Airbnb canceled booking, saying city rejected license number
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I've talked to the Airbnb founders a few times, and they're probably the most passionate founders I've met. It's clear that they believe in their vision 100%, even without the money (just look at their history of self-funding for years before they could attract VC interest).
But by refusing to cooperate with cities on some legitimate complaints (like a small number of hosts who own a ton of properties, which is even sketchy to me as a guest), they really brought this hardline pushback on themselves.
But cities do need to grow and expand. Quiet backstreets turn into busy boulevards. They have done so for millennia. The economic opportunities such transformation brings for the city far outstrip the cost of new sound insulating windows - not to mention that, for owners, those are more than covered by the appreciation of the property.
That's why I prefer a system where tourists and hosts pay for the creative destruction they do to residential areas, and put that revenue to good use for everybody else.
These kind of rules is something all businesses need to adhere to, and I see no reason why Airbnb should be an exception.
It's laughable to require a single rented room the same paperwork that a large hotel requires, then say that enables them to "play by the same rules as everyone else". They are a fundamentally different way to provide the same economic service and the law needs to adapt, not protect traditional interests.
You say "tourists are not paying taxes to the city" which is certainly wrong for San Francisco and for most other cities I've travelled to as well. In San Francisco, there is a 14% occupancy tax and it is taken by Airbnb automatically during booking as they do in hundreds of cities. Compare this to Craigslist where I used to rent and nobody ever mentioned paying tax once.
Finally, many of these cities literally have tourism as their number one industry. Its a bit dangerous to start saying that the people who fund your city are second class citizens since they only pay occupancy taxes and not income taxes. In fact many of the areas against Airbnb like Miami Beach have bent over so far backwards for tourists that all they care about are the hotels now.
Tourists patronize all sorts of businesses (lodging, transportation, entertainment, food, retail) and those businesses are paying taxes. The revenue from tourists is part of that business equation. Of course there are also specific taxes paid by tourists (airport fees, port fees, hotel room taxes, rental car taxes) as well as regular transactional taxes paid by everyone (sales/service/vat).
What was sketchy was when I used to have to rent apartments in cities off Craigslist with absolutely no regulation, no escrow, and no reputation to avoid people who literally just finished ripping someone off. This is where many cities seem to want to return.
Since many people prefer to stay in apartments / houses while they travel, some of the hotels will not be needed and can be converted into additional housing. It makes sense that there would be entrepreneurs who learn to make these places attractive to travelers while maintaining low costs to clean and maintain the property. In fact, these places are often better run than a property that is only rented out a few times a year.
If I were the cities, I would focus on regulating the things that really impact quality of life (e.g. having firm penalties for frequent noise violations) without trying to micromanage how people use hotels versus apartments. People will always rent apartments, do house swaps, couchsurf, etc. and its often a win-win for everyone involved. Punish the bad actors, leave people alone who rent a lot of places out but don't trigger complaints, and avoid pushing the movement underground where you can't tax it or try to help with noise violations and other problems.
Meanwhile the same people will instead now go to Craigslist or a local equivalent and rent out 50 properties without the need to create any accounts or earn superhost status. They won't report that income, it won't be taxed, and they probably won't have a legitimate business. Somehow this is a win.
- "Hang the criminal!", says the crowd... Capitalist pig wants to own and profit from something! How dare she/he?!
Or they don't want to follow the laws surrounding businesses renting out properties.
You can vote to change the laws or regulations, speak out about them to convince others to do the same, lobby Congress, etc., all while not operating outside of the law in the meantime.
It’s absurd to defend the property owners who are doing this, as if a city having suboptimal regulatory policy just means free reign to violate the law or fraudulently avoid regulations.
> “Meanwhile the same people will instead now go to Craigslist or a local equivalent and rent out 50 properties without the need to create any accounts or earn superhost status. They won't report that income, it won't be taxed, and they probably won't have a legitimate business. Somehow this is a win.”
No. This is a ludicrous counterfactual to compare to. Operating a huge ring of short stay rental units is not just automatically profitable or worthwhile. There isn’t just huge liquid supply of renters willing to do it through some untrusted Craigslist contact, not at all.
It is specifically the Airbnb certification and the tacit endorsement that comes with being part of a mainstream booking platform that makes it attractive for someome to pay to operate a ring of units like this skirting city regulations. This is only enabled by the platform, which is why it is the right point at which to enforce regulations.
The more likely counterfactual is that those units would have been purchased either by people intending to live in them full time, or landlords looking for standard leasing opportunities for longterm tenants, both of which might be a net more productive use for the city overall.
And who is to decide what is more productive? If you happen to think that I'm the less productive, because I guess "reasons", them I'm to be kicked out from a city?
Also, the issue is with cities limiting supply of housing.
At that point I’d just force the owner of the shared housing to comply with hotel laws for that country, modified for whatever infrastructural differences there may be.
Professional hosts also often have much better systems for key handoff, people you can call if something goes wrong, etc.
As far as nuisance guests, I've said elsewhere in the thread that I think the cities should not hesitate to give out large fines for recurring noise violations from one address. Party houses and frats also make a lot of noise even though they have nothing to do with vacation rentals. Banning Airbnb is a less direct solution to that problem than simply passing and enforcing noise regulations. People will just rent on Craigslist and make as much noise as they want if you don't.
Craigslist existed (and was probably more important!) long before Airbnb, and the nuisance tenant phenomenon seems to track Airbnb's popularity, not Craigslist. So that's not a very persuasive argument.
Such honor among thieves is perhaps surprising but in the end rather beside the point.
That doesn't make vacation rentals inherently sketchy. It just means that technology has enabled a different solution for the problem then was possible before and now cities will work out to what degree they will embrace it versus trying to regulate it out of existence. Don't get me wrong, I think certain aspects need to be strictly regulated but requiring tons of red tape to rent your apartment out once a year while you go abroad is not the long term solution and is a waste of usable space.
I think in the future people will laugh at how byzantine the laws were to rent out an apartment. Especially in these cities where the hotels are filled up and now people will just leave their apartments empty instead of accommodating people.
I mean most large cities have hundreds of thousands to millions of people. I just can't imagine Airbnb would even be 1% of available properties.
Not sure that "sketchy" is the adjective I'd use. The thing is that a city is not a petri dish for competing business to squeeze as much nutrients from the environment as possible. First and foremost it's a place for humans to live and thrive. That "Residents can only rent out their property for a maximum of 90 nights a year when they are not living there" is an attempt to keep them this way.
I had one host, who managed/owned several properties, run an extension cord right along the rim of a bathtub so it could reach one of those dish-style space heaters they stuck in the corner of the bathroom. Neither the cord placement, the non-GFCI outlet it was plugged into, nor the type of space heater were suited for the wet, humid environment of the bathroom.
To me, that's sketchy.
Care to show me what you interpreted as me 'taking it out on all vacation rentals?'
> I still don't want to ban hotels. I give the hotel a scathing review, sometimes complain to them directly, and then I move on.
Cool? I understand that you think that I want to ban vacation rentals, but perhaps you should reread my post before responding with assumptions and non-sequiturs.
Airbnbs are generally unregulated and hosts, more often than not, try to hide their business from landlords, neighbors and their local government.
They think they’re being “aggresive”, hoping that the rules change. But they’re screwing up vacations selfishly
> Airbnb – the company, not the hosts of the property – pulled the plug on their week’s stay in San Francisco, 10 days before they were due to arrive.
Hotel rooms are “perishable goods”. Generally prices will be lower than farther out but value will be lower than if you bought earlier. It’s like milk, grocery store can’t sell spoiled milk so yes the milk that’s about to turn you can get at a discount but it’ll be less value per dollar.
I will be SO glad when AirBnB'ing an entire apartment as a business is shut down: I try and use it exclusively with private rooms and where it is clearly the host's usual home, or it's a property that is created specifically for tourism. I also find that in areas where city tourist tax is applied, AirBnB apartments aren't much cheaper than hotel rooms: at which point I usually look for a hotel instead if I can get better amenities. In a city like Chicago, where weekend hotels go for $250-300 a night on the low/mid end in the Loop, you are still looking at about the same with an AirBnB apartment, once you add service and cleaning fees.
Can anyone prove to me, that this isn't pushing up rents because landlords and tenants can now afford higher monthly rents knowing they can AirBnB a few weekends or more to cover the higher costs?
I get that a lot of cities are cracking down on Airbnb and this is disrupting some travelers. This just doesn't seem like a great example.
A little over a decade ago I was wandering around Europe for a couple months and only stayed in a proper hotel a couple times, once because I needed an address to ship my luggage the airlines lost and the other because I got into town late and there wasn't anyone at the train station hunting for tourists -- every other time as soon as I stepped off the train there were people offering up rooms to rent in private houses for some extra cash on the side. All in all it worked out and I saved a few bucks in the process.
Or "Airbnb fails to properly warn travellers they're booking stays that potentially will have to be cancelled later".
It's almost funny that the city is engaging in rent-seeking behavior against renters. In this move San Francisco makes it clear that they believe they own your property and you merely occupy it on their whim.
In this move, San Franciso makes it clear that you can't change the use of a property without permission.
Living in a city is a big trade-off. More jobs, less liberty.
Some people rent out a spare room now and again for extra cash, and some people have multiple properties that are occupied exclusively by Airbnb renters, essentially running an unlicensed hotel.
The latter can be extremely obnoxious if its your upstairs neighbor, not to mention the effects that being discovered by Airbnb real estate investors can have on a town or neighborhood.
(If it turns out it was the city's fault that Airbnb erroneously thought the registration was invalid, that'd clearly be an implementation failure, I agree, but still leaves open the question why Airbnb only reacted so late)
As opposed to a rigid system of "designated uses" for private properties that prevents economic transactions depending on how much they inconvenience upper class and politically connected residents and competing hospitality interests.
Edit to add:
And by regulating local externalities at the local building level rather than the city level, you are more likely to have better regulations in regards to residents and owners wishes.
It's sad to get to this point but nobody was going to do anything and I was no way willing to deal with that situation. One tourist even pissed in the elevator.
The situation was just not tolerable.
One star - Neighbors will beat you with a baseball bat if you have a late night party.
Your first quote is wrong according to the article
I also found it weird that the PR nonsense said that “2 million” people are using the service and putting money in the pockets of “countless” hosts.
Hosts aren’t countless... so I wonder why they aren’t calling that out?
So technically they are countless.