Netherlands will require central registration of Airbnb rentals | Hacker News Reader

Netherlands will require central registration of Airbnb rentals

17 pointsnaskwo4 comments

Interesting: https://tpo.nl/2018/09/25/kajsa-ollongren-d66-verklaart-oorlog-aan-illegale-verhuurders-airbnb/

This is in line with a blockchain-based proposal that I had sent to the city of Amsterdam in mid 2017, where every residential unit has its own ledger to track how many times it has been let out.

It will be interesting to see if this actually rolls out, and what the impact on Airbnb usage in Amsterdam will be.

(in 2000, I founded Kamernet, which in a sense was a predecessor to Airbnb - albeit local to the Dutch market and not for tourists, and I am intimately familiar with the housing shortage in major Dutch cities. In my view, Airbnb is collapsing under its own success, unfortunately)

Anyone who has had to face the brutal Dutch rental market has no sympathy for Airbnb or their users.

Exatly, I'm as anti big brother as they come but I'm not against this regulation. Airbnb has had a dramatic effect on livability in Amsterdam specifically.

I think Amsterdam (and more recently, Rotterdam) are not representative for the rest of the country though.

A lot of the problems in Amsterdam are just because there are too many tourists. There are currently about 18 million/year. It's a small densely populated country, so 18 million is comparatively a lot.

Problems in other nearby cities (like Rotterdam) happen because prices in Amsterdam are rising, so people relocate to Rotterdam.

After over a decade of aggressively promoting tourism, the city of Amsterdam is now starting to realize that this is actually creating a lot of problems, and is now trying to limit tourism somewhat. Not a moment too soon if you ask me.

I believe the same is true for the city of Vancouver? They are fining people who are breaching the agreement between AirBnB and the city (which covers very short term rentals only), there must be a registration somewhere:

http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/airbnb-vancouver-rentals-agre...

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