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As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great. Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge deman
by jboggan 11y ago
As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great.
Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB.
I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process.
There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression.
My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.
- therobot24 11y agoThis is an interesting perspective that i hadn't considered, and honestly i can't think of any balance. If you penalize Airbnb renters with taxes and nonsense licensing you're going to end up with less diversity where just a select few end up doing the same thing you're describing instead of the many that do it now. While if you do nothing you're going to keep pushing real residents out through price hikes. Tough situation. However, I do think that this is very limited to areas of already high demand and shouldn't be a blanket policy across a whole region.
- learnstats2 11y agoSo it's great, for people who already own property sitting on the most expensive land in the world?
- cylinder 11y agoBut if the most economically valuable use of Santa Monica land is hotel / tourism / short-stay, then perhaps the whole place should be turned into hotels. Not saying I agree with this but it's something that should be considered.
- jboggan 11y agoAs a Santa Monican I am glad that life and governance are not reduced to the maximization of an objective value function.
- imaginenore 11y ago> She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process. That doesn't make any sense. $333 from an apartment per month in Santa Monica. You've been lied to.
- jboggan 11y agoI said nets, not grosses. She has two places rented out 10-20 days a month and the total revenue pays for all three rents plus about a grand left over. She lives in whichever apartment seems to get the least interest on AirBnB and occasionally switches it up.
- anigbrowl 11y agoNet, not gross. That's after all the mortgages and bills.
- ma2rten 11y agoHousing prices in Santa Monica are out of control (not as much as San Fransisco though), but I don't agree AirBnB is to blame for that. Santa Monica is just a nice place where a lot of (rich) people want to live. That said, I agree that AirBnB guests should pay hotel tax. Otherwise they have an unfair advantage.
- wdr1 11y agoI'm also a Santa Monica resident/homeowner and I'm very disappointed by this legislation. I have a lot of family out of state, and when they visit, it's great that they can rent an entire house on AirBNB/VRBO. We did this for my wedding (in Santa Monica) and it worked out fantastic. When I travel, my house is basically empty. I don't see why I can't rent it out to another family. I agree AirBNB should charge the hotel tax & all that, but the approach of outright banning whole unit rentals seems wrong.