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Comment by keanebean86 | Hacker News Reader

Are people using airbnbs as apartments? I don't see how it drives rent up. There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors so they should only be competing with hotels. What am I missing here?

Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?

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Isn't it obvious? People buy appartements in nice city centers only to rent them on AirBnb, causing all kinds of disruptions (local shops turn into tourist shops, etc.) and reducing the number of flats for locals. This is exactly what is happening in my neighborhood (France). It's terrible.

People are using apartments as AirBnBs. Whole-unit rental, keys on a coded box outside the door.

> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors

Yes, but that could be much larger than the current level. A discussion in the context of Edinburgh: https://www.hotelmanagement.net/own/edinburgh-looks-to-limit...

AirBnB hosts in many cities are buying up apartments (or landlords who used to rent long-term are switching units to short-term rentals), reducing the supply and thus driving up prices for the remaining units.

Where tourism is, economic activity thrives. Local population grows. => there's a shortage of housing, especially in city center, where people want to live, and want to go. => there's a competition to own the land/housing between: people who want to live there, and people who want to rent it to tourists (lower investment than if you lived there and high+frequent demand). => there's also a shortage of hotels AND a temporary shortage of convenience (precisely where AirBnB thrives with VC money, in order to break and change the market - that's very intentional).

> I don't see how it drives rent up.

If entire apartments are made into AirBnbs, there's less apartments in the market which turns the prices up, what's so hard to grasp ?

And if Hotels close down due to AirBNBs there's more space for appartments where there once were hotels. If the AirBNBs take less space than the hotel they replace it's a win for appartments. If they cause more tourism it's a loss. What the overall effect is is far from clear, I haven't seen any thorough analysis on that.

It's naive to only look at one factor and ignore the others, yet that's often how far this debate goes.

Are hotels closing?

It seems very unlikely AirBnBs will "take less space" than a hotel. Hotels are quite space-efficient, given they're largely small, single rooms.

> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors

It might be finite but it's exploding. Even semi remote places get crowded these days.

https://ourworldindata.org/tourism

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