This was really short sighted given Airbnb have claimed since the beginning to regulators, local authorities and the public that they exist only to provide a platform for people to rent out their spare rooms when it's convenient for them. Their core claim is that they are not a hotel company, which is how they manage to skirt so many hotel regulations. Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the properties offered on the platform can afford to keep them without renting then out full time, since it's supposed to be their primary home.
In reality, Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with added facilitation of discrimination, normalisation of the charging of extra fees such as for "cleaning" (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?), rating obfuscation and a huge negative impact on local rental prices with landlords assembling empires of dozens of Airbnb properties. The fact Airbnb were so tone deaf to all this, asking the public to offset the losses made by landlords in times like these is really incredible.
I have somewhat of a 'not in my backyard' opinion of Airbnb. I have admittedly used the service multiple times, but since I moved into a new house I've changed my view on the business model.
Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house, occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his.
The city has not been able to catch up with the modern world and has no policy or licensing for Airbnb style businesses.
The pandemic has had zero impact on his ability to rent out rooms, it's always full.
TLDNR: I wish I had a neighbour and not a business next to me in a residentially zoned street.
Using AirBnB sometimes doesn't automatically make you a NIMBY, IMO. If an ordinary family of four stays in a secluded single family home for a weekend, that's not really the incarnation of AirBnB that many people have a problem with. It's the modern flophouse in the middle of a regular neighborhood that is really driving problems.
In my country the city is playing catchup on policy level.
Currently you can only allow 30 days of AirBnB for a property.
Over here the demand for AirBnB is pretty much non existant now, though. The Coronavirus lockdown has put an end to all travel and tourism for now. Many properties are now returning to normal, long term rental units.
I think the important distinction is the side effects of having a neighbor that rents out on AirBnB. In your case it's "occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his" which I think is unacceptable. I have rented ~10 AirBnB's with friends over the years and in every case we either flew into the location and used Uber/Lyft to get around or carpooled there resulting in us only using the allowed number of parking spaces.
A family or group of people occupying a residence that would be occupied by a similarly size group is not a problem in my mind. It's only when there is noise at all hours, trash left around the property or on yours, or parking in your parking area that I would really start to mind.
Maybe that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't (that I know of) live near someone who rents out on AirBnB. That said, I do live next to 1 house that has ~6 (I honestly can't be sure) people that live there (all adults) and on the other side have a house that is often vacant and the owners have their parents live there sometimes I think and none of that bothers me. That's mainly because they keep to themselves, don't make lots of noise, leave trash laying around, or take up extra parking. So knowing all that I don't think I'd mind an AirBnB as long as all those factors didn't change.
Have a chat with the owner and failing that see if you can setup a clamping company and do a deal with one to clamp anybody that encroaches on your property. May as well make some money from it.
I don't really see how this bothers you. If they're parking on your driveway, just call a tow truck. If they're on the street, you're SOL unless you can pitch the city to make your street "residential parking only" with decals (but this is no different from your neighbour just owning 8 cars and street parking them).
Is this fundamentally different than your next door neighbor replacing their SFH with a 4 story apartment building? One could say Airbnb rentals are based on want and traditional rental housing is based on need, but the residents of the theoretical apartment building don’t “need” to live on your street.
Not disagreeing with you except about the cleaning fee. Hotels usually clean every room every day and have an on-site cleaning staff. The marginal cost to clean one room is pretty low, and it happens every day while you’re there, so it’s baked into the price. On Airbnb, typically your place is cleaned once after you leave whether you stayed one night or two weeks, and it’s more expensive than just cleaning a hotel room, so it’s a separate charge, as it should be.
> Not disagreeing with you except about the cleaning fee.
Having different fees is fine. What is troublesome is that AirBNB doesn't immediately show the total price (including all surcharges). I think recently they finally were forced to do that in the EU (before that I used a browser addon). That the initial price includes all the additional surcharges has been mandatory for quite a while due to companies using this to trick customers (e.g. advertising 200 EUR for renting 1 week; practically you need to pay 700 EUR).
Note that various companies still try to skirt that bit (surcharges only shown at a later stage). E.g. mandatory "booking fees" and so on.
...which is baked into their room rates? It’s predatory to advertise a lower rate and then inflate it after the fact with all kinds of tacked on fees. People (rightfully) go nuts at hotels that try to do this.
> how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?
Because I suppose hotels have to actually clean their rooms well, so the housekeeping expense is probably a significant fraction of the daily charge. But Airbnbs definition of cleaning is at best changing the sheets (if you're lucky) and make sure that there are no streaks in the toilet. So they charge a pittance and get away with it.
Hotel regulations are by and large rent-seeking behavior (irony?). For example, OTA's have created several rules that only exist to protect their profits. Hotels have to have the same price on all listing websites including their own, so it doesn't matter if one OTA charges 40% as their cut. You're not allowed to bake their overhead into your bottom line.
Despite the wild-west nature of vacation rentals like this, people often prefer it over traditional hotels. Maybe it's the free market saying all this regulation meant to entrench the incumbents has hit its critical mass.
Does anyone know of an alternative to Airbnb that's somewhat more ethical/sustainable? I strongly dislike hotels and I've really enjoyed the home feeling of some Airbnbs I've stayed at. If there was some alternative that didn't promote the rental property culture that'd be great.
> Built into these claims is the assumption that the owners of the properties offered on the platform can afford to keep them without renting then out full time, since it's supposed to be their primary home.
It's not because they are supposed to be able to afford it that you didn't assumed you would get that revenue.
We do pet sitting, we don't need that revenue, in fact, we would nearly do it for the cost (food and cat litter) if the platform allowed it, simply because we like having pets, but can't afford the long-term responsibility of owning one right now (it's also incredibly rewarding to allow people to know their cats are well taken care of during their travel). For obvious reason, that revenue wen't down to nearly 0 during the pandemic. We don't need that cash, but it did change our plans quite a bit, because we expected that revenue. In our case it wasn't too bad, but I have no doubt it can be worst for others (I can easily see people that paid for renovations expecting to keep getting that revenue).
That's also completely ignoring the fact that it's not only the loss of revenue from Airbnb that can be the issue. The pandemic had impact much greater than Airbnb. It's not because someone didn't even expected any revenue from Airbnb, that they aren't in need right now.
You don't want to help someone? Don't, I'm not either right now, can't afford that, but that doesn't means there isn't people in needs and that you will never want to help them. Airbnb added that feature on their platform... that's all...
> (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?)
Hotel staff aren't paid? You pay the fee, it's just not itemized...
Would it be better if it weren't itemized? The total cost is shown before clicking on any offer... it wouldn't change a thing to hide it better.
I fully agree with most criticisms, but fees for the final cleaning of the room (usually only once per 1 or 2 week stay) are oftentimes separate from the room (or apartment) price, but they have to be advertised
When you searched Airbnb for prices they wouldn't include cleaning or additional services. For my first few years using Airbnb, this wasn't a problem, but then folks began hacking the search algorithm and charging huge cleaning fees to get included in more searches. You'd select a place for $500 and find it was $700 when checking out. I started going back to hotels cause they were cheaper than Airbnb.
It's a truly end-of-capitalism† move to shift the risk burden of property ownership from the center to the periphery. I guess McDonalds does this too with its franchises, but this is so much more pure: you own the property, you figure out all the property management work, and AirBnB takes the cut. McDonalds at least sends its franchises frozen hamburgers. AirBnB is just pure toll-bridge-as-a-service.
† Not sure if capitalism will actually end any time soon, but stuff like this is what makes radicals try their best to end it.
This seems counter-productive. Housing costs are up because of AirBnB. I’m not thrilled, but that’s the market. The market needs to reprice. Folks who bet on the market would get rich if the bet paid off. Let them sell their places, and someone else can rent them out in the future.
Call me callous but I don’t feel the need to bail out someone who charged me $500/night on a place with a $3000 monthly payment. I entered the transaction freely, and the transaction is over.
Housing costs are not up because of Airbnb, they are up because of government regulation. If we wanted housing to cost to buy a house in the US to be $100k average, we could do it almost overnight by lifting regulations unrelated to safety. With existing automation tech (produce like industry instead of custom each time) we could get it to $50k. In 10 years we could make housing affordable if we had the societal will.
I think you can make many arguments that being more expensive is worth it (more free parking is an example of what is included in the price of a home today), but there is no technical reason homes cannot be very inexpensive. You can also argue it's a "feature not a bug" from existing homeowners, who work to reduce supply (zoning, NIMBY, etc).
I think they are partially. In London, rents have decreased 25%-50% since COVID. Part of that will be reduced demand. But I have also seen a lot of rooms advertised for long-term rental that were previously Airbnbs.
We could certainly ameliorate this by building more houses. But here in the UK we're a lot more limited by available land space than you are in the US. And while there is limited supply it makes sense to prioritise making primary dwellings affordable over profit making for landlords.
Depends on the zone. A lot of EU cities are having problems with AirBnB hosts buying up property, driving prices up and people out of their neighborhoods. In my city, once the pandemic started a lot of new apartments were up for renting long-term, and the most likely explanation is that these were tourism renters trying to cover losses due to tourism.
I live in a city where tourism is a huge part of the economy. Since AirBnBs took off, our hotel occupancy dropped off massively, and rents have gone up. Much of our government revenue depends on hotel taxes, which obviously not collected on AirBnBs.
Yes, we can build more residential properties (and we are), but I think it's a bit naive to assume that tourists leaving hotels vacant, and staying in livable housing instead wouldn't drive up rents for locals in the short term.
There’s already a massive industry around manufactured homes. Trailer homes are at the bottom end and “normal” looking ones at the top end. They cost about the same if not less than what you quoted. Most places I’ve seen them are rural areas.
Zoning and NIMBY issues are mainly a West coast problem. The South, Midwest, Southwest, and a good part of the Northeast are not even close to the West coast.
I could have been more precise and said “in part due to AirBnB.” AirBnB increased the demand for housing (from investors) without increasing supply. So home ownership costs go up. Conversely they do increase the rental supply.
I concur with you that zoning and regulations definitely impact the supply quite a bit. (Mostly reducing supply)
Housing costs are up in low price areas. For example, I stayed in Kiev for a month because I can work anywhere. Did the same thing in Vilnius and other low cost cities. Digital nomads and vacationers from countries with high standards of living are pushing up property prices around the world.
The section 8 landlords are enjoying some serious schadenfreude right now because even though they only cash small checks once a month they're the only ones still cashing checks at all.
Short term rentals have an effective monthly rent far in excess of the normal monthly rent for equivalent accommodations. With this payoff comes risk. The money source can dry up on you much faster. I have no more sympathy for people who went all in on AirBNB than I do for people who went all in on day trading.
This has been kept secret for years. Landlords that know what they are doing go after those section 8 contracts. Most people wouldn't be able to recognize a section 8 renter if they were standing right in front of them.
My old apartment, complete with modern amenities, had section 8 renters. It was targeted towards young professionals. But new construction made it 100% ADA-compliant. Which is perfect for wheelchair bound social security-disability check receivers. According to the property manager, "no problem with section, unlike you, they always pay rent on time!"
All I'm seeing in this article is a few people trying to get that dopamine rush of engagement by dunking on "landlords" (not that all AirBnB hosts are landlords, some are just folks renting an extra room out), and sfgate happily obliging them.
At least the tweet I saw on the article had thousands of likes. I've seen some articles where a person said something on Twitter and there's 12 likes and the writer is trying to make it sound like a trend.
Airbnbs are, by definition, short term rentals that don’t follow the rules imposed on the hotel industry, so how are they not landlords? Apparently one third of their hosts own 25 or more units, which I imagine is quite a bit more than the average small-time landlord.
Consider this one a features story. No so much need to follow an assembling crowd and seeing what they're griping about in person anymore, trending will show it.
Fact of the matter is that momentarily twitter reflects general public discourse and has to be engaged with. Not to say that the whole public discourses through twitter, but that it generally reflects public discourse. As in, even the broadcast segments that are watched by technophobic grandparents show it on screen, reference it, and then talk about it.
I think I should have said "full-time" or "professional" landlord. I had thought that the word had a connotation of it being a full-time gig, but I was wrong.
Being a regular customer in a very hot market (Dublin) I can attest that most of the places I've been to were grossly overpriced and let's not speak about the quality.
Back in the fat cows era (up until a few months ago) it seemed that Airbnb was synonymous to "if you have a spare doghouse in a hot overpriced market then you can make very good money out of it". Not to mention how airbnb was contributing to such markets to get even more overpriced by causing shortages.
And now they are urging customers to sponsor hosts...
Yup. Definitely someone there must have lost it entirely.
They must be so disconnected that they feel their hosts and guests are actually having a meaningful connection. Most of my Airbnb interactions don't go beyond the exchange of keys (or not even that with the key boxes).
I have no sympathy for landlords or Airbnb, they are just going to have to deal with the market like everyone else.
Not only does one actually meet one's host much rarely these days compared to AirBnB's early years, but the cases where one indeed interacts with the host are often pretty tiresome, think lonely elderly people who just keep talking after you have tried to make it clear that you are tired and want to be alone. Sadly, this doesn't get mentioned much in reviews for fear of upsetting the host or the forced-positivity corporation that is AirBnB, so it is very hard to avoid these awkward encounters completely.
It’s amazing to me that Airbnb tells people that it’s up to them to determine if their contributions are tax deductible. Why would they even write this? Hosts on Airbnb are for-profit enterprises. I’ve never heard or a registered non-profit running Airbnb rentals. What are they thinking?
I was baffled by this too. Maybe in the initial testing people saw this and this question came up? Probably very few people overall know how this stuff works.
I wonder if AirBnB knows how delusional they are about their own product?
They originally pitched it on a social message – stay with other people who enjoy travelling like you, sometimes you'll rent a room from someone, other times you'll rent out your room. Everyone cares about making this a great community.
However this is far from what they've become – most rooms/properties are full-time AirBnB rooms, many managed by management companies trying to skim as much profit as they can, and rented out by professional short-term landlords who clearly don't care about the community.
In the former product, I can imagine having a connection to some hosts, I can imagine emailing them to see if I could book a floating credit for some nights next year or tipping a fair bit more on a booking.
But that's not AirBnB. I've not stayed in a single place like that. Surely AirBnB must know what their product actually is? Does that mean this communication is just gaslighting customers into thinking they're something different?
I've been in AirBnB hosts where the landlady would make deserts for us and all kinds of stuff, just because she was nice and bored. We enjoyed it very much and I would tip her via AirBnb - she didn't want cash, except once - pre-agreed for multi course meal where she fed a group of 4, and it was pretty much just for the resources.
There was a guy in SF that took me around shown me the city, etc... I enjoyed this too and would tip him.
Adding the ability to donate is not a neutral decision and affects everyone using the platform whether they "donate" or not. I use quotes because we usually reserve the word "donate" for non-profits and charities.
Not donating is saying just as much to the host as donating.
And maybe that's a good change, but I think it's wrong to say that offering the option only affects those who choose to pay extra.
Readit News
In reality, Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with added facilitation of discrimination, normalisation of the charging of extra fees such as for "cleaning" (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?), rating obfuscation and a huge negative impact on local rental prices with landlords assembling empires of dozens of Airbnb properties. The fact Airbnb were so tone deaf to all this, asking the public to offset the losses made by landlords in times like these is really incredible.
Our neighbour Airbnbs multiple rooms in his house full time. He barely has parking for 3 cars, 2 cars if you don't want to be boxed in. However he rents out room for 6 people. He constantly has business moving through his house, occasionally his guests encroach on our driveway which is adjacent to his.
The city has not been able to catch up with the modern world and has no policy or licensing for Airbnb style businesses.
The pandemic has had zero impact on his ability to rent out rooms, it's always full.
TLDNR: I wish I had a neighbour and not a business next to me in a residentially zoned street.
/rant
Currently you can only allow 30 days of AirBnB for a property.
Over here the demand for AirBnB is pretty much non existant now, though. The Coronavirus lockdown has put an end to all travel and tourism for now. Many properties are now returning to normal, long term rental units.
A family or group of people occupying a residence that would be occupied by a similarly size group is not a problem in my mind. It's only when there is noise at all hours, trash left around the property or on yours, or parking in your parking area that I would really start to mind.
Maybe that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't (that I know of) live near someone who rents out on AirBnB. That said, I do live next to 1 house that has ~6 (I honestly can't be sure) people that live there (all adults) and on the other side have a house that is often vacant and the owners have their parents live there sometimes I think and none of that bothers me. That's mainly because they keep to themselves, don't make lots of noise, leave trash laying around, or take up extra parking. So knowing all that I don't think I'd mind an AirBnB as long as all those factors didn't change.
Dead Comment
Having different fees is fine. What is troublesome is that AirBNB doesn't immediately show the total price (including all surcharges). I think recently they finally were forced to do that in the EU (before that I used a browser addon). That the initial price includes all the additional surcharges has been mandatory for quite a while due to companies using this to trick customers (e.g. advertising 200 EUR for renting 1 week; practically you need to pay 700 EUR).
Note that various companies still try to skirt that bit (surcharges only shown at a later stage). E.g. mandatory "booking fees" and so on.
Because I suppose hotels have to actually clean their rooms well, so the housekeeping expense is probably a significant fraction of the daily charge. But Airbnbs definition of cleaning is at best changing the sheets (if you're lucky) and make sure that there are no streaks in the toilet. So they charge a pittance and get away with it.
Despite the wild-west nature of vacation rentals like this, people often prefer it over traditional hotels. Maybe it's the free market saying all this regulation meant to entrench the incumbents has hit its critical mass.
It's not because they are supposed to be able to afford it that you didn't assumed you would get that revenue.
We do pet sitting, we don't need that revenue, in fact, we would nearly do it for the cost (food and cat litter) if the platform allowed it, simply because we like having pets, but can't afford the long-term responsibility of owning one right now (it's also incredibly rewarding to allow people to know their cats are well taken care of during their travel). For obvious reason, that revenue wen't down to nearly 0 during the pandemic. We don't need that cash, but it did change our plans quite a bit, because we expected that revenue. In our case it wasn't too bad, but I have no doubt it can be worst for others (I can easily see people that paid for renovations expecting to keep getting that revenue).
That's also completely ignoring the fact that it's not only the loss of revenue from Airbnb that can be the issue. The pandemic had impact much greater than Airbnb. It's not because someone didn't even expected any revenue from Airbnb, that they aren't in need right now.
You don't want to help someone? Don't, I'm not either right now, can't afford that, but that doesn't means there isn't people in needs and that you will never want to help them. Airbnb added that feature on their platform... that's all...
> (how have hotels managed to get by since time immemorial without charging one!?)
Hotel staff aren't paid? You pay the fee, it's just not itemized...
Would it be better if it weren't itemized? The total cost is shown before clicking on any offer... it wouldn't change a thing to hide it better.
Deleted Comment
"Airbnb is a glorified hotel room broker but with..."
Still want phrasing which is more critical. Something along the lines of profiting from cheating.
† Not sure if capitalism will actually end any time soon, but stuff like this is what makes radicals try their best to end it.
It can't because any change or evolution keeps the name.
The only way to end it would be to revert back to a pre-capitalist economy that's not been retroactively deemed one (either by fans or detractors).
Call me callous but I don’t feel the need to bail out someone who charged me $500/night on a place with a $3000 monthly payment. I entered the transaction freely, and the transaction is over.
I think you can make many arguments that being more expensive is worth it (more free parking is an example of what is included in the price of a home today), but there is no technical reason homes cannot be very inexpensive. You can also argue it's a "feature not a bug" from existing homeowners, who work to reduce supply (zoning, NIMBY, etc).
I think they are partially. In London, rents have decreased 25%-50% since COVID. Part of that will be reduced demand. But I have also seen a lot of rooms advertised for long-term rental that were previously Airbnbs.
We could certainly ameliorate this by building more houses. But here in the UK we're a lot more limited by available land space than you are in the US. And while there is limited supply it makes sense to prioritise making primary dwellings affordable over profit making for landlords.
Yes, we can build more residential properties (and we are), but I think it's a bit naive to assume that tourists leaving hotels vacant, and staying in livable housing instead wouldn't drive up rents for locals in the short term.
Zoning and NIMBY issues are mainly a West coast problem. The South, Midwest, Southwest, and a good part of the Northeast are not even close to the West coast.
[citation needed]
I concur with you that zoning and regulations definitely impact the supply quite a bit. (Mostly reducing supply)
Dead Comment
The government.
The section 8 landlords are enjoying some serious schadenfreude right now because even though they only cash small checks once a month they're the only ones still cashing checks at all.
Short term rentals have an effective monthly rent far in excess of the normal monthly rent for equivalent accommodations. With this payoff comes risk. The money source can dry up on you much faster. I have no more sympathy for people who went all in on AirBNB than I do for people who went all in on day trading.
My old apartment, complete with modern amenities, had section 8 renters. It was targeted towards young professionals. But new construction made it 100% ADA-compliant. Which is perfect for wheelchair bound social security-disability check receivers. According to the property manager, "no problem with section, unlike you, they always pay rent on time!"
Section 8 is a fantastic program that deserves more credit for avoiding the issues that plague the Projects.
Two popular HN pieces have recently touched on how journalists and newspapers give twitter too much weight:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833267
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23827073
All I'm seeing in this article is a few people trying to get that dopamine rush of engagement by dunking on "landlords" (not that all AirBnB hosts are landlords, some are just folks renting an extra room out), and sfgate happily obliging them.
Fact of the matter is that momentarily twitter reflects general public discourse and has to be engaged with. Not to say that the whole public discourses through twitter, but that it generally reflects public discourse. As in, even the broadcast segments that are watched by technophobic grandparents show it on screen, reference it, and then talk about it.
That's a landlord.
Dead Comment
Back in the fat cows era (up until a few months ago) it seemed that Airbnb was synonymous to "if you have a spare doghouse in a hot overpriced market then you can make very good money out of it". Not to mention how airbnb was contributing to such markets to get even more overpriced by causing shortages.
And now they are urging customers to sponsor hosts...
Yup. Definitely someone there must have lost it entirely.
I have no sympathy for landlords or Airbnb, they are just going to have to deal with the market like everyone else.
If the host reached out to me on their own, I would probably help them. But to have Airbnb guilt trip people into donating is beyond me as well.
We often make value judgements on these things but the reality is that as long as someone is willing to pay it is not 'overpriced'.
They originally pitched it on a social message – stay with other people who enjoy travelling like you, sometimes you'll rent a room from someone, other times you'll rent out your room. Everyone cares about making this a great community.
However this is far from what they've become – most rooms/properties are full-time AirBnB rooms, many managed by management companies trying to skim as much profit as they can, and rented out by professional short-term landlords who clearly don't care about the community.
In the former product, I can imagine having a connection to some hosts, I can imagine emailing them to see if I could book a floating credit for some nights next year or tipping a fair bit more on a booking.
But that's not AirBnB. I've not stayed in a single place like that. Surely AirBnB must know what their product actually is? Does that mean this communication is just gaslighting customers into thinking they're something different?
Heck NO! What is their reasoning here!? I have zero emotional connection with that person. Nor do I think they are entitled to my charity.
I've been in AirBnB hosts where the landlady would make deserts for us and all kinds of stuff, just because she was nice and bored. We enjoyed it very much and I would tip her via AirBnb - she didn't want cash, except once - pre-agreed for multi course meal where she fed a group of 4, and it was pretty much just for the resources.
There was a guy in SF that took me around shown me the city, etc... I enjoyed this too and would tip him.
I have more examples of that.
This is not even charity, it's just pointless.
Not donating is saying just as much to the host as donating.
And maybe that's a good change, but I think it's wrong to say that offering the option only affects those who choose to pay extra.
Right now it's ripe with places (sometimes entire buildings) dedicated to AirBnB, to the point where they put a dent in the local renting market.