to lobby before we get shut down" isn't innovation.
  - dylan604 10mo ago
    The word disrupt makes me roll my eyes like I'm 13 again. It has become a dog whistle to me now that when I hear it, I immediately want to walk away from whatever pitch is being offered.
dvt 10mo ago
This is not just a problem in Spain. Affordable housing is a problem in almost every Western metro, both in the US and in Europe. The problem is caused by the financialization of real estate. I know it's always been a bit of a financial asset, but the past 40 years have really seen this accelerate to pretty crazy levels. The issue, when you boil it down to the basics is: wealthy folks, development companies, overseas oligarchs, hedge funds, etc. owning many properties where they try to extract as much value as possible. This means that rents go up and short-term-rentals become more viable. This also means that young middle-class families can't afford to purchase or to live there, so it pushes out locals (this is especially bad in Lisbon). The solution seems to be government telling you what you can or you can't do with your private property, which does not sit well with me, but it's becoming more and more clear that this can't go on forever.
- reed1234 10mo ago
  Is it not a supply and demand problem? Then the only rational solution to get prices down is to build more housing.
  - nemomarx 10mo ago
    More supply is crucial but efforts to reduce demand in the mean time probably won't hurt either. If tourists can stay in hotels and hostels that take up less housing that seems good? But you still need to build more housing obviously
    - reed1234 10mo ago
      Wouldn’t that cause an artificial pressure against construction?
      - skeeter2020 10mo ago
        I don't think dramatically, because the issue right now is that residential housing can be used for short-term commercial accomodation. It feels like the connection between these supply & demand curves is limited.
exabrial 10mo ago
__thats it__??? it's missing like 5 zeros on the righthand side of that number.
- lefstathiou 10mo ago
  65,000,000.00000
  - exabrial 10mo ago
    Well played
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > The fine is equal to six times the profits Airbnb made while the properties were still listed despite being in breach of the rules. As long as it wasn't profitable for them to do bad stuff (which it wasn't, since the fine is 6 times the size of their profits from that period of time), I'm happy enough about. You win some, you lose some, this is closer to winning than loosing so thank you Ministerio de Consumo.
- jackliuhahaha 10mo ago
  that's delusional: 65M * 10,000 = 100 times ABNB's market cap
- sallveburrpi 10mo ago
  They should fine them 6.5 trillion? I’m in favour of the fine but that seems a bit much
  - exabrial 10mo ago
    Sometimes jokes don’t come out well over the internet.
- Invictus0 10mo ago
  [flagged]
MisterTea 10mo ago
I was in Spain this past summer and it certainly seems they are experiencing tourist burnout. I saw anti tourist messages on banners hung on buildings, graffiti, posters and stickers in Madrid and Barcelona. Some of it was a bit threatening but I had zero issues. The issue of airbnb is a sticky one. On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place. Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels. On the other hand, these rentals drive up real estate prices and drives out locals. And often these rentals are in run-down low-income turning affordable yet poor quality housing into high quality temporary rentals. This drives out low income residents deepening income inequality issues while subjecting them to the threat of homelessness. As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity we won't resolve any of these issues. In a better world we would think about others and realize that easy access to shelter is foundational to stabilizing people to enable them to succeed in life. It's not hard, we have an abundance of materials and labor yet we have built a culture where helping others is some form of weakness for both parties.
- showsover 10mo ago
  > On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place. Yes, if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays. Having an airbnb in your building is terrible as you don't know the people and they don't care about getting to know you. > Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels. The great thing about hotels is that they can be planned for and zoned correctly for. Even so, I've had a hotel go up 100m from my apartment and had to invest in blackout blinds since they chose for a modern design with glass all over (and the lights are bright at night). The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.
  - 10mo ago
Stevvo 10mo ago
Georgism is the only long-term solution to this problem. It's not like there is even disagreement on that; any economist would tell you so. However, the Landed gentry have no interest in solutions.
- dzhiurgis 10mo ago
  Which problem and which economists?
  - QGQBGdeZREunxLe 10mo ago
    You can definitely find household named economists that don't agree with Land Value Taxes. Hell there's a grassroots push in the US to eliminate property taxes.
    - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
      I do like Georgism, but taxing wealth and not a transaction is just going to transfer wealth from poor to government. Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest).
      - friendzis 10mo ago
        > Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest). Capital gains tax has zero effect on billionaires precisely because it is not levied on them in most cases. When one's total wealth hits high tens of millions suddenly they get access to instruments to use their wealth without triggering "taxable events". Probably the most well-known example are loans against shares. This eliminates [some of] downward pressure on some asset prices, triggering positive feedback loop on price and thus wealth transfer.
        dzhiurgis 10mo ago
        Loans needs to be paid off tho...
alfyboy 10mo ago
I was recently evicted from my apartment in a city in Norway experiencing similar growth in short-term rentals. The rental on that apartment was around €750 (same for my roommate). Apparently, during high season in the winter similar apartments goes for ~€830 a night. High season is 3 months in the winter, but seemingly that is enough to outcompete longterm tenants.
- Ekaros 10mo ago
  There is 12 months in a year. So that can be covered in 12 days... So even half a month would be more... Seems broken... I have nothing against short or medium term rentals. If they are limited percentage of housing as total. This percentage is rather low.
- neom 10mo ago
  You have no protections against this where you live? That would be near impossible where I live (Ontario).
  - alfyboy 10mo ago
    Unfortunately not due to co-living with the landlord.
dariosalvi78 10mo ago
The main issue with Airbnb is that a few companies own a huge percentage of the flats. It's a big, unregulated, industry without any responsibility that is driving regular hotels out of business and locals out of their neighbouhoods. Of course it has to end at some point.
- subpixel 10mo ago
  See my other comment. When 30% of the housing stock is short-term rentals that families cannot buy, it doesn't matter at all who owns them. Where I live, they are all owned by locals, but that doesn't remediate any of the issues short-term rentals cause.
  - dariosalvi78 10mo ago
    Local, middle class owners can own how many empty flats? 1%? 10%? Of course I don't have a number, but I'd bet that if you remove the mega-owners, that 30% would drop significantly. Airbnb was not a bad idea, but it has been perverted. It's time to regulate it and probably break it too.
    - subpixel 10mo ago
      Ownership class is all conjecture, but it really doesn't matter because all owners behave the same way. It's not as if local owners rent less, or charge less, or leverage their property less.
- mistrial9 10mo ago
  no it does not have to end. I mean to say, it is foolish to think you know how systems will play out over time. If the game rules are imbalanced then no one knows.
  - dariosalvi78 10mo ago
    Sure, let it expand infinitely until it owns all real estate on earth
NotGMan 10mo ago
AirBnB should be banned, and I say that as a very pro-capitalist guy. In an economy where there is a housing shortage local population needs affordable and long-term (6-months+) rental contracts or they don't have stability. Capitalism is great in general, but some things, such as healthcare, housing, electricity,... needs to have a stronger regulatory framework then eg TVs since the collapse of basic human necessities creates chaos and eventually becomes the foothold of extreme socialist/communist political parties which then finish the job of destroying the economy.
- miguelxt 10mo ago
  Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next? Housing and rent are already heavily regulated in Spain. Some regulations and side effects of those regulations: * Minimum contract length of 5 years. * Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years). * It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. * Even if the tenant is not paying, you, the landlord, have to keep paying the utilities, because if you stop paying, you'll be charged with "coacciones". * If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. * In some cities like Barcelona, regulation goes beyond. Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated. * And all that is not going into detail of the "Okupa" problem.
  - ryan_lane 10mo ago
    > Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next? New York, as expensive as it is, is still considerably cheaper than cities like SF. Part of this is that they build more, part of it is that they have a usable train system, which allows people to live more spread out across the city, but part of it as well, is that they've banned airbnb. It would be ideal to also see empty unit taxes on units >$10m (inflation adjusted). It would also be good to see high taxes on sales of units >$10m (inflation adjusted). > Minimum contract length of 5 years. This is good, assuming it's one sided (the tenant can choose to move out, but the landlord can't break the lease). People need stability in housing more than landlords need to be able to end leases. > Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years) Sure, it should be generally tied to inflation, but what other investment exists where you're guaranteed yearly increases? Why are people so adamant that landlords need to be guaranteed minimal increases in their profits? Housing is a natural monopoly, and allowing businesses to maximize their profits, unchecked, isn't capitalism. > It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. This is often brought out as a massive negative of regulations, but let's be honest, this is an outlier. Without tenant protections, however, it's common for landlords to evict tenants to increase rents. Even with protections, landlords still take illegal measures to try to evict tenants to increase rents, like doing constant construction at night, or refusing to do maintenance. This is basically the same complaint about welfare programs. We have to accept some percentage of fraud to serve the greater good. It's completely normal for most businesses to take a risk based approach to fraud, to maximize profits. Retail businesses, for example, will try to maximize their credit card auth rates, even though that may increase their fraud rate, if the increases in auth rate outweigh the cost of the fraud. A stable society is worth a small percentage of fraud. > If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. Good. I don't see how this is a downside. > Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated. Again, this is good. If there's a housing crunch, then residents should be prioritized over tourists.
throw_m239339 10mo ago
Good. How could these "disruptive" american companies get away with violating local laws that long remains a mystery to me. If I started running an illegal hotel in Barcelona, or a website advertising for illegal rentals in the same city, myself, from Spain, I'd be quickly arrested and thrown in jail as an individual...
asdfsfds 10mo ago
I live in Spain. I'll give you an interesting example I've witnessed. Two of my neighbors rent seasonally on airbnb. Middle class women, one of them a widow. I assume they used to make a tidy profit. I believe they worked quite hard on making those houses pretty, and I've seen they had good reviews. Just now their license to operate has been denied, apparently without much explanation (I believe the Property Registry is making the decision, this is a bureaucratic body of state employees, not democratically elected). Across the street lies a hotel, a true tourist trap. They have a 6/10 rating on booking and rely on scamming British tourists, whom you can see balancing drunk on their balconies daily. It's owned by a national conglomerate. As you may guess, as of now the airbnbs are closed and the hotel is thriving despite only bringing the worst kind of tourist to the community. An astute observer will note that the hotel industry is one of the biggest lobbyists supporting the current government at a national level. I am not one to defend big companies, but for some people here Airbnb was freedom. Now they have to go work cleaning rooms or just collect retirement checks, as obtaining a license to run a hotel is impossible without political connections / corruption. My point is, not everywhere are laws as fair as in the United States. Before someone talks about housing pressure, this is a relatively out of the way area where 40% of houses sit empty most of the year.
- foogazi 10mo ago
  Can those drunk tourists not rent Airbnb's too ? How is it not better for them to stay across the street at the hotel than on a flat next to a family home ?
  - asdfsfds 10mo ago
    The Airbnbs mentioned rented throughout the year in monthly periods, so they fill a different niche. The new law kills not only short term stays but everything that goes through an online provider (except multi-year contracts). When I first arrived here I relied on these long stay airbnbs until I could find a way through the byzantine Spanish rental process. Now this option will no longer exist. Again, you are not familiar with Spanish politics if you think this is by accident. I have myself given up on any attempts of doing business here after I spent 1 year waiting for a certain business license and could only obtain it (in a week) after a chance friendship with a local notary. :)
alexandrerond 10mo ago
I have legal holiday rentals on two properties in Spain, but they are managed by an specialized company: * The regional administration handed out licenses without problems until a year ago, even when everyone was complaining already about these rentals. It was just paperwork + fee to get the license. They did for years and now they wonder why there are so many flats: they allowed it. * The main issue these rentals cause to the neighbors is people partying, being noisy, inconsiderate. Rentals have rules against these behaviors yet they happen frequently. I wish we or the police had tools to legally kick people out in the middle of the night for this behavior. * Apart from legal rentals, which are being limited now, there are a lot of illegal rentals. They are only starting to crack down on them. AirBNB and others have not complied with the law and this should not come as surprise. They have actively enabled illegal businesses for years. People go to jail for that and they should shut them down. * There is no affordable housing in the city-center. Rental flats make it worse but in many places the issue will not be fixed if they disappeared. The causes are deeper and a nice flat is not going to become "cheap" to rent in any case. * Holiday rentals are a bit more profitable that long-term rentals, but not crazy unless you are doing it at scale and they come with their own problems. Many are switching now to "seasonal" rentals, which are rentals for a period less than a year and the tenants need to go then. They forgot to handle these in the new regulations. Long-term rental is problematic because you can't use your flat when you need it. i.e. if you have a flat that you come to spend your own holidays. So people in that situation have limited alternatives. * I am personally not against switching to long term rentals, but the current situation wrt. licenses etc. puts me in a "wait and see" mode. My flat is legal, so they might make it more profitable by cracking down on illegal ones. Once I put a long-term rental I cannot ever go back to vacation rental either. There is little incentive to switch right now, but I will of course do it if I'm legally required to do so. For all the talk, they haven't taken that step, which is a testament to how politicians can say one thing and then do close to nothing in the end.
johndoh42 10mo ago
... because the government is in the pocket of the big hotel chains, which are ruining the country. Airbnb: World travelers who try to blend in. Hotel: Drunk Brits who puke all over the place. We have 3 Airbnb flats in our house for 2 years now. Never had an issue with any of the renters; But, the lights in the stairwell are working now, the door locks work, electricity is stable, and I haven't seen a cockroach in a long time. Meanwhile the guests from the hotel across the street keep us awake every freakin' night. Bonus: Those 3 flats had been sitting empty for nearly 10 years, just like the other ~30 thousand flats sitting empty in the city.
- rkomorn 10mo ago
  My anecdata is different: the Airbnb one floor above us in our last place earned us a visit from the cops (due to a misunderstanding about the definition of "bottom floor") due to how frequently they were occupied by people either having parties there or coming back from parties very loudly at all times of night. The same floor/direction misunderstanding also got us so many incorrect doorbell rings that we ended up muting it at the cost of risking missed deliveries. Whatever magical behavior these AirBnB guests have, they can still take it to a hotel.

121 points by robtherobber 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

ihsw 10mo ago

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probably_wrong 10mo ago

As far as I understand this is the latest shot in the conflict between Spain and its lack of affordable housing. I'd put the symbolic start around 2004-2006 [1] with the movement called "you won't have a house in your fucking life" where people all over Spain started demonstrating against high apartment prices. I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. [1] https://www.leonidasmartin.net/artes/no-vas-a-tener-una-casa-en-la-puta-vida https://www.leonidasmartin.net/artes/no-vas-a-tener-una-casa... (in Spanish)

dazc 10mo ago
They don't want to upset the high number of middle-class Spaniards who have all of their money invested in airbnbs.
rdtsc 10mo ago
> I don't like AirBnB and I'm glad they got fined, but the Spanish government also needs to accept that they have been sitting around doing nothing for roughly 20 years. Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. I am totally unfamiliar with Spain, but wondering what would government have to do to improve the situation? They wouldn’t build government owned and operated houses? Or is it that they do not issue permits for builders, or tax incentives are all wrong?
- bsoql 10mo ago
  https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/UcmNiWf.jpeg How much effect will 65000 flats have on this?
  - igtztorrero 10mo ago
    Everyone likes the warmth of Spain in winter
    - bsoql 10mo ago
      Those coming overwhelmingly come from places that are hotter than Spain.
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        https://www.statista.com/statistics/445784/foreign-population-in-spain-by-nationality/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/445784/foreign-populatio... Not really true, Romania, Italy, UK, Ukraine, Peru, Germany, France and more are not hotter than Spain. Is there something else you're trying to hint at that you don't dare to say out loud perhaps?
- dylan604 10mo ago
  Typically, government can step in by changing zoning ordinances that would allow for larger multi-family buildings. At least from my US perspective and assuming other countries would have something similar. There's a city near me that has an ordinance stating no buildings taller than four stories are allowed. If that was modified to allow up to ten story buildings, you could drastically increase number of units available.
- jillesvangurp 10mo ago
  All of that probably. Also not that familiar with Spain. But the same issue is visible all over Europe. Basically apartments in nice areas are rented out to tourists for much more than would be affordable for locals. The advantage for the property owner is that these are short term rentals that are very lucrative. With long term renters, they basically the rental prices are highly regulated and in many countries it's very hard to terminate rental contracts. In some places renting out property is now so unattractive that landlords just sell off the property which removes it from the market entirely. That's what happened in the Netherlands in recent years. And meanwhile, getting any kind of building permits is super hard so there's only a trickle of new property being built that lags behind demand. There's a real estate bubble where real estate value outgrows inflation structurally. So housing is getting more and more expensive. To the point where a normal person with a normal income has basically no chance at all at finding anything decent on the market. The solution of building more housing and making it easier for property owners to rent out their property are consistently not happening. The Netherlands actually has large amounts of empty property where the owners prefer to not rent it out and keep their investment liquid because it's such a PITA to get out of an agreement. There's also a history of privatized housing corporations selling off their property to make some quick money for the share holders. The net result is a huge mess of private property that is either not rented out or rented out at extortion prices. At the same time there's also growing amount of empty commercial real estate. Because people work from home now. Converting that for housing is another regulation challenge. The problem isn't greed but broken policy. The reflex of "protecting" renters has had the opposite negative effects on the rental market. Things like Airbnb are more like a symptom than the cause of this. The way I see it, house construction should not be expensive. It's artificial scarcity. A 50K camper can be pretty comfortable. But forget about having the right to use that as a place to live. You are instead expected to pay extortion rents or buy your own 500K piece of shit tiny apartment that is actually smaller and less comfortable than the bloody camper. A camper is just a house with wheels. Those are mass produced in factories. Houses without wheels should be much simpler to make. This never was a technical problem. Prefab housing is kind of a solved problem. It's not that hard. Any idiot can construct a garden shed in an afternoon. If the rules were different, most big cities would have huge slums with campers and other improvised housing. Regulation is what keeps this under control. But when policy breaks down, slums like that become the next logical level of this crisis. A good example of exemptions in the Netherlands are so-called holiday homes where people live permanently; despite this clearly being illegal. Evicting people would create an unsolvable problem for bureaucrats. So, a lot of people that live like that got their situation legalized. And of course recreational units tend to be in nice places too. So, it's a popular thing. If tens of thousands of people start parking their campers on the edge of town bureaucrats would struggle to address the issue without creating a bigger crisis. Probably something like this will force a solution eventually.
maeln 10mo ago
> Looks like politicians all over will do everything in their power except actually building more apartments. This is the wrong way to frame this issue. A lot of cities like Paris and Amsterdam have this issue with short-term renting. "Build moar" is just not really an option for these type of city. Firstly, the constructible area of the city is limited. So build, but build where ? You can expand horizontally, but this creates challenges with public transportation and other public services. And it can be slow since it means having to expel industry and agriculture further to rezone area into constructible home/office area. So the other option is to build up, which means destroying potentially historic building, changing the skyline and viewpoint. This would be bad for tourism (and people who live here might not like it either), since this is a big reason why people even come to visit. In the past, cities had simple way to deal with this. With zoning and hotel licences, the city could have a real urban plan on how it wanted to evolve and how much space it wanted to dedicate to tourism vs industry vs offices vs homes. But AirBnb came and just said "fuck that" and bypass complitely the licence système and or building and operating permit usually needed for tourism. Greed and capitalism took advantage of that and the number of place to rent or buy descreased significantly in favour of short term tourism rental, making living in the city slowly unaffordable. Building more is not that simple. AirBnb respecting the law is a simple solution. It won't complitely solve the issue of the availaibility of affordable home, but it sures as hell help.
- namdnay 10mo ago
  if building up is bad for tourism, it kills two birds with one stone: more housing and less tourists who want airbnbs. so slowly build up until you stabilise the tourism at the level you want!
  - maeln 10mo ago
    Locals in cities do not necessarily like high rise neither. And tourism brings a lot of money and jobs. People won't really like making their city uglier and losing their jobs just to have more housing.
    - concinds 10mo ago
pezgrande 10mo ago
Did Airbnb really affect house market that much? Hotels got wayyy more expensive now there so I expect less tourism in the future, wonder if it was a good trade off.
sct202 10mo ago
They've been expanding their airports over those 20 years; Barcelona's passenger air arrivals has doubled in that time and there is another expansion being planned. Barcelona is not a large city and they should really be coupling every airport capacity increase with an equal increase in tourist accommodations or they end up in an even worse situation.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > Barcelona is not a large city By what measure? Granted, I now live outside of Barcelona after moving here from an island with ~700 people on it, so for me pretty much any city is big, but I'm fairly sure Barcelona is within top 100 worldwide in terms of population living in it, so I'm guessing you're saying "not a large city" by some other metric?
- everfrustrated 10mo ago
  Spain's airports are quite interesting. They're all owned by a monopoly which sets the same landing fee to land at any airport. So high volume airports are effectively cross subsiding building very good airports in the smaller regional areas. Not great for prices (Ryanair is complaining about high landing fees) but it does mean tourists have a good job being dispersed into the countryside and having a good experience.

blitzar 10mo ago

Another senseless EU attack on the greatest nation on earth (/s?)

boblawbomb 10mo ago

[flagged]

friendzis 10mo ago
> Perhaps this is me being an ignorant American, but the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well. Yes, it's you being both ignorant and american. This argument quite directly, without any slopes (slippery or not), extends to for example acquiring a piece of land, building some housing at premium costs and then slapping a factory (and waste landifill, for a good measure) on the rest of the lot. Housing regulations exists for many abundant reasons. Living quarters vs short-time rentals drastically change requirements for and load on surrounding infrastructure, which is built out based on established zoning.
dazc 10mo ago
Housing used to be relatively cheap in Spain which has resulted in huge swathes of the main cities and tourist resorts becoming almost entirely airbnbs. The social/economic implications could have been predicted long ago.
yardie 10mo ago
> the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well Between zoning, easements, nuisance laws, government has a lot of say in how you use your private property. Owners even stepped it up a notch and invited HOAs, a quasi-government that has even more say about your property. Unfortunately, people love telling their neighbors how they should live.

daedrdev 10mo ago

The main issue with going after airbnb is that its a true bandaid fix: the gains in supply are often offset by just a few years or months progression of the underbuilding of supply

KeplerBoy 10mo ago
Still necessary though. If the economics work out for landlords, a city can lose a lot of apartments to short term rentals way faster than it could increase supply. Especially in central districts where significant new construction is barely possible.
worksonmime 10mo ago
in this case tourist-driven demand is a completely different beast than local housing needs, and no city can (or should) build enough to satisfy global tourism. Regulation may be the only realistic lever
embedding-shape 10mo ago
Sure, but the article is specifically about that subject, while the government been working and continues to work on many other fixes too. Limiting rent increases, among other things, is constantly being talked and enacted right now, so at least it's going in the right direction. Airbnb is one of many problems, and all of them require something done about it. But one does not exclude the other, if you look up the "Spain" tag on your favorite international news source I'm sure you can dig out the other measures being taken currently.
- socalgal2 10mo ago
  How does limiting rent increases help the issue? all that does is reduce the incentive to build more housing. It’s also a bandaid fix that sounds good today but in the end makes things worse.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Because now people aren't priced out of their current place where they live simply because the landlord wants more money each month, now it's limited to increases by an index. And landlords can also not just kick out a tenant, raise the rent price and find someone else. Again, many small streams make a big river. Not one single action or new law will instantly fix the issue, you patch what you can and incrementally work towards something better.

IG_Semmelweiss 10mo ago

I distincly recall many articles stating that for ridiculous EUR like 50k you could buy housing in spain right after 2007 the crisis, for many years afterward. Because it was so overbuilt , at least outside of the big metros) that the builders and sellers were desperate to move. I wonder if they all wiped out by the crisis (subprime really hit spain hard), and what we are seeing now is the consequence of that wipeout, and bankruptcies.

tokai 10mo ago
You can get houses even cheaper now. The two things are not related though. Huge areas of Spain are barren empty places, with no jobs, transport, or anything. Nobody really can or want to live these places. Thats why the houses are so cheap.
embedding-shape 10mo ago
In large parts of Spain, that is still true. Entire rural villages for sale in some cases even. Problem is that it's in areas where people don't want to live. In the areas people want to live, the problem is the opposite, there isn't nearly enough housing, so you end up with some of the highest population densities in EU (#2 and #3 are both in Spain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_proper_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... in "density per km2" for example, 50% of top 10 on that list is in Spain!) and prices keep going up. Add in that salaries are pretty low so cost of living is subsequently low, so you end up with a ton of "expats" and other fun folks like "foreign investors" who purchase up all the livable/rentable properties with their "higher value" money, because everything is so cheap for them. Owners realize this, and while the government is (now at least) trying to put a stop to all of this with limiting rent increases and more, owners still try to take advantage of it as much as they can. Personally, I think we need to temporarily put a complete halt to non-residents buying any sort of properties or even land here, at least for a short period of time so the people who actually live and work here can recover from the situation. For the average person with a normal job here and not working for foreign companies with a higher salary, it's short of impossible to be able to afford to eventually buy a house.

igtztorrero 10mo ago

[flagged]

Arainach 10mo ago
"Let's break the law and hope that we get rich enough to lobby before we get shut down" isn't innovation.
- dylan604 10mo ago
  The word disrupt makes me roll my eyes like I'm 13 again. It has become a dog whistle to me now that when I hear it, I immediately want to walk away from whatever pitch is being offered.

dvt 10mo ago

This is not just a problem in Spain. Affordable housing is a problem in almost every Western metro, both in the US and in Europe. The problem is caused by the financialization of real estate. I know it's always been a bit of a financial asset, but the past 40 years have really seen this accelerate to pretty crazy levels. The issue, when you boil it down to the basics is: wealthy folks, development companies, overseas oligarchs, hedge funds, etc. owning many properties where they try to extract as much value as possible. This means that rents go up and short-term-rentals become more viable. This also means that young middle-class families can't afford to purchase or to live there, so it pushes out locals (this is especially bad in Lisbon). The solution seems to be government telling you what you can or you can't do with your private property, which does not sit well with me, but it's becoming more and more clear that this can't go on forever.

reed1234 10mo ago
Is it not a supply and demand problem? Then the only rational solution to get prices down is to build more housing.
- nemomarx 10mo ago
  More supply is crucial but efforts to reduce demand in the mean time probably won't hurt either. If tourists can stay in hotels and hostels that take up less housing that seems good? But you still need to build more housing obviously
  - reed1234 10mo ago
    Wouldn’t that cause an artificial pressure against construction?
    - skeeter2020 10mo ago
      I don't think dramatically, because the issue right now is that residential housing can be used for short-term commercial accomodation. It feels like the connection between these supply & demand curves is limited.

exabrial 10mo ago

__thats it__??? it's missing like 5 zeros on the righthand side of that number.

lefstathiou 10mo ago
65,000,000.00000
- exabrial 10mo ago
  Well played
embedding-shape 10mo ago
> The fine is equal to six times the profits Airbnb made while the properties were still listed despite being in breach of the rules. As long as it wasn't profitable for them to do bad stuff (which it wasn't, since the fine is 6 times the size of their profits from that period of time), I'm happy enough about. You win some, you lose some, this is closer to winning than loosing so thank you Ministerio de Consumo.
jackliuhahaha 10mo ago
that's delusional: 65M * 10,000 = 100 times ABNB's market cap
sallveburrpi 10mo ago
They should fine them 6.5 trillion? I’m in favour of the fine but that seems a bit much
- exabrial 10mo ago
  Sometimes jokes don’t come out well over the internet.
Invictus0 10mo ago
[flagged]

MisterTea 10mo ago

I was in Spain this past summer and it certainly seems they are experiencing tourist burnout. I saw anti tourist messages on banners hung on buildings, graffiti, posters and stickers in Madrid and Barcelona. Some of it was a bit threatening but I had zero issues. The issue of airbnb is a sticky one. On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place. Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels. On the other hand, these rentals drive up real estate prices and drives out locals. And often these rentals are in run-down low-income turning affordable yet poor quality housing into high quality temporary rentals. This drives out low income residents deepening income inequality issues while subjecting them to the threat of homelessness. As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity we won't resolve any of these issues. In a better world we would think about others and realize that easy access to shelter is foundational to stabilizing people to enable them to succeed in life. It's not hard, we have an abundance of materials and labor yet we have built a culture where helping others is some form of weakness for both parties.

showsover 10mo ago
> On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place. Yes, if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays. Having an airbnb in your building is terrible as you don't know the people and they don't care about getting to know you. > Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels. The great thing about hotels is that they can be planned for and zoned correctly for. Even so, I've had a hotel go up 100m from my apartment and had to invest in blackout blinds since they chose for a modern design with glass all over (and the lights are bright at night). The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.
- 10mo ago

Stevvo 10mo ago

Georgism is the only long-term solution to this problem. It's not like there is even disagreement on that; any economist would tell you so. However, the Landed gentry have no interest in solutions.

dzhiurgis 10mo ago
Which problem and which economists?
- QGQBGdeZREunxLe 10mo ago
  You can definitely find household named economists that don't agree with Land Value Taxes. Hell there's a grassroots push in the US to eliminate property taxes.
  - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
    I do like Georgism, but taxing wealth and not a transaction is just going to transfer wealth from poor to government. Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest).
    - friendzis 10mo ago
      > Similarly how capital gains tax has 0 effect on billionaires and just rip off investors (aka the poorest). Capital gains tax has zero effect on billionaires precisely because it is not levied on them in most cases. When one's total wealth hits high tens of millions suddenly they get access to instruments to use their wealth without triggering "taxable events". Probably the most well-known example are loans against shares. This eliminates [some of] downward pressure on some asset prices, triggering positive feedback loop on price and thus wealth transfer.
      - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
        Loans needs to be paid off tho...

alfyboy 10mo ago

I was recently evicted from my apartment in a city in Norway experiencing similar growth in short-term rentals. The rental on that apartment was around €750 (same for my roommate). Apparently, during high season in the winter similar apartments goes for ~€830 a night. High season is 3 months in the winter, but seemingly that is enough to outcompete longterm tenants.

Ekaros 10mo ago
There is 12 months in a year. So that can be covered in 12 days... So even half a month would be more... Seems broken... I have nothing against short or medium term rentals. If they are limited percentage of housing as total. This percentage is rather low.
neom 10mo ago
You have no protections against this where you live? That would be near impossible where I live (Ontario).
- alfyboy 10mo ago
  Unfortunately not due to co-living with the landlord.

dariosalvi78 10mo ago

The main issue with Airbnb is that a few companies own a huge percentage of the flats. It's a big, unregulated, industry without any responsibility that is driving regular hotels out of business and locals out of their neighbouhoods. Of course it has to end at some point.

subpixel 10mo ago
See my other comment. When 30% of the housing stock is short-term rentals that families cannot buy, it doesn't matter at all who owns them. Where I live, they are all owned by locals, but that doesn't remediate any of the issues short-term rentals cause.
- dariosalvi78 10mo ago
  Local, middle class owners can own how many empty flats? 1%? 10%? Of course I don't have a number, but I'd bet that if you remove the mega-owners, that 30% would drop significantly. Airbnb was not a bad idea, but it has been perverted. It's time to regulate it and probably break it too.
  - subpixel 10mo ago
    Ownership class is all conjecture, but it really doesn't matter because all owners behave the same way. It's not as if local owners rent less, or charge less, or leverage their property less.
mistrial9 10mo ago
no it does not have to end. I mean to say, it is foolish to think you know how systems will play out over time. If the game rules are imbalanced then no one knows.
- dariosalvi78 10mo ago
  Sure, let it expand infinitely until it owns all real estate on earth

NotGMan 10mo ago

AirBnB should be banned, and I say that as a very pro-capitalist guy. In an economy where there is a housing shortage local population needs affordable and long-term (6-months+) rental contracts or they don't have stability. Capitalism is great in general, but some things, such as healthcare, housing, electricity,... needs to have a stronger regulatory framework then eg TVs since the collapse of basic human necessities creates chaos and eventually becomes the foothold of extreme socialist/communist political parties which then finish the job of destroying the economy.

miguelxt 10mo ago
Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next? Housing and rent are already heavily regulated in Spain. Some regulations and side effects of those regulations: * Minimum contract length of 5 years. * Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years). * It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. * Even if the tenant is not paying, you, the landlord, have to keep paying the utilities, because if you stop paying, you'll be charged with "coacciones". * If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. * In some cities like Barcelona, regulation goes beyond. Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated. * And all that is not going into detail of the "Okupa" problem.
- ryan_lane 10mo ago
  > Cities that have almost completely banned Airbnb (e.g.: NYC) have not seen any improvement on affordability. What's next? New York, as expensive as it is, is still considerably cheaper than cities like SF. Part of this is that they build more, part of it is that they have a usable train system, which allows people to live more spread out across the city, but part of it as well, is that they've banned airbnb. It would be ideal to also see empty unit taxes on units >$10m (inflation adjusted). It would also be good to see high taxes on sales of units >$10m (inflation adjusted). > Minimum contract length of 5 years. This is good, assuming it's one sided (the tenant can choose to move out, but the landlord can't break the lease). People need stability in housing more than landlords need to be able to end leases. > Maximum increase of rental per year regulated to 2/3% (even during high inflation years) Sure, it should be generally tied to inflation, but what other investment exists where you're guaranteed yearly increases? Why are people so adamant that landlords need to be guaranteed minimal increases in their profits? Housing is a natural monopoly, and allowing businesses to maximize their profits, unchecked, isn't capitalism. > It can take years to evict a non-paying tenant. If there are children in the apartment, it's even harder. This is often brought out as a massive negative of regulations, but let's be honest, this is an outlier. Without tenant protections, however, it's common for landlords to evict tenants to increase rents. Even with protections, landlords still take illegal measures to try to evict tenants to increase rents, like doing constant construction at night, or refusing to do maintenance. This is basically the same complaint about welfare programs. We have to accept some percentage of fraud to serve the greater good. It's completely normal for most businesses to take a risk based approach to fraud, to maximize profits. Retail businesses, for example, will try to maximize their credit card auth rates, even though that may increase their fraud rate, if the increases in auth rate outweigh the cost of the fraud. A stable society is worth a small percentage of fraud. > If the landlord is not a person but a company, regulation is even harder. Good. I don't see how this is a downside. > Maximum prices set by the local government, seasonal contracts banned, and even room rentals regulated. Again, this is good. If there's a housing crunch, then residents should be prioritized over tourists.

throw_m239339 10mo ago

Good. How could these "disruptive" american companies get away with violating local laws that long remains a mystery to me. If I started running an illegal hotel in Barcelona, or a website advertising for illegal rentals in the same city, myself, from Spain, I'd be quickly arrested and thrown in jail as an individual...

asdfsfds 10mo ago

I live in Spain. I'll give you an interesting example I've witnessed. Two of my neighbors rent seasonally on airbnb. Middle class women, one of them a widow. I assume they used to make a tidy profit. I believe they worked quite hard on making those houses pretty, and I've seen they had good reviews. Just now their license to operate has been denied, apparently without much explanation (I believe the Property Registry is making the decision, this is a bureaucratic body of state employees, not democratically elected). Across the street lies a hotel, a true tourist trap. They have a 6/10 rating on booking and rely on scamming British tourists, whom you can see balancing drunk on their balconies daily. It's owned by a national conglomerate. As you may guess, as of now the airbnbs are closed and the hotel is thriving despite only bringing the worst kind of tourist to the community. An astute observer will note that the hotel industry is one of the biggest lobbyists supporting the current government at a national level. I am not one to defend big companies, but for some people here Airbnb was freedom. Now they have to go work cleaning rooms or just collect retirement checks, as obtaining a license to run a hotel is impossible without political connections / corruption. My point is, not everywhere are laws as fair as in the United States. Before someone talks about housing pressure, this is a relatively out of the way area where 40% of houses sit empty most of the year.

foogazi 10mo ago
Can those drunk tourists not rent Airbnb's too ? How is it not better for them to stay across the street at the hotel than on a flat next to a family home ?
- asdfsfds 10mo ago
  The Airbnbs mentioned rented throughout the year in monthly periods, so they fill a different niche. The new law kills not only short term stays but everything that goes through an online provider (except multi-year contracts). When I first arrived here I relied on these long stay airbnbs until I could find a way through the byzantine Spanish rental process. Now this option will no longer exist. Again, you are not familiar with Spanish politics if you think this is by accident. I have myself given up on any attempts of doing business here after I spent 1 year waiting for a certain business license and could only obtain it (in a week) after a chance friendship with a local notary. :)

alexandrerond 10mo ago

I have legal holiday rentals on two properties in Spain, but they are managed by an specialized company: * The regional administration handed out licenses without problems until a year ago, even when everyone was complaining already about these rentals. It was just paperwork + fee to get the license. They did for years and now they wonder why there are so many flats: they allowed it. * The main issue these rentals cause to the neighbors is people partying, being noisy, inconsiderate. Rentals have rules against these behaviors yet they happen frequently. I wish we or the police had tools to legally kick people out in the middle of the night for this behavior. * Apart from legal rentals, which are being limited now, there are a lot of illegal rentals. They are only starting to crack down on them. AirBNB and others have not complied with the law and this should not come as surprise. They have actively enabled illegal businesses for years. People go to jail for that and they should shut them down. * There is no affordable housing in the city-center. Rental flats make it worse but in many places the issue will not be fixed if they disappeared. The causes are deeper and a nice flat is not going to become "cheap" to rent in any case. * Holiday rentals are a bit more profitable that long-term rentals, but not crazy unless you are doing it at scale and they come with their own problems. Many are switching now to "seasonal" rentals, which are rentals for a period less than a year and the tenants need to go then. They forgot to handle these in the new regulations. Long-term rental is problematic because you can't use your flat when you need it. i.e. if you have a flat that you come to spend your own holidays. So people in that situation have limited alternatives. * I am personally not against switching to long term rentals, but the current situation wrt. licenses etc. puts me in a "wait and see" mode. My flat is legal, so they might make it more profitable by cracking down on illegal ones. Once I put a long-term rental I cannot ever go back to vacation rental either. There is little incentive to switch right now, but I will of course do it if I'm legally required to do so. For all the talk, they haven't taken that step, which is a testament to how politicians can say one thing and then do close to nothing in the end.

johndoh42 10mo ago

... because the government is in the pocket of the big hotel chains, which are ruining the country. Airbnb: World travelers who try to blend in. Hotel: Drunk Brits who puke all over the place. We have 3 Airbnb flats in our house for 2 years now. Never had an issue with any of the renters; But, the lights in the stairwell are working now, the door locks work, electricity is stable, and I haven't seen a cockroach in a long time. Meanwhile the guests from the hotel across the street keep us awake every freakin' night. Bonus: Those 3 flats had been sitting empty for nearly 10 years, just like the other ~30 thousand flats sitting empty in the city.

rkomorn 10mo ago
My anecdata is different: the Airbnb one floor above us in our last place earned us a visit from the cops (due to a misunderstanding about the definition of "bottom floor") due to how frequently they were occupied by people either having parties there or coming back from parties very loudly at all times of night. The same floor/direction misunderstanding also got us so many incorrect doorbell rings that we ended up muting it at the cost of risking missed deliveries. Whatever magical behavior these AirBnB guests have, they can still take it to a hotel.