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Comment by reverend_gonzo | Hacker News Reader

> And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.

The great thing about the free market is you get the choice. You don't have to pass a law to force everybody to also do as you choose.

There are definitely problems with some AirBNBs. Renting out an apartment as if it was a hotel room should not be allowed. However. that should be a contract issue between tenant/landlord or owner/HOA, and also a local zoning issue.

That said, there are also times that AirBNBs are very worthwhile. I've stayed in homes in the desert, far away from anything else. I've stayed in non-touristy neighborhoods in Venice, Stockholm, and Havana, that let me get away from the common areas and see local life.

Hotels definitely have its pros and cons, as do AirBNBs, but there should not be federal regulation outright banning it.

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The issue in my mind is that AirBNB actively thwarts attempts by landlords, HOAs, and zoning officials to enforce their contracts. If it was all above-board, I'd have no issues. Truly. But frankly, if AirBNB was compliant with leases, HOAs, and zoning, they'd be out of business. And they know it.

People talk a lot about the free market, but I see a lot of externalities at play here. Am I as a landlord to be held responsible for the damage to my units caused by somebody running a gypsy hotel, in explicit violation of their lease, paying me not one extra penny? Are their neighbors obligated to deal with a bunch of spring breakers partying through the wall, also for free?

This whole thing smells like a bunch of valley billionaires arguing that they should be above the law so they can make their IPO valuation come out right.

Properties have been sublet and let on the black markets forever. airbnb is not changing much of that, only making it more visible.

Most airbnb landlords will quickly realize that it takes a huge amount of work to welcome guest for short stays, then they'll realize that they might loose a lot of money if not filled all the time.

> airbnb is not changing much of that, only making it more visible.

I think it is grossly inflating the scale at which it is now possible.

Airbnb is a drop in the ocean, I guarantee you.

Oh for sure. I've known plenty of people who've done relatively brief (~ 2mo) sublets completely against leases etc (of course NYC is still a bit of a Wild West as far as housing is concerned, particularly at the more affordable end of the rental market).

My point was that AirBnB has vastly inflated the potential scale of revolving door short black market sublets (the loud, drunken vacationers that seem to be the source of most disgruntlement/anti AirBnB mentality here in the HN comments) much more than, say, craigslist.

The media are vocals about a few big cities on a few topics. It brings a lot of readers. Nothing special, it's always been the wild west over there.

AirBnb is already self regulating quickly: You rent a property, the guests damage it, you're not renting it on airbnb again for the next decade.

Or you simply realize that it's not sustainable. Revolving door short sublets are, in fact, usually not sustainable.

Fair point - again dependent on the property/neighborhood. I stayed in an AirBnB in Denver that was one of three cookie cutter buildings next to each other each on about 1/4 acre, built sometime in the last 5-10 years, all clearly used exclusively as short term rentals (as best I could tell).

Great AirBnB experience, literally no complaints, and no neighbors close enough to give us the stink eye (admittedly we were staying in the one that was in the middle of the three on that street). Mind you we were generally respectful and there for a very short time, not enough to really piss anyone off.

That seems sustainable to me, whether or not it's legal.

People AirBnB'ing their apartment in my current building (which has a 24 hour doorman/woman/person who pretty much knows everyone who lives there? obviously that shit wouldn't fly for long, never mind that it's flagrantly against the lease we all signed, there's no way to fly under the radar).

I meant that it's not sustainable because it takes a lot of work to welcome the guests, clean the flat and sheets all the time. It gets to a full time job really quickly if you have a few flat, and they better be in the same building.

Also, the price is expensive for guests... but as host, AirBnb takes 20-30% commission and you don't get paid for empty times. There are lots of emptiness if you do short rents.

I find the notion of business "self regulating" to be no more or less absurd for AirBnb than I would an oil or coal company. Of course I understand why they'd make the argument, I just can't fathom who would believe them here in the 21st century.

For a non-airbnb example of this, look at Ireland: they have minimal regulations/barriers to entry for starting a (real) B&B, and the result is that you can get great accommodations all over this heavily-touristed island for €35-55/night. Truly one of the great deals in European travel.

Similar in the UK, the regulations for B&Bs and guesthouses are pretty minimal compared to a hotel. The biggest issue people run into in getting licensed is that often some changes are needed to meet the fire code for overnight accommodations. Usually not hard to fix, but may involve things like installing fire doors at the top and bottom of stairwells, and installing lockable fire doors on any closets that are located beneath stairs.

I rented an entire 3br/2 ba apartment in Dublin for a week for $700, circa 2007. We had 15 people in there.

On the first night there a child cat burgled one of our wallets. He scaled the side of the building and came in through an open window. We caught him in the act, but he was too quick and scampered out the way he came. When we complained to the host (the pharmacy downstairs, really) they asked if we wanted a NEW apt in a different building or another apartment in that one (basically two apts for a week for the price of two nights in a hotel)

Now when people talk about Air B&B, I think of courier dentistry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX_GfxGIWQs&t=1s

> child cat Do you mean a kitten or did you mean "child that"? I can't stop laughing, despite your loss of wallet.

I had the same reaction. Then realized he meant a pint-sized cat burglar scaled the wall, snuck through a window, and lifted a wallet. To me this is extreme considering it would be far easier to be a pickpocket or scam artist.

I think they meant that a child (noun) cat-burgled (verb). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cat_burglar

great accommodations all over this heavily-touristed island for €35-55/night.

Used to be about half that pre-Euro!

Dude, pretty much everything, everywhere "used to be about half that" 15 years ago, regardless of currency...

I don't know about Ireland, but in Spain it was terrible in many sectors. An euro is 166.386 pesetas. Guess what happened.

People are talking a lot about safety regulations, as in, "well, if you're willing to take the risk of sleeping in someone's house, you should be able to," but what gets me is that safety's just one of the things hotel regulations ensure.

Another is access for the disabled. I've stayed in a few AirBNBs that would absolutely have been off-limits to someone in a wheelchair, but the number of times I've stayed in a hotel that wasn't disability-accessible? Zero.

Yeah, choice is great when you're talking about saving some bucks and taking on the risk of sleeping in an essentially-unlicensed hotel, but what about the people for whom the regulations guarantee them access to commerce or travel at all?

Like others have said, regulations develop out of a reaction to a lousy status quo. I think it'd be a shitty world to live in where people with disabilities were being shut out again, to the extent they used to be.

(Am I saying that, if you're going to let your room commercially, you should make it ADA-compliant? Maybe so. It's at least worth thinking about, instead of saying, by default, screw those folks in wheelchairs.)

ADA compliance is a fair point, but at the same time, I've lived in completely legal to rent apartments in NYC that were absolutely not wheelchair accessible.

All new buildings in NYC must have elevators/general wheel chair accessibility, but the old buildings are still there, and still being used.

Further, there are numerous AirBnB rentals that existed as licensed rental properties long before AirBnB came around that are most certainly not wheelchair accessible.

I think it would at least be fair for AirBnB to require listings that are/are not wheelchair accessible to say so on their listings. Beyond that I don't think it's fair to require owners of those properties to invest a large sum of money to make it accessible.

Oh, absolutely, I don't think the answer is black and white; neither "any exchange of housing for money must be fully ADA-compliant"-- nor "raising the question of ADA compliance is a burdensome regulation that should be ignored".

For me, the question that's worth asking is, how do we ensure, as new ways of doing old things develop, that the people who've been shut out in the past (i.e. the people that the ADA protects) aren't just getting shut out again?

People in wheelchairs, that's a thing. The ADA is the way that, up til now, we've set up to enforce that businesses must accommodate them. Stuff like AirBNB and Uber is bringing an absolute ton of new individuals, essentially doing business, who've simply never had to think about making business accessible to people with disabilities.

Maybe there's a new regulatory framework that needs to develop? Maybe there should be a burden on the companies like AirBNB and Uber to ensure that, wherever they operate, some percentage of their service offering is wheelchair-accessible? (Even if they're buying property or hiring drivers directly to satisfy that requirement?) I don't know, just brainstorming at this point, I guess.

It would cost those businesses more, of course, but I ask myself which world I'd rather live in--one in which my two wheelchair-bound friends could actually use AirBNB wherever they went, or one in which I said "hey, sucks you're locked out of that experience, but free market, yolo"?

I'm really not sure how best to handle it. Uber has definitely gotten some grief for their total inability to be accessible to people in wheelchairs in NYC, when there are yellow cabs that are, but that criticism has largely fallen by the wayside.

That cabin I rented with some friends in bumblefuck an hour outside of Boulder, CO - should they be required to install an elevator when the car we drove could just barely even get us there (even in the summer time)?

100% accessibility seems impossible (barring significant improvements in wheelchairs, which are definitely coming), but where exactly is the line?

I don't really know the answer. I think in general if you're making something new - you should make it as accessible as is reasonably feasible, but how much should we require to be "backported"?

> also a local zoning issue

Isn't AirBnb a party to that issue?

If AirBnb stuck to it's early role as way for people to rent rooms in homes or vacation homes, it would be an amazing service. By seeking to "disrupt" the hotel industry, they kind of poisoned the well.

> The great thing about the free market is you get the choice.

Have you ever looked at the AirBNB rating system? It's a disaster. Five stars or get abuse. Without a trustable rating system here you won't get a free market.

>The great thing about the free market is you get the choice. You don't have to pass a law to force everybody to also do as you choose.

Not necessarily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

That paper is about information asymmetry. If you know you're getting a room in someone's apartment, there is still no reason to prohibit informed customers from doing that.

And the externalities visited upon everyone else around the apartment renter?

They may or may not exist depending on the location, the layout of the building, the particular renter, the behavior of the homeowner, and probably about a thousand other variables that are impossible to even identify.

You know you're getting a room, but you don't know if the room or experience will be plagued with trouble. Much the same as the "lemon car" problem--not all cars or rooms at "market price" are equal.

You know that the average quality is lower than a hotel, with reviews on top of that. And if you don't want to risk a lemon then you can still stay in a hotel.

You have hotels either way and you clearly can't save the market for not-hotel rooms by prohibiting it entirely. Where is the harm in allowing someone to knowingly take a risk in exchange for a discount?

Having traveled enough to know that not all hotel rooms are created equally, I don't even know how that's a concern.

I've stayed in hotels that were frequented by prostitutes (not a value judgement, but it does change the experience of the stay considerably), hotels with drug dealers in the parking lot, etc. Even going with a big brand, I've had extremely disappointing experiences.

Most recently, I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Louisville, which is a highrise hotel in which all the rooms are located around a central lobby. This is fine, assuming there aren't people screaming in the lobby, but surprise, there were literally people screaming in the lobby for long periods in each of the two nights we stayed there, and repeated calls to the front desk didn't resolve the situation.

We'd planned a longer stay, but ended up relocating after the second night of interrupted sleep, and somewhat ironically, ended up in a super quaint AirBNB that was a fraction of the price.

Yes, AirBNB can be a bit of a crapshoot, but that isn't a problem that's unique to AirBNB.

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