this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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I read that airbnb lead to rents rise, because it made it so easy for landlords to run their property like hotels. I don't use them, and kind of think lowly of people that are like "well it's convenient so i don't care".
It means there's not enough construction. If apartments were used as hotels, then more construction would offset increase in prices
I think it shouldnt be on the consumers but on the lawmaker. Tax airbnbs like real bnbs or like hotels or there are many other levers that can be pulled to make it less profitable than renting to locals
It was a nice concept in the 2010s when it was like an advanced version of Couchsurfing or a digital version of a homestay. Then of course it became an unsustainable business model and went to dogs when it became a money making scheme for finance bros to buy up housing and charge 4-star hotel prices.
partially right, but its usually the corporate real estate companies doing this, they buy up the HOUSES and just air bnb, or rent them forever, without even selling any of the houses.
While Air B&B has done irreperable harm to the housing market, I'm not 100% convinced it should be banned. I propose if a house operates as an enterprise, it be taxed according to commercial rates, not residential. It would go a long way to resolving the inequities.
this. it should be taxed like any other hotel/motel
At least for the time it's not used as a residence by the owners. If they want a mixed rate, they need to prove when they are there and when they're not (i.e. when it's listed for rent).
I imagine there are some "written in blood" laws and regulations that apply to hotels that airbnb is ignoring, too. That should also be addressed.
I read a story about that, it was a VRBO though.
Sauce
This. They help destroy housing markets.
further destroy housing markets.
investors are already doing their work, too.
while hotels and motels run at low capacity utilization
I only use it when I travel in large groups. At which point it's really really nice. It's private. It's quiet. It's cheap (per person). It's more social. We usually also save money on food by buying in bulk and cooking.
Living next to a few short-term rentals, it is so extremely creepy to have various large groups of people in and out, staring at you and your stuff, blocking the street with Ubers and scooters, and you only think it's quiet because you're the house making all the noise.
It sucks to make a neighborhood a nice place to live only to have all that leeched for profit selling to bachelorette parties full of girls going WOOO at 1 AM.
I live in a neighborhood that regularly (as in, at least once, often more times a week) has people blasting concert grade speakers until like 4 in the morning, with revving cars, fireworks, gunshots, etc etc.
and thats from people who live there. no airbnbs.
Shitty people are shitty people. at least with an airbnb you have a chance at a break in the neighbors being dickheads.
As usual, a few jerks ruin it for the rest of us.
I've stayed at a number of airbnbs and we're very respectful of our neighbors. We basically treat the place as if we lived there, because that's what we're looking for.
Hotels suck:
I just don't like hotels. Maybe zoning could limit airbnbs to townhouse/condo communities or something that are all rentals, but give me more options than a stupid hotel.
Maybe hotels could just learn something from ABnB and offer some larger, more comfortable spaces with kitchens and 4-5 bedrooms? They're all over in Vegas.
Airbnb kitchens aren't great either (dull knives, wrecked pans) but at least they exist.
They're hit and miss, but yes, existing is the critical part here. I can make up for a missing/wrecked pan, I can't conjure an oven.
Roll against your wisdom to not cast lvl 3 conjure gas line
If you fail your wisdom check You'll need dex of 18 to not start a fire.
I don't doubt it's not great to live next to them.
That's awful presumptious of you. Why would I think it was quiet if the noise was coming from inside the house? How does that make any sense to you?
Yep instead of lowering rent because your unit is unaffordable you just buy up and rent them all out creating housing scarcity and prices will increase right up until the point ppl can't afford to vacation anymore... Which is pretty much now anyway. Queue up all the BS stories. "Millennials/zoomers don't 'want' to vacation anymore"
The Snake is going to eat it's tail.
Where I feel like they have a suitable place is for vacation rentals. Like when I was a kid our family would rent a house at the beach for a week as our summer vacation. The beach we’d go to had several real estate companies that would manage the rentals and published little booklets every year with the listings. The houses were privately owned, though, so as Airbnb and especially VRBO came along this gave the homeowners another option that was perhaps less expensive than the agencies. These are houses in a vacation area, though, generally not taking away housing from locals. This also was traditionally a family that owned one extra house for family getaways and trying to rent it out when they weren’t using it, not investors creating “hotel” chains. Setting up what is effectively a hotel in a residential area and cutting off housing from people who need it should be an obvious problem yet many people don’t recognize it.
don’t forget the rudeness of some people. they behave like the whole building is a hotel and they can do whatever they damn well please.
If it were up to me, I would obliterate this concept. Hotels are for holidays, not people’s houses where everyone brings along their holiday brains and are being generally disrespectful towards the communities.
In Paris, France, government officials went around the inner city area and forcefully removed all unofficial key safes from buildings. That’s how all cities should handle this.
However, some years ago there was a news story going around about one person that owns various different places in Berlin, all listed under different names on AirBnB and that person barely visits those places as he has cleaning people do everything in between bookings. They only pocket the huge amounts of money while doing nothing. And the description to find the door key was like “find the public bicycle rack and look for the broken bike with a pink frame, the key will be under the saddle” and there were specific instructions to not talk to anyone in that building. So they definitely knew that this was kind of a grey area…
We used one in Manhattan that was somewhat like this about a decade ago. We were told to tell anyone else in the building that we were friends of some guy (can't recall the name) who was different than the one doing the booking.
Hotels suck.
Not sure what this is, every time I use an airbnb I treat the place as if I lived there, because that's why I'm selecting an airbnb instead of a hotel. We often leave the place better than it was when we got there.
Surely there's some way to preserve the benefits of airbnb while cutting down on the abusers.
yeah I get things like its the only option yet somehow people traveled and found a place to stay before it existed.
Originally, they did fill a niche. If you have a big group of people, a hotel breaks the group up into rooms. Airbnb lets you have one place all to yourself.
Nowadays it's gone to shit with low quality spaces, hotels listing themselves on Airbnb, stuff like that. I hope there's a middle ground.