Short Term Rental (2018)
stephenrees.blog
stephenrees.blog
If cities managed/governed their property regulations correctly, we wouldn't be facing a situation where development is so constrained, existing property is so valuable (and appreciating), and short term capacity is so lacking. I don't blame people for operating within the incentives that have been put up for them. It's unavoidable. You think each individual Airbnb owner is responsible for this situation?
Despite this article being from 2018, the problem of course continues, even has gotten worse. And cities (well, most anyway) do nothing to manage their growth in conjunction with the unstoppable demand that they will have to eventually acknowledge.
Hotels are properly regulated, but AirBnb is profiting off circumventing the existing (good, working) rules on where tourist hotels are to be located.
And they are not a neutral marketplace because many people would not rent a room from a random stranger without the guarantees that Airbnb claims to provide.
If eBay were to offer warranty on legal gray-area arms deals, you'd hold them accountable, too, I presume. So why treat Airbnb's legal gray-area rentals any better?
Is the reason people dump trash on vacant lots because we regulate landfills?
The government is not an effective force at stopping people doing things that most of everyone thinks should be done. Government prohibitions work best when there is a small & unpopular minority which is being bought into line.
Contrast an alcohol prohibition with laws prohibiting murder. One of those is popularly supported and generally effective. The other is a good example of the law creating a wrongdoing out of nothing.
“This is really a way to help renters. For example, under the current situation, if you’re a tech sector worker and you have a good salary but you’re really struggling to find a rental in Vancouver, even with your high salary, you’re thinking: “I’m paying really high income tax and really high rent, but my landlord is paying very little in property tax. If we switched that, I’d be better off.”
So by raising property taxes and lowering income and sales taxes, you could have a more dynamic economy. People recognize that unaffordability is currently hindering the economy, due to how hard it is to draw workers here to Vancouver who can’t be comfortably housed. But lowering income and sales taxes will also bolster the economy, because people will have more money to spend and more incentive to work and do business. It’s this extra incentive due to lower income and sales tax rates that is behind the theoretical result.”
If you extended this concept into the realm of short term rentals, then property taxes on the unit you are able to rent out on AirBnB would be vastly higher than on the unit in a building that prohibits STRs. The market would take care of the rest.
[1] https://news.ubc.ca/2018/12/05/ubc-economist-proposes-soluti...
Airbnb is so supply constricted that it virtually always sides with the host. Compare that to NYC housing laws which are some of the most tenant friendly I could’ve written myself. So Airbnb screws individuals through various policies degrading consumer protection.
The world decided zero interest rates were good, so Chinese investors like the aforementioned buy places outright with minimal capital down and rent them out to local Canadians at a premium, driving rent and prices up. The result is that domestic markets have been brutalized and the rich have won in the zero rate economy, especially on housing.
I’ve had 8 Airbnb experiences and 4 turned out awful, the other four were fantastic. I used to think the company was amazing for building this new market now I’m completely jaded and feel bad for hoping this company rots
There's no way you get to 1000$ wear easily on multiple small things unless you have someone's making an effort to be trash or breaks a large appliance in which case it's provable and Airbnb probably knows it.
The story of someone getting scammed out of a lot of money like that can spread.
Nowadays, all that good will and belief in helping out others has been replaced by an impersonal financial transaction. Surely, that has changed how the "guest" and the "host" interact with each other, and not in a good way. The "guest" is now a customer of paid services and gets treated accordingly.
I believe short term rentals should be organized by a government agency. That way, all the profits can be reinvested into the housing market instead of being siphoned into a tax haven by Airbnb.
I don’t understand what would make people think that a few programmers in SF and random people all over the world could provide quality housing? The big hotel brands spend tons of money on training and renovations and periodic inspections of each property, but a website that simply allows host and guest to rate each other is supposed to provide an even better experience?
Does anyone know why its so hard to tax Airbnb? Airbnb should be responsible for collecting tax on behalf of the state and county. Tax them and pass it on to the little guys.
If you truly want this level of freedom, you need to not buy a condo or a property with a HOA.
Additional rules for owners makes sense for condos and buildings with obviously shared common infrastructure and resources. I think it makes less sense for detached housing. Apparently a large number of developers building new houses at the subdivision-scale (not in California, lol) are now putting in HOAs automatically. It's going to be a pretty shitty situation in 30 years.
Condo HOAs will thus sometimes try to pass rules or amend bylaws to establish rental restrictions of various sorts -- most commonly setting a minimum lease term, but sometimes trying to set percentages of units that must be owner occupied, limiting the numbers of units that can be owned by a single owner, or establishing a time frame a unit must be owner occupied before it can be rented.
My understanding is that most of the new apartment buildings they are building around me in Oakland and trying to rent out are "pre-converted" or already titled as condos -- but as the investors are renting them out generally there is no HOA to speak of as there is one owner. But, should market conditions change, common areas and separate titles are already established so less paperwork would be required to sell off the units.
I'm asserting that buying a detached house that falls under an HOA is something that should generally be avoided. With a house, there are rarely shared resources that actually need to be managed so any potential benefit is minimal at best, and bad HOAs can be a nightmare, so the risk is high.
I'm also lamenting the fact that developers building new neighborhoods of detached houses (e.g. in places like Austin) are apparently putting almost all of them under HOAs, perhaps because of some legal meme that doing so somehow reduces risk for the developer, or increases sale prices. I think this is an unfortunate trend.
And yes, there are issues with the people who rent. I am not going to go into detail but I have lived in bad situations (above a homeless shelter, a policeman got shanked outside a place I used to live), it is genuinely unpleasant to have your place turn into a hotel around you. Part of this is negligent landlords (in any block of flats, AirBnb will lead to a build up of trash and abuse of common areas), part of this is unpleasant renters (I have had people ring my bell at 10pm asking for directions in broken English like I am a concierge) but the most obvious point is...why is this even a thing? These are houses. People live here. If you want to stay somewhere, stay in a hotel...that is why they exist (short-term letting in most places is a loophole to let people stay in houses for short to medium periods, not a few nights like a hotel).
And yes, there are issues with tax. In many places in the world, hotel rooms are taxed. AirBnb is not (this will vary, I believe some places have specific taxes that hotels pay directly, others have varying rates of VAT, etc.).
Unf, the local council has so many property-owners and people making money off this situation that I suspect nothing will be done. But, again, I live somewhere where this is huge, tourism has never been an issue (it is a huge part of the economy), and it is deeply unpopular. A lot of these landlords aren't local, they do nothing about the costs imposed on other residents...it is a cancer, it is like having a shitty landlord but you all have to live there. And btw, the place I live gets the same amount as vistors as always...AirBnb doesn't matter, no value is being created for the local economy, people don't come to stay in an AirBnb.
Rant over. Fk AirBnb.
Even disregarding the economic benefits and jobs that creates, they're subsidizing a ton of cultural amenities for the local residents. It's pretty hard for me to believe that move visitors are a bad thing. I've certainly never heard of a city spending marketing dollars to get fewer tourists. ("Stay away from Nashville, it sucks here!")
Also, look at New Zealand closing off what used to be public parks to limit the pollution and environmental damage caused by tourists.
That doesn't seem right. There are a lot of mom & pop and SMBs offering legit accommodation, aside from those two ends of the spectrum
Plus zoning rules help to keep an area livable. That's why people usually live in quiet areas and then walk over to the cafes down the road.
In Germany, you are required to bring plastic bags so that you can take home your dog's poop. Many tourists don't know that, so ever since a neighbor started offering his spare room on Airbnb, our neighborhood became covered in dogsh. As a result, everyone now treats the AirBnb tourists with contempt, which I guess is also not nice for them.
And why do you assume that AirBnb will not go to the top 1%?
For entering the short-term-rental market you first and foremost need enough money to buy a nice city center apartment in addition to your actual home. That sounds like Chinese investment bubble to me, not like the struggling middle class.
The dogs are only one of many problems. As another example, in some countries it is still customary to throw your trash onto the main road where it will be burned at night.
Most of the issues are due to guests that have a very different culture and do not speak German, French, or English. For newly rich Chinese, the host is understandably at a loss to explain our dos and donts.
We also tried picture signs for explaining the dogs issue and there's a government-paid waste bag dispenser nearby. But a large part comes down to laziness and ignorance from the guests. If you never have to pick up your dog poop at home, would you do it while on vacation? Would you still do it even if nobody is watching?
The peak of that attitude are UK tourists, notorious for their entitled "I am on vacation so I don't give a sh" approach. UK partying groups overdid it to the point where governments prohibit direct flights to keep them away. So how do you plan to re-educate them for a 3 day trip?
In my opinion, the only good option is keeping impersonal tourists out of the residential areas. If they stay with friends and family, they will behave. But if they stay anonymously, no way to make them behave.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/858025/majorca-protest-...
AirBnB and the likes have come to their full realization. What do you think your city looks like? Where do the locals live? What do you think a "AirBnB plateau'd" equilibrium looks like?
Presumably the current regulations around short term rentals/hotels etc developed over time in response to problems the initially unregulated industry caused. So we'll end up going through the whole cycle again?