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Comment by vtail | Hacker News Reader

People buying apartments to rent out via Airbnb is not inherently a bad thing - it just indicates there is existing unsatisfied demand for short term rentals, which cannot be fulfilled by hotel industry. And guess what - hotel industry is another example of an industry heavily regulated by government (zoning laws, construction permits etc.). So the Airbnb problem most likely has the same underlying root cause.

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No it is an indication that people are cheap and a person who bought a apartment as an investment now makes 30-60€ a night vs about 600 a month. There is a reason hotels are expensive. Airbnb does the same as uber. They start a business with either exploits a loophole or is illegal. Btw. at least in austria, if you want to rent your apartment on such a plattform you have to clear it with everyone who lives in that house. Of course nobody does that and of course the plattforms don't verify that, because they are "just a connecting plattform, we don't give any warranty but of course we get millions of of this"

Yes, there's a big difference between someone who rents out their apartment using Airbnb because they're away half the year, or has a spare room that they rent out, and someone who buys an entire building of 20 apartments and turns it into a hotel in all but name, skirting around all the consumer protections and regulations that have been put into place around hotels.

You can argue that the regulation of hotel-style Airbnb use is too lenient, or the regulation on real hotels is too onerous, but I don't know of any good argument that they should be treated differently.

Sorting this out would either lead to reduced demand for apartments to use with Airbnb as it becomes less attractive to large-scale landlords, or lead to greater demand of land for hotel usage.

> ...turns it into a hotel in all but name, skirting around all the consumer protections and regulations that have been put into place around hotels.

Then the protections and regulations need to be adjusted to apply to businesses that operate like hotels, regardless of what they're called.

There's fundamentally no reason such a hotel shouldn't be able to list their rooms on Airbnb - as long as customers aren't deceived, and the law is complied with.

> if you want to rent your apartment on such a plattform you have to clear it with everyone who lives in that house.

I love this idea. My friend currently lives in a building in Brooklyn where a person rents out rooms in his apartment on AirBnB and it's been nothing but an annoyance since day one. I'm glad NYC has put some restrictions on AirBnB .

Chiming in as an NYC resident:

I'm _extremely_ grateful that my current lease, as well as the upcoming one that I hope to sign if my application is approved, explicitly spells out the penalties for renting out apartments on Airbnb as a fee equivalent to 2 months rent immediately applied to the tenant.

It's been a massive improvement to not have to deal with the externalities that come from sharing a building with Airbnb guests.

> there is existing unsatisfied demand for short term rentals

This may be all well and true, but cities have no obligation to accommodate such demand. For residents, short-term visitors are annoying, since they rarely stay long enough for their behavior to warrant more than a warning from the police, they have no interest in maintaining the neighborhood during their stay, and their economic power is mostly used on things that local residents have no interest in or actively dislike.

You could "solve" this problem by providing more short-term rentals, but unlike housing I find it hard to believe that city residents actually want it resolved that way.

AirBnB allows housing stock that would otherwise be inhabited by long-term residents to be reappropriated for tourism and business travelers. That puts local residents in direct competition with tourists/businesspeople for housing, and predictably increases the price of housing for long-term residents.

By regulating the hotel industry and restricting the supply of short-term housing, local governments favor long-term residents over visitors. AirBnB is great for travelers, but long-term residents pay the price.

> it just indicates there is existing unsatisfied demand for short term rentals

Yes, but allowing the market to satisfy that demand is not necessarily a good idea. This isn't a case where the unrestrained market will solve all problems. It will solve a problem for travelers, but create problems for long-term residents.

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