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Comment by badclient | Hacker News Reader

Are you okay if 50% of the units in your apartment and apartments across the city were used for this purpose? Are you fine with the rent increase you will incur because of the demand for units from folks who want to make a profit and can afford to pay much higher rent than someone like you?

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> Are you okay if 50% of the units in your apartment and apartments across the city were used for this purpose?

Yes. I fundamentally don't want a gated community.

> Are you fine with the rent increase you will incur because of the demand for units from folks who want to make a profit and can afford to pay much higher rent than someone like you?

I'm not convinced your premise is correct. But I'll roll with the punches.

Your second claim that this would increase rents doesn't make sense on the larger scale. For every apartment that is rented out on Air Bnb a hotel room goes vacant. After a bit of time the hotel industry would decrease it's capacity to meet the decrease in demand. That would open up former hotels as new apartments.

The possible increase in flexibility and therefor efficiency is more likely to lower rental costs across the city, and increase income opportunities when apartments have a room to rent.

No, as the hotels shrink capacity, unless there's a corresponding rise in amount of residential property, it'll be more people packed into a smaller space. The higher end hotels and rooms will go first, and that's the money that will end up sloshing around the residential and rental market. All that's left will be shitty motels, insanely expensive apartments and houses for purchase or long term rental, and short-term rental at current rates or maybe a tiny bit lower (I agree that the market will force short term rates down.)

>and increase income opportunities when apartments have a room to rent.

This will increase income opportunities for landlords. Especially all of those cash buyers that were riding the upside of this last rally, buying hundreds of properties at a time. In cash.

Edit: Even though, now that I think about it, there's a lot of shadow inventory that will come back into the system with price rises. Residential might be able to keep up with demands for a while.

For every apartment that is rented out on Air Bnb a hotel room goes vacant.

This isn't true. NYC already prevents a lot of short-term visits because of the high nightly hotel rentals. If that price becomes cheaper, then more people will travel there.

...apartments across the city were used for this purpose? Are you fine with the rent increase...

ISTM that contracts can enforce one's preferences with respect to a particular building, but only in a very few exceptional neighborhoods could they do anything to hold down rent. After all, one can't very well demand contract terms for the building across the street.

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