You don't need to ban them, just make them meet the same regulations on safety and zoning that regular hotels have to
I agree. A lot of the trouble that Airbnb causes can be mitigated with simple regulations that we already have in place. Additionally, we should recognize that Airbnb is currently filling a void in the market that hotels aren't currently filling. There are times when people want to rent a place to stay for a full week or a month and also not have to pay to eat out every night. Airbnb allows you to rent a place that's generally cheaper for longer stays and also provides a basic kitchen including cookware and dishes. Hotels just don't have that unless you pay a premium. The only other thing they offer, which I'm on the fence about, is the ability to rent a place in close proximity or directly in a specific neighborhood or town as opposed to whatever area has a hotel to host tourists. On the one hand, that's super nice for exploring cities and doing non-touristy things. On the other hand, residents deserve some separation from tourists especially since they don't all behave. If hotels can find a way to fill these gaps, then I'd be ok with banning Airbnb. But we can also just regulate Airbnb 🤷
I feel like several advantages of Airbnb comes specifically from the lack of regulation. I'm speculating, but I imagine installing kitchens and maintaining them costs quite a lot as a hotel, with probably stricter and more expensive regulations compared to an Airbnb. I wouldn't be surprised if Airbnbs were regulated similarly to hotels, that they'd be priced higher due to all the costs. It doesn't make sense to me that a hotel, with 10s or hundreds of units, where not all units have to be rented out at once, is more expensive than a single property home where the whole unit must be rented out at once, and it takes up a bigger space. not to mention the inefficiency of repairs, and cleaning.
You might be right on the potential cost, but aren't all Residence Inns basically this? I don't think they cost that much more than other hotels.
It’s not the regulations, generally. Hotels are simply more cost effective for corporate management and ROI. If you want to make 20-25% a year you maximize units and minimize land expense and labor to manage. That it costs $10-30M is not a barrier to entry for a large corporation. AirBnB is less profitable but has substantially lower barriers to entry, especially if you lie about owner occupied status (which nearly all do when starting it).
The regulatory angle only really gets put in play because the land is cheaper due to improper zoning (residential is less expensive than commercial) and if the owners are dodging taxes.
I used to work away a lot, an airbnb was always a considered option - even when my meals were paid for. Sometimes you want to have a place to chill at for the week, not just a room.
Saying that though I generally didn't use airbnb for this, booking.com often has holiday lets as well - or better yet go directly to the owner's website.
Air BNB also exposed another aspect of the market as they can be so damn cheap, for a house to stay in! It's clear there's something scammy going on when the best option for me and my friends visiting New York was to rent an Air BNB loft for two weeks instead of a hotel.
Also kick the CEO and everybody in his general vicinity in the nuts. This should be law.
Tough, but fair
Another way you could handle that is that any property you own after your 1st or 2nd, automatically attracts commercial property tax rates.
That should not disallow private individual to rent a spare room, or holiday home, but it will kill off the investment businesses that specialise running airbnb syndicates.
Additionally, if a property has not had a full time occupant for at least 9 of the 12 months in a year, it is subject to a wealth tax based on its value.
That should deal with the investment firms that just sit on massive stocks of empty homes and business properties, feeding off the increasing prices they are creating themselves, while adding no value and offering no service.
Everyone who says "ban them" seems like they have never left the US. In Europe and Latin America, there are a ton of other websites that locals use for the same thing. Before the web, you would call up a few places listed in a guidebook and rent it over the phone.
I dislike Airbnb because it's expensive. The concept of "renting a room" in a vacation area will never go away. But the idea of $100 cleaning fees, when they just change the sheets and wipe down surfaces (30 minutes total) is dumb.
what about not allowing companies to buy hundreds of houses as rental property?
It's not just companies. Individuals are also chain buying places. Establish income from airbnb, leverage for their next purchase.
My real estate agent was buying his 3rd airbnb while I was looking 2 years ago. Dude was in his late 20s.
I'm hoping the house of cards comes crumbling down. Been dealing with housing insecurity as my landlord terminated our lease.
While I do agree with your point, individuals aren't buying hundreds or thousands of properties. It's corporations buying up a limited resource that are driving up the prices, not I-own-three-houses landlords.
Nah, I'm gonna go ahead and still be mad at both despite them being different degrees of bullshit. Thanks.
An individual landlord isn't buying hundreds of properties, but hundreds of individual landlords (all saying "it's not my fault, I only own three houses!") are buying hundreds of properties.
Even if each individual landlord is a good person who's going to heaven, they still make the housing market worse for everyone else. Their interests are directly opposed to working class people.
They're still all buying more than they need to live in.
I remember this scene in The Big Short. Steve Carell goes to a strip club.
Absolutely true.
I work in a highly paid industry and during the 2010-2015, nearly everybody was investing in real estate. Most of the lunchroom talks were about finding properties, showing off our house investments, and speculating if an area would boom. There were startups catered to folks like us to just give them money and they'll handle the cleaning and maintenance.
Then we got distracted by Bitcoin and all other weird things.
Focusing on AirBnB is better in my opinion because of the difference between the two.
A company buying a home to rent still has to rent the property, so they aren't removing the housing supply. In contrast, a person or corporation buying a home to use as an AirBnB is removing housing from the market.
I'm 5050 on this. At least the airbnb is making money for people (generally) instead of a massive Corp. I. Reality both suck but I think I'd rather a person benefit.
Good. Sorry to every mom and pop who treated housing like an investment, but at least you still have the house. Hope they slash the market 90%. Hope everyone who's been waiting for a decade gets a place to live. Hope opportunistic landlords choke and go bust when they can't pay three mortgages on their tenants' salaries anymore. Housing is a human right.
How about we ban companies like Blackstone from buying up all the auction homes, lightly flipping them and then putting them back on the market as overpriced rentals?
They're a big reason for our housing shortage.
Why not both? Airbnb severely increases prices, and properties bought by corporations do the same. I'm tired of not doing anything because "what about "
Any industry based on scarce resources or monopolies should be strictly regulated and given profit caps. Land is limited so corporations should not be able to monopolize that land for boundless profits.
If you think banning Airbnb is going to solve the housing crisis outside touristic spots, I think you might be in for a rude awakening.
Gotta build more, specifically denser, and at a large scale. Probably lots of rentals with landlords not in it for profit, think Vienna-style.
All landlords are in it for the profit. They should instead do more condominiums, so you can own the space you live in. We shouldn't have to live the rest of our lives paying rent.
True, but he means nationalized, so publicly owned, publicly funded.
Not only is rent there seen as temporary ownership (same in Germany), with really strong protections but the rent itself is like $300-$400 euros a month, barely anything for a top tier apartment that's basically a solarpunk megabuilding.
I honestly think that's preferable to paying mortgages for also for-profit banks and 'climbing the ladder'.
The lack of ownership as an option also prevents the accumulation of such wealth that someone can buy it all out and make it all worse again
Government-owned apartments don't need to have a profit-focus, and can instead have a service-focus.
You'll still be paying continuously for a condominium - there are plenty of things related to living in one of those that aren't free. Having an ownership-focused model of housing and incentivizing as such comes with a whole host of undesirable problems as well, so it's not strictly speaking a silver bullet. That being said, housing coops can under the right circumstances be a force for good.
Gotta build more, specifically denser, and at a large scale.
This sounds like cyberpunk megabuildings
I only just now noticed that the AirB&B logo looks like a vagina with balls
Airbnbussy
Did sites like VRBO for vacation and large house rentals exist for AirBnb? I didn't really book those at that point. While I agree airbnb should probably be replaced by hotels (like in the past) was there a way to rent a large living space for a group pre-airbnb?
AirBNB used to be about just renting a room in your house out to people. Before it got big it wasn't for being a multi-property short-term landord.
Actually, vrbo was more like that - vrbo was around long before airbnb and was meant to be a way to help market your short term rental or like rent your vacation house out while you werent using it.
The problem is they each fill a niche, the need for short term accommodation with privacy for a group, but its super easy to take advantage and start listing huge numbers of properties to make lots of money if youre a ~~leech~~ landlord - which is part of why we're in such a bad situation now with the housing market.
La times article about it (may be a pay wall) https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-23/palm-springs-capped-airbnb-rentals-now-some-home-prices-are-in-free-fall
This seems like a good thing. 1.5 million dollar homes aren't selling well? Maybe cheaper homes or apartments will have better mass appeal.
I was recently in palm springs, and not only is it among the shittiest-vibe towns I've visited, with some of the worst restaurants I've been to anywhere in California, I saw a depressing, near windowless, one-story home with no yard for sale at $3M. Their market made absolutely zero sense, I feel like this was inevitable, especially after speculative building during the pandemic.
Omg, best news story of the day. This brought me a shit ton of joy.
You can ban the company, but you can't ban the concept (which has been around forever)
The concept is great. The company has caused untold damage to the housing market.
Is this what responsible governments do? I would have figured that Airbnb and the ~~gamblers~~ investors in the housing market would have ~~bribed~~ lobbied hard against this.
This is less a meme, and more a screenshot of an article
Same thing happened in Vancouver with people’s utility closets when it became illegal to rent out utility closets short term (already was illegal long term)
It didn’t help home prices but the million dollar closets became worthless
I still think that instead of banning perfectly valid use cases of housing to lower prices (forcefully decreasing demand), we should focus more on just building more stock to satisfy all needs?
And before someone says "we can do both!" we aren't. The majority of attention is going to things like this, and corporate investment (which is valid, tbh).
The more houses they build the more airbnbs there will be.
The reality is that there are enough empty houses to house everyone who needs them, the problem is that those who own them either want them empty as a holiday home they can later sell as an investment, or rented out, as an investment.
Because that's what housing is today.
Which is why the only real solution is to decommodify housing, since it's a human right and should be treated as such, while the profits of the rich are not, and should not.
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
