I think this is an interesting and unintended consequence of AirBnB not investing nearly on filtering their users.
AirBnB obviously was interested in getting their product used by as many people as people (growth at all costs) - but this had the effect of getting a lot of young, cost conscious people to take holidays in area that were traditionally residential. While most AirBnB renters are polite and respectful, enough of them were loud, disruptive and ignoring the local rules (for example, tourists in Venice who use AirBnB but ignore the very strict garbage disposal laws) that local residents started dreading having AirBnBs around.
AirBnB is already very strict with landlords: it needs to start being a lot stricter with its users too. They rapidly need to educate their users about how to be good citizens, and that the motto of 'the customer is always right' is completely the wrong way to think about a stay in a residential area in a foreign city. Users should think of themselves as a respectful guest, not an entitled customer.
"AirBnB is already very strict with landlords: it needs to start being a lot stricter with its users too." It's not as strict with landlords as it should be.
And while it is strict with users it actually favors landlords and by a landslide. Have you ever rented long term with AirBnB? Hosts can literally cancel the reservation for any reason( Airbnb says they punish for doing so but rarely if ever because the Host can provide any reason) If you happen to be in a city that doesn't have as many Airbnbs and you get a really good deal, you're screwed if the host decides to cancel.
Costs for Airbnb's have also gone up significantly that it's often not even worth it to rent one if you happen to be less than a group of 4 people.
The last few times I was tempted to use Airbnb for stays of around a week, I found the price to be comparable to hotels in the area. I ended up getting a hotel, because I wanted my stay to be managed by professionals.
Does AirBnB ensure that the landlord/owner is properly licensed to offer the property for a short term rental before listing it? Or do they just take the landlord's word for it?
"While most AirBnB renters are polite and respectful, enough of them were loud, disruptive and ignoring the local rules (for example, tourists in Venice who use AirBnB but ignore the very strict garbage disposal laws) that local residents started dreading having AirBnBs around."
A short term renter in an unlicensed business operating next door to you in your residential apartment building is necessarily going to be louder, less safe, and cause more issues than a long term neighbor. I rent a residential apartment in a residential building on a residential street. I did not rent a hotel room for a year next to other hotel rooms.
Pardon my ignorance. What is the benefit / purpose of the license besides added revenue for whatever municipality the rental is in? Is there some kind of inspection or background check process?
No, sorry. AirBnB is creating immense problems in tourist destinations, to the point where people in major cities in Greece (and other countries) are having trouble finding affordable permanent housing.
Barcelona and Rome are overrun with tourists, and it's killing the cities. AirBnB should just go away, the market worked very well before it, even if things were a bit more expensive.
I can't speak to this problem in tourist destinations or Europe generally as I don't have enough data to have an opinion, but I frequently see Airbnb blamed for high housing costs in some American cities and it strikes me as being a bunch of bullshit. Sure Airbnb doesn't help the rental problem and it is a contributor to rising rents, but the primary problem isn't Airbnb, it's lack of supply of high density apartment living options. Many US cities are composed primarily of 2-3 story houses which have been converted into dingy expensive apartments. This is utterly unacceptable from an efficiency standpoint. Many of these units need to be bulldozed and replaced with high rise apartments if cities are to become affordable again.
I can't wrap my mind around people that think that 'too many tourists' or 'too many jobs' are a problem. Those are 'problems' that most cities in the world would kill for: if we consider them problems it's because we are not nearly creative enough to take advantage of them.
As a simple example: if we have too many tourists, give a progressive daily tax that's charged to every visitor that automatically includes museum visits/etc. Use that revenue to build more housing for local residents (and if some dipshit points out that more housing ruins a neighboorhood's character, ask yourself if Paris or suburbia has more character) or to subsidize local transport infrastructure.
This sounds like those cities do not have an educated/skilled workforce.
Sure there are spots near the Roman forum you would expect to have lots of tourists(basically inside the Aurellian walls).
But outside of that its a 20+ minute drive for a tourist to popular areas. If a 50$ airbnb is beating out a $1,000/mo rent its because people cannot afford $1000 in rent.
We host an airbnb ourselves, lots of business travelers in our area.
If people are coming to visit what humans did 2000 years ago and not visiting the humans there today, I dont think the problem is Airbnb.
It's not at all strict with landlords. Requiring hotel/b&b zoning would be being strict with landlords, say, and that's what many countries and municipalities now do, but AirBnB seems to generally have little interest in helping to enforce that.
I had a host saep apartment on me to a smaller one. Then the new on clearly didn't have sheets changed or bathrooms cleaned. I flagged this to Airbnb and nothing. Very surprised as this was a bit of a shock how bad it could be. Since then I prefer hotels. The cost difference isn't that much and it's simpler to deal with occasional errors like this.
Not true in Canada, AirBnB breaks municipal and in some cases provincial laws for short term rentals. Thousands of houses are in no rent zones and AirBnB knows damn well. The tactic to combat these rentals is to use provincial & city inspectors who levy huge taxes and prohibit short-term rentals with the landlords, but they are very understaffed and generally ineffective.
AirbNB is getting away with very grey legal area here, they should he held legally accountable for facilitating illegal rentals. Right now my tax dollars are paying for the government to enforce what AirBnB sells without impunity.
On a personal note I'm thinking of pursuing this legally with AirBnB and/or my city, my street has 4 illegal AirBnB rentals on it and my city can't see to enforce their own laws. There's enough interest in my region to easily get about 30 people on board, and that's just one semi small town.
And we don't blame the users of AirBnB, they dont know the local laws, we blame the landlords and ultimately the platform.
I know in west coast tourism destinations you will practically get beat up if your renting out to airBnB illegally since it has such a negative effect on local housing prices.
Well, you've already answered my question before I made a random response.
I was going to ask "Why are there laws against people making money?", but it make sense. Residential areas are for residents, not commerce. There should be a place for folks to relax around their contemporaries without having to deal with knowing that their environment may change from day to day.
I would say, perhaps there should be a compromise. After-all, being able to rent out a room from time to time can help home owners stay in their homes longer (or even enjoy life more). Maybe there could be a 2-3 strike rule on tenants. Where, if things do go out of hand (for whatever that reason), then the homeowner cannot be part of the AirBnb renting experience.
That way, there is something to gain and something to loose. Educating tenants would be priority.
I think part of the issue is that AirBnb is probably not very good at catching a banned user making a new account.
I don't think they ask for users' IDs. Presumably anyone could sign up with a fake name and a prepaid credit card, act wild, get banned, and repeat the process.
Determining the identity of an online user can be pretty hard. AirBnB doesn't want to add verification steps that will cause attrition in the rental pipeline, so they'd rather do nothing than do a little and be seen as failing at it.
I agree with your point. I'd however like to add to this: "Users should think of themselves as a respectful guest, not an entitled customer".
Lots of landlords that rent places for a living started using AirBnB. I specially experienced this in Poland, where I often had to go to a company-owned building to pick up the keys. There they had an office, reception, etc.
It didn't feel any different from a hotel. One time we complained about an apartment, and they gave us another one that was empty.
So, my point is that the host often sets the mood. If it's a hotel-like structure that even has self check-in, with a company that uses its own website, Booking, AirBnb and whatever else is around to rent rooms, you feel like an entitled customer. If an old woman opens the door to the guest house, you feel like a guest in her house.
I guess AirBnB departed from their original vision of having people sleep in your living room on an air mattress, and it's now used by hospitality companies as another channel to get customers. When that is the case, you definitely feel like acting as a guest at a hotel, since that's what it is although booked via AirBnB.
Airbnb wouldn't want to do this though. A lot of cities are made almost entirely of condos and apartments that specifically rule out short term rentals (and have had since before Airbnb was even a thing). If people respected laws, rules, etc, they'd have nearly no product in the hottest areas. Airbnb as you know it would be a mere shadow of what it is now.
It is funny but you know there is an invention to the problem you just mentioned: It is called a "Hotel". For cost conscious people it is called a "Hostel" or a "Guest House".
The reason Airbnb is cheaper is because users are running afoul of the laws and possibly taxes.
Have you checked the Airbnb listings? Very little people are sharing their places. Most of the people are running this as a business. Many of them are not either there and delegate the key to another third-party.
It is a mess. And I'm not against it (I'm not a legal citizen of every country). But it is not fair to have registered hotel who comply with rules and pay taxes. And have Airbnb. You'll have to pick.
AirBnb creates "bad neighbours" by putting lots of tourists, some of whom behave badly, in formerly residential locations. It creates a whole new set of absentee landlords. If it were restricted to renting out places where the owner was still living it wouldn't be nearly so much of a problem.
This is the approach taken in London: Anyone can AirBnB their property, but only for 90 days a year, unless you have special permission. This prevents people buying up/renting flats just to let them out on AirBnB and putting pressure on the already cripplingly bad housing situation.
Similar in San Francisco. You can rent a single room (while you're in the house) for longer, but you can rent the entire apartment only for up to 90 days/year.
Not sure whether it's a good solution or not. Mixed feelings about it.
It could still be worth it to buy a unit purely for using it as an Airbnb in London and leave it empty 275 days a year.
Just market it as a holiday rental on dates corresponding to big London-based football matches, when people traveling might often pay hugely inflated nightly rates.
Maybe supplement during academic conferences or government events. In the right part of London and for a unit with the right amenities, you probably could still turn a net profit annually just on 90 days, and leaving it empty the rest.
Which would mean it could still negatively affect housing shortage issues and home prices, and still result in poorly behaved tourists nearby for 1/4 of the time.
In this scenario is AirBnB shorthand for all short term rentals or specific to that company? Meaning could I do AirBnB for 90 days and VRBO for 90 days or are they combined?
Also similar in Berlin, though last I checked there were still quite a few whole flats available... at much higher prices. Makes me wonder if some people are just counting the fines as a cost of doing business.
>putting pressure on the already cripplingly bad housing situation.
No amount of demand suppression will ever fix a supply issue.
“We’re better off not building up housing infrastructure subsidized by short term leases and just trying to suppress any demand that changes the market clearing price”
I live in London and a couple of years ago several of my neighbours had their flats on Airbnb, then my upstairs neighbour got married, moved out and had his flat on Airbnb, that was a massive burden on us as we suddenly went from one quiet neighbour from never knowing who was going to be living there to lots and lots of noise and weekend afterparties, luckily our council took action but only after my next door neighbour also complained. Then I was priced out of where I had been living for 6 years, and it drove me mental seeing all those flats near me advertised as whole flats on Airbnb and realising I’d have to move further out.
I have pledged to never stay in an Airbnb, ever and tell my friends they shouldn’t rent a whole place either.
That's an argument against gentrification in general; not AirBnB. An area progressing is a good thing, but there are pointy edges to it and local residents not keeping up with the local market is one of the thornier ones.
This Redditor offers one plausible cause/reason [0]:
> This may not be a popular opinion here but I totally understand the concern. There had been a huge increase in transient international visitors being introduced to residential areas that previously did not have to deal with that. Having a constant stream of strangers coming and going in your building is not something many residents feel comfortable with.
Also: > Also I just want to be sure to note to people: THESE LAWS APPLY TO ALL SHORT TERM RENTALS AND ARE NOT JUST FOR AIRBNB.
That's a valid concern. But seems to be something better handled by local ordinances and not the sort of thing a national government shoulf need to drop the hammer down on... In my opinion.
IMO, there are certain advantages to regulating things at a higher level. It's easier for AirBNB to comply with one set of rules instead of many. An individual in Japan can take advantage of a single, well-written how-to guide instead of learning his or her local laws.
That being said, where I live, I made sure the HOA explicitly forbids AirBNB-style rentals.
Every neighbourhood passing their own legislation or rules would be an absolute nightmare for Airbnb because there would be no regulatory clarity at all.
One very good thing about Japanese housing legislation is that it happens at the national level. It prevents a lot of issues you have in the United States.
There's a lot of emphasis on bad behavior from Airbnb guests, but I think that's only part of it. Another big issue is that formerly residential communities often resist the conversion of housing that used to host neighbors (and especially kids) into short term tourist rentals. The pressure, and controversy, is especially intense in areas that are largely residential but immensely popular with tourists. The French quarter of New Orleans, the left bank of Paris, many neighborhoods in San Francisco and New York, places like that.
The problem is that "spare" bedrooms (as Airbnb likes to call them) are far more lucrative used as short term tourist rentals than as a living space for kids, who cost a bundle and don't generally pay much in rent. The pitch Airbnb makes is that people have a spare bedroom lying' around and why not rent it out? But the thing is, people start to acquire properties with spare bedrooms for the purpose of having one to rent out - or entire housing units. When this proceeds apace, former communities - which in places like the French quarter are already primed to protect themselves from too much conversion into tourism stock - come to see Airbnb as an existential threat.
Even if the Airbnb guests are well behaved, this fundamental difference won't go away. Think of it this way: some people would like to trade their right to run a hotel out of their house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't either. That means severely restricting Airbnb.
For what it's worth, as an airbnb host in a residential neighborhood in a small tourist town that attracts a lot of young people in the summer I have never had poorly behaved guests. I've had a couple that could have cleaned up after themselves a little more or ruined our towels but otherwise have not had any issues, even with noise. Airbnbs in the area absorb the extra demand for space that hotels cannot supply, and having strangers around during tourist season is far preferable to having new hotels built and dealing with the invasion of the sprawl that comes with them. We do not (yet) have the problem of investors buying real estate to rent out on Airbnb because there is not yet enough demand to support it.
I realize you're talking about large cities, but it seems everyone else in this thread is as well and forgets that Airbnb operates well outside of large cities.
> some people would like to trade their right to run a hotel out of their house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't either.
This! And: most of us thought we already had laws to that effect.
Also, even for the best-behaved guests I would not want to have regular AirBNB-ing in my building. There are young children and old people living here, and they deserve some presumption of safety, not just quiet.
(I do stay in AirBNBs myself sometimes, and I'm a very low-impact guest, but I recognize my opinion is a bit contradictory because of that.)
> The problem is that "spare" bedrooms (as Airbnb likes to call them) are far more lucrative used as short term tourist rentals than as a living space for kids, who cost a bundle and don't generally pay much in rent. The pitch Airbnb makes is that people have a spare bedroom lying' around and why not rent it out? But the thing is, people start to acquire properties with spare bedrooms for the purpose of having one to rent out - or entire housing units. When this proceeds apace, former communities - which in places like the French quarter are already primed to protect themselves from too much conversion into tourism stock - come to see Airbnb as an existential threat.
This doesn't seem like a plausible scenario. I highly doubt that Airbnb revenue from a spare bedroom is enough to offset the cost of the spare bedroom itself. Here in SF an extra bedroom easily adds 1K or more to the cost of an apartment. Between getting a 2 bedroom apartment and spending the time and effort to run a Airbnb in it, vs. having a 1 bedroom apartment and saving a lot of money without any extra effort it's hard to see people electing the former.
Most of the Airbnbs I've stayed in were vacation homes that the owners didn't live in most of the year, or families whose kids moved out.
Good riddance. I live in rented accommodation in Japan. A couple of years ago an Airbnb was set up next door and it was a nightmare. People coming and going at all hours, large groups of drunk holiday-makers having loud parties into the night, drinking and smoking on the balcony. After multiple calls to the owner of the apartment and the police the situation was finally resolved.
I definitely think Airbnb should have the limitation that you can only rent out a place you actively live in.
It's really sad that AirBnB is used by most people as a cheap resort, and expect to have a resort-like experience at the expense of the local neighborhood who has no desire to live next to one.
Can we just have home-share for people that understand how to be good neighbors, pretty please?
Part of hotels' professionalism is knowing how to deal with "hillbillies". Hillbillies are naturally attracted to cheap things and have no idea how to conduct themselves when they aren't in their own hometown, so they are a special problem with respect to Airbnb.
One might assume from my place of birth that I am a hillbilly, but decades of travel and living in various places domestically and abroad have mostly civilized me. I do occasionally have to correct myself however.
What's frustrating with AirBnB in Japan is AirBnB lets them lie about how many bedrooms they actually have. The excuse usually given is that Japanese count rooms differently but that is 100% provably false. As someone that's lived here 12 of the last 20 years you can see it's provably false by visiting any Japanese realtor or apartment listing site where there is zero ambiguity about the difference between 1 bedroom, 1 bedroom with a living room, dining room or both, and a 2 bedroom, or a 2 bedroom with living room and/or dining room.
This is important because of privacy. If it says 2 bedrooms it should actually have 2 bedrooms. Not a one bedroom and a living room with a sofa.
The fact that AirBnb endorses this really speaks to the integrity at AirBnb which AFAICT is fairly low (have documented lots of other similar issues with them)
In Amsterdam they already set the limit of allowed rental days per year to 30. Just last month the new city council announced they will completely forbid AirBnB in certain neighbourhoods. As someone who studied and worked most of his life in Amsterdam I welcome these measures a lot.
I used several Airbnbs in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima last year. The first one we arrived in, in Tokyo had signs in the lift saying that Airbnb was not allowed to operate in the building, which was a bit of a stressful start. Nothing came from it though. The places in Kyoto and Hiroshima were fine, but it's made me weary of using Airbnb again.
Readit News
AirBnB obviously was interested in getting their product used by as many people as people (growth at all costs) - but this had the effect of getting a lot of young, cost conscious people to take holidays in area that were traditionally residential. While most AirBnB renters are polite and respectful, enough of them were loud, disruptive and ignoring the local rules (for example, tourists in Venice who use AirBnB but ignore the very strict garbage disposal laws) that local residents started dreading having AirBnBs around.
AirBnB is already very strict with landlords: it needs to start being a lot stricter with its users too. They rapidly need to educate their users about how to be good citizens, and that the motto of 'the customer is always right' is completely the wrong way to think about a stay in a residential area in a foreign city. Users should think of themselves as a respectful guest, not an entitled customer.
Does AirBnB ensure that the landlord/owner is properly licensed to offer the property for a short term rental before listing it? Or do they just take the landlord's word for it?
"While most AirBnB renters are polite and respectful, enough of them were loud, disruptive and ignoring the local rules (for example, tourists in Venice who use AirBnB but ignore the very strict garbage disposal laws) that local residents started dreading having AirBnBs around."
A short term renter in an unlicensed business operating next door to you in your residential apartment building is necessarily going to be louder, less safe, and cause more issues than a long term neighbor. I rent a residential apartment in a residential building on a residential street. I did not rent a hotel room for a year next to other hotel rooms.
Barcelona and Rome are overrun with tourists, and it's killing the cities. AirBnB should just go away, the market worked very well before it, even if things were a bit more expensive.
As a simple example: if we have too many tourists, give a progressive daily tax that's charged to every visitor that automatically includes museum visits/etc. Use that revenue to build more housing for local residents (and if some dipshit points out that more housing ruins a neighboorhood's character, ask yourself if Paris or suburbia has more character) or to subsidize local transport infrastructure.
Sure there are spots near the Roman forum you would expect to have lots of tourists(basically inside the Aurellian walls).
But outside of that its a 20+ minute drive for a tourist to popular areas. If a 50$ airbnb is beating out a $1,000/mo rent its because people cannot afford $1000 in rent.
We host an airbnb ourselves, lots of business travelers in our area.
If people are coming to visit what humans did 2000 years ago and not visiting the humans there today, I dont think the problem is Airbnb.
I don't think AirBnB was the cause of the Greek debt crisis.
You mean during the recession?
It's not at all strict with landlords. Requiring hotel/b&b zoning would be being strict with landlords, say, and that's what many countries and municipalities now do, but AirBnB seems to generally have little interest in helping to enforce that.
AirbNB is getting away with very grey legal area here, they should he held legally accountable for facilitating illegal rentals. Right now my tax dollars are paying for the government to enforce what AirBnB sells without impunity.
On a personal note I'm thinking of pursuing this legally with AirBnB and/or my city, my street has 4 illegal AirBnB rentals on it and my city can't see to enforce their own laws. There's enough interest in my region to easily get about 30 people on board, and that's just one semi small town.
And we don't blame the users of AirBnB, they dont know the local laws, we blame the landlords and ultimately the platform.
I know in west coast tourism destinations you will practically get beat up if your renting out to airBnB illegally since it has such a negative effect on local housing prices.
I was going to ask "Why are there laws against people making money?", but it make sense. Residential areas are for residents, not commerce. There should be a place for folks to relax around their contemporaries without having to deal with knowing that their environment may change from day to day.
I would say, perhaps there should be a compromise. After-all, being able to rent out a room from time to time can help home owners stay in their homes longer (or even enjoy life more). Maybe there could be a 2-3 strike rule on tenants. Where, if things do go out of hand (for whatever that reason), then the homeowner cannot be part of the AirBnb renting experience.
That way, there is something to gain and something to loose. Educating tenants would be priority.
I don't think they ask for users' IDs. Presumably anyone could sign up with a fake name and a prepaid credit card, act wild, get banned, and repeat the process.
Determining the identity of an online user can be pretty hard. AirBnB doesn't want to add verification steps that will cause attrition in the rental pipeline, so they'd rather do nothing than do a little and be seen as failing at it.
Lots of landlords that rent places for a living started using AirBnB. I specially experienced this in Poland, where I often had to go to a company-owned building to pick up the keys. There they had an office, reception, etc.
It didn't feel any different from a hotel. One time we complained about an apartment, and they gave us another one that was empty.
So, my point is that the host often sets the mood. If it's a hotel-like structure that even has self check-in, with a company that uses its own website, Booking, AirBnb and whatever else is around to rent rooms, you feel like an entitled customer. If an old woman opens the door to the guest house, you feel like a guest in her house.
I guess AirBnB departed from their original vision of having people sleep in your living room on an air mattress, and it's now used by hospitality companies as another channel to get customers. When that is the case, you definitely feel like acting as a guest at a hotel, since that's what it is although booked via AirBnB.
The reason Airbnb is cheaper is because users are running afoul of the laws and possibly taxes.
Have you checked the Airbnb listings? Very little people are sharing their places. Most of the people are running this as a business. Many of them are not either there and delegate the key to another third-party.
It is a mess. And I'm not against it (I'm not a legal citizen of every country). But it is not fair to have registered hotel who comply with rules and pay taxes. And have Airbnb. You'll have to pick.
The effects are just now being understood which why legislation is just now being enacted to taper it a bit.
AirBnb creates "bad neighbours" by putting lots of tourists, some of whom behave badly, in formerly residential locations. It creates a whole new set of absentee landlords. If it were restricted to renting out places where the owner was still living it wouldn't be nearly so much of a problem.
Classifying people into commercial and "sometimes" renters makes sense. If you want your business to be bigger, comply with more regulations.
Not sure whether it's a good solution or not. Mixed feelings about it.
Just market it as a holiday rental on dates corresponding to big London-based football matches, when people traveling might often pay hugely inflated nightly rates.
Maybe supplement during academic conferences or government events. In the right part of London and for a unit with the right amenities, you probably could still turn a net profit annually just on 90 days, and leaving it empty the rest.
Which would mean it could still negatively affect housing shortage issues and home prices, and still result in poorly behaved tourists nearby for 1/4 of the time.
No amount of demand suppression will ever fix a supply issue. “We’re better off not building up housing infrastructure subsidized by short term leases and just trying to suppress any demand that changes the market clearing price”
I have pledged to never stay in an Airbnb, ever and tell my friends they shouldn’t rent a whole place either.
Your problem is actually zoning, not Airbnb: https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/affor...
> This may not be a popular opinion here but I totally understand the concern. There had been a huge increase in transient international visitors being introduced to residential areas that previously did not have to deal with that. Having a constant stream of strangers coming and going in your building is not something many residents feel comfortable with.
Also: > Also I just want to be sure to note to people: THESE LAWS APPLY TO ALL SHORT TERM RENTALS AND ARE NOT JUST FOR AIRBNB.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/8os3mv/minpaku...
IMO, there are certain advantages to regulating things at a higher level. It's easier for AirBNB to comply with one set of rules instead of many. An individual in Japan can take advantage of a single, well-written how-to guide instead of learning his or her local laws.
That being said, where I live, I made sure the HOA explicitly forbids AirBNB-style rentals.
One very good thing about Japanese housing legislation is that it happens at the national level. It prevents a lot of issues you have in the United States.
Deleted Comment
The problem is that "spare" bedrooms (as Airbnb likes to call them) are far more lucrative used as short term tourist rentals than as a living space for kids, who cost a bundle and don't generally pay much in rent. The pitch Airbnb makes is that people have a spare bedroom lying' around and why not rent it out? But the thing is, people start to acquire properties with spare bedrooms for the purpose of having one to rent out - or entire housing units. When this proceeds apace, former communities - which in places like the French quarter are already primed to protect themselves from too much conversion into tourism stock - come to see Airbnb as an existential threat.
Even if the Airbnb guests are well behaved, this fundamental difference won't go away. Think of it this way: some people would like to trade their right to run a hotel out of their house in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't either. That means severely restricting Airbnb.
I realize you're talking about large cities, but it seems everyone else in this thread is as well and forgets that Airbnb operates well outside of large cities.
This! And: most of us thought we already had laws to that effect.
Also, even for the best-behaved guests I would not want to have regular AirBNB-ing in my building. There are young children and old people living here, and they deserve some presumption of safety, not just quiet.
(I do stay in AirBNBs myself sometimes, and I'm a very low-impact guest, but I recognize my opinion is a bit contradictory because of that.)
This doesn't seem like a plausible scenario. I highly doubt that Airbnb revenue from a spare bedroom is enough to offset the cost of the spare bedroom itself. Here in SF an extra bedroom easily adds 1K or more to the cost of an apartment. Between getting a 2 bedroom apartment and spending the time and effort to run a Airbnb in it, vs. having a 1 bedroom apartment and saving a lot of money without any extra effort it's hard to see people electing the former.
Most of the Airbnbs I've stayed in were vacation homes that the owners didn't live in most of the year, or families whose kids moved out.
Deleted Comment
I definitely think Airbnb should have the limitation that you can only rent out a place you actively live in.
Can we just have home-share for people that understand how to be good neighbors, pretty please?
Nice idea but, speaking from experience, it can work the other way around. I've stayed in a few AirBnB's where the neighbours have been arseholes.
Hosts also, on at least one occasion.
One might assume from my place of birth that I am a hillbilly, but decades of travel and living in various places domestically and abroad have mostly civilized me. I do occasionally have to correct myself however.
This is important because of privacy. If it says 2 bedrooms it should actually have 2 bedrooms. Not a one bedroom and a living room with a sofa.
The fact that AirBnb endorses this really speaks to the integrity at AirBnb which AFAICT is fairly low (have documented lots of other similar issues with them)
Dead Comment