Comment by arebop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arebop | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

There are 50912 housing units in Santa Monica, 36657 of which are rental units [https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=235...]. So 1700 is (generously) 4.6%. Not nothing, but how much really? It's complicated but extrapolating from a San Francisco analysis [http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-Pre...] we might expect that 4.6% increase in housing supply would result in a 5.8% decrease in prices. For comparison, Santa Monica has seen about a 25% increase in rental prices this year [http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/].

Maybe somebody else will actually repeat the Egan analysis with Santa Monica-specific regressions and so forth. Perhaps the model itself could be improved.

Also, if there are so many people willing to pay so much to spend a night in Santa Monica, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have both long-term and short-term housing?

But it doesn't really matter does it? AirBnB is a political issue in all these places and the rabble don't care about your "data" or "logic." They are fed up with high prices and arrogant "disruptive" tech bros and they are ready to take action!

Good numeric analysis, but a couple things don't sit well with me. First, 5% is a significant price difference when you're sinking up to half your income into housing (http://la.curbed.com/2015/12/10/9892338/los-angeles-rent-bur...), especially at the price levels we are talking about for Santa Monica rentals.

Second, AirBnB is more than a political issue and referring to people as "rabble" just because they disapprove of illegal rentals is pretty arrogant. I live in Santa Monica, work in tech, and absolutely do not want any of my neighbors renting their apartments on AirBnB. One of my neighbors did so for a while last year and the result was the entire complex repeatedly having to deal with unruly visitors being overly loud at night and trashing the common areas.

If you want to make money on rentals, buy a property that allows you to do that, and where everyone around you knows that's going to happen and can plan accordingly. If you don't want to do that, then you don't get the right to abuse your apartment complex or neighborhood just because you want to make some money. Treating AirBnB rentals like they have zero impact on anyone but the renter and owner is disingenuous and shows a certain level of selfishness with respect to the actual complexities of the situation.

My neighbor was pretty noisy when he first moved in. I had to ask him several times to quiet down and eventually after the landlady heard complaints from several others, he did. This isn't at all an AirBnB-specific issue.

I admit 5% isn't nothing. But if your problem is that rents are rising 25% pa in your town, a one-time decrease of 5% isn't much of a solution.

You're 25% figure is highly questionable. As you surely noticed when you got that number from Trulia, average rent in SM actually decreased from $4800 to $4600 between July 2015 and January 2016. You would need to see numbers going back more than 12 months to come up with a meaningful estimate.

Your 5% figure is based on a model purpose-built for San Francisco. In particular the number for elasticity of demand is likely wrong for Santa Monica. Considering how sensitive the model is to this parameter, it seems pretty iffy to present 5% as a meaningful estimate of anything.

So it took several times to get a neighbor to quiet down, then he stayed quiet.

Now imagine getting a new neighbor every week. Once he quiets down, there's a new one. That's living next to an AirBnB.

The same person is responsible every week. Take it up with the landlord. Before I was in an apartment, I owned a condo, and the bylaws prohibited short term rentals and even most long term rentals. No new laws are needed to deal with these old problems.

I stand corrected, thanks for the info! That's an interesting supply/price analysis. Airbnb really is moving the needle.

Well hotels are the short term solution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com