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Comment by htaunay | Hacker News Reader

Travel less affordable to some, housing more affordable to others.

Yes please. I'm tired of not being able to afford living in my own city.

Is it really because of AirBnB?

I don't know, insofar as I don't have a view of who does what with each housing unit in the city, but I'd imagine to a large degree yes.

Flats being rented on AirBnB is definitely competing with long term residents wishing to rent flats.

What is more visible as due to COVID this flats become available for a normal rental.

Obviously AirBnB, booking.com are only one of factors.

> Flats being rented on AirBnB is definitely competing with long term residents wishing to rent flats.

so are hotels, parking lots, malls, and everything else that take space right?

Those are regulated and taxed.

So? They still provide a downside. Regulation doesn’t make something instantly worth it.

So it makes sense for cities to limit and balance the down sides of short term rentals the same way they limit and balance the down sides of hotels, parking lots, and malls.

Partially yes, but AirBnB and similar caused widespread effect of flats and apartment buildings being turned into a hotels.

Residents of a city (via local government) may have some influence on hotel/mall/parking lot construction but this fails when anyone may buy apartments and starts hotel there anyway.

yes to some places. there was an article on how all of the residential units in the town of Crested Butte, CO, are owned by people who don't line there and the units exist only for renting to tourists at this point.

Partially AirBnB can be blamed. But one needs to also point to the elephant in the room, inflation.

Eurozone and US Central Bank policies are more-or-less "Cash is Trash" so markets react by throwing their savings at literally any asset that can, at least in theory, preserve value, including real estate.

The apartment I'm renting would definitely be on AirBNB if it weren't for the pandemic. The owner told me that. Not a prime location, but access to multiple public transport options right across the street.

yes! unless you can call a 1 hour commute into the city still living in the same city.

Housing would become more affordable if you let people build more of it. Do EU city centers need to preserve every brick on every 400 year old horse shack?

Yes, that's what the AirBnB users are coming for... ;)

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