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Comment by cycrutchfield | Hacker News Reader

> I used to love staying in Airbnb’s but can’t stand the cheapness of it all as of late due to them turning into pure investments and no longer real homes.

That's nice that you prefer one type of rental over the other. Why not allow both, so that others who prefer not having a homeowner intruding on their privacy don't need to deal with that?

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Because local housing naturally has a limited supply making it a natural monopoly in addition to the fact that, since it's very difficult to live without housing, it is a one-sided market without alternatives.

So, as much as you'd like to pretend it's just a matter of personal freedoms, bypassing housing codes via the guise of a tech company just enables negative externalities that restrict the personal freedoms of others. And the 'others' are the people who actually live there, making them more important than you.

If large scale operations are what's being considered wrong, then why not target that specially? E.g, if you use short term rental on more than 1 property, then the taxation on the 2nd one is going to be larger and larger until it's no longer profitable.

For people with just 1 investment property, they will still be able to rent it out short-term as it is possible today.

That sounds like a lot of loophole-ridden bureaucracy to accommodate non-residents driving up the price of housing.

Local housing has an artificially limited supply, actually. There's an absolute limit on housing per unit of area, but we get nowhere close to approaching that limit anywhere in the US. The real issue is zoning laws prohibiting building of new housing or favoring single family homes over apartment buildings creating markets where supply doesn't increase. If you address this and allow for building of higher density housing, prices will decrease and services like AirBNB stop being as big of an issue.

It doesn't help that local government politicians are frequently homeowners (and their constituents as well) that have a vested interest in keeping housing prices high. AirBNBs, apartment buildings, and high rises are going to negatively impact the value of their properties.

Not if there's induced demand. Areas without zoning laws have been tried, we usually tear them down.

Induced demand for housing, a thing that costs actual money to purchase, would just be an indicator that supply hasn't reached equilibrium with demand.

Then those who want to rent out their houses should be treated as hotels, taxed as hotels, regulated as hotels and obey zoning rules as hotels.

Because they are in fact, hotels.

they are not hotels, but serviced apartments. that is something different. i hate hotels. but i love serviced apartments. they have a kitchen, washing machine and everything i need to actually live there even for a short time. things that hotels don't have, or make very inconvenient to use.

Right, for you it's a great plus to have a single unit hotel but for the people who've just had a few single unit hotels opened outside their door/above their head/across the hall... we're wondering how these hotels managed to avoid the zoning laws!

it's NOT a hotel! it's a short term apartment rental. i don't want a hotel. zoning laws are what they are, but that doesn't mean they are justified.

long term rental, short term rentals, serviced apartments and hotels are all distinct categories. do not lump them together. they all address different needs for different people.

zoning laws ought to take that into account. personally i find US zoning laws overly restrictive, but thats my opinion, and others may feel differently.

what we should discuss is, what kind of zoning is appropriate, and for what reason. some people may like the mix of short and long term rentals, and some don't. it's a matter of taste. there is no objective standard that fits everyone.

> what we should discuss is, what kind of zoning is appropriate, and for what reason. some people may like the mix of short and long term rentals, and some don't.

Essentially the people who like short term rentals are the landlords who can extract higher revenue from short term rents and the people who can enjoy the benefits of a residential area by renting them. Maaaybe the local businesses that are tourist driven but I suspect that for the most part tourists decide where to go first and then pick the style of accomodations based on availability and pricing.

For everyone else in the residential area You've created a unit which is unavailable for locals, driving up long term rent/house prices. You've created a unit occupied by people who need not concern themselves with the long term consequences of their actions. (I don't want to p* off my neighbor with a loud party because I have to live with them for a long time) You've created a unit where a continuous stream of short term renters may accept more cramped quarters in order to save on cost, the effect being that a 2 bed apartment may effectively continuously house 9 people, creating undue noise and resource consumption, even if they are considerate neighbors. You've created a unit which needs to be cleaned as frequently as daily, creating noise.

I appreciate that these are externalities and you like the benefits a serviced apartment gives you but Airbnb has managed to bash these into residential areas and steal the value from those who live there with little recourse but to enforce the existing regulations (which the hosts are often breaching!) or regulate Airbnb out.

as a traveller i'd of course appreciate if the prices were not to high, and i also prefer to get a full apartment for myself, and not a tiny closet in a 2-bedroom that has been sliced to pieces.

i have stayed in both kinds of places. and i agree with you that those issues are real. i'd be totally fine with a limit on occupancy, and price control.

some issues could be solved with a license that a landlord can loose if they violate the rules. including excessive noise.

so i believe it is possible to manage serviced apartments in a responsible way that do not cause problems for other people in the building.

Short-term rental shares much more (99%) in common with hotels than long-term renting. The benefits you get from a short-term place only exist because the externalities are paid by other renters in the building, the police, the government, etc. It's a sham.

Those are called hotels :-)

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