One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
Governments gradually made AirBnB illegal or effectively illegal, largely or wholly killing off AirBnB in given cities, or countries.
For example, it used to be about impossible to get into Amsterdam, because of rent control and renting regulations; no supply of places to let. Then AirBnB came along, and everyone and their dog let places on AirBnB. You could get in, and at a good price. Then AirBnB was essentially banned, and now you can't get into Amsterdam.
It was always that there were a lot of people offering places who didn't know how to price what they had; so you'd see a lot of properties, but a lot were crazy money. Still, if there were enough, there would be enough places at sane prices you'd get somewhere.
These days, I still look at AirBnB, but I see that their fees have continually risen over time, and are now like 10% or 15%, and there's just no content. I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
Finally, AirBnB itself, regarding "large company", became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time.
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB suspending my account for a few days, until support get back to me.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness.
So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations.
It was great, but now it's really not.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
All of the above makes total sense (to me) when you realize that people don't know how to price rentals at all - just like the average person doesn't know how to price restaurant food.
When you know truly how to price (and cost!) something, you know when and where you can offer discounts. If cost to acquire a tenant is $2k, then the discount to preserve a good tenant should be about $2k per tenant turnover time.
Almost like Uber was marketed, AirBnB was not initially sold as a "make primary income off this". It was a way for people with excess assets (spare car and some time, spare room in a big house, etc) to make some money and the companies were the broker.
Turning Airbnb into a full-blown rental market with people and LLCs buying houses just for AirBnB was the downfall. At least, that's my interpretation.
I think Paris tried to curb this buy allowing Airbnb, but you can only rent out max 50% of the year. This makes it so local owners can make some money, but corporations wouldn't be able to get the yield they need at 50% occupancy.
Usually there are large and unavoidable transaction costs involved in selling/buying properties. It's a liquidity event on a large amount of capital so it's pretty much inevitable that government want to get involved with taxes, duties, fees etc.
I'm on one collector group on Facebook and people come and list their items for thousands of dollars even though the average price on eBay is about $1. You'll point them to the sold items and they will say "OK, I see that, but I really think you are wrong and mine is worth $6500 + shipping, and also you are very rude telling me my price is wrong."
I think they're referring to estimating what restaurant food "should" cost, based on what it is. Rule of thumb I heard years ago was aiming to sell for about 3x what your ingredients cost you plus tax, but that may have increased since.
At peak times. There's a reason lots of restaurants have happy hours and lunch specials. And a weekday night tends to be less in demand than a Friday or Saturday.
Perhaps it's a bit pedantic, but that seems less like pricing restaurant food and more like pricing food in general, which is totally valid if you're on a fixed budget and considering how much to spend for food.
Not that I always could or would care to go to the effort for a fancy meal, but in general it's going to be a lot cheaper to prepare most meals at home. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Of course it'll be cheaper to make most meals yourself. Especially since the imagined price doesn't tend to include rent, kitchen labor, service staff labor, or depreciating costs of kitchen appliances, which all go into the price of restaurant meals.
I'm living in a house anyway. I'm not paying myself. Appliances last decades. It would cost me money to drive to a restaurant. With rare exceptions (e.g. high end kitchen you don't use much and eating out really cheaply) there's no world where the costs of preparing meals at home are higher than eating out every meal.
The point is that many people expect them to be priced similarly because they think of the ingredients as the main costs (because those are the only costs they actually see when cooking for themselves), which they are not.
When going to a restaurant you should include transport costs and time wasted with transport and waiting. Cooking at home can be an efficient pipeline where you have full control of inputs while saving money and time. I was frustrated because I wanted to pay for convenience but in my case I found it to be non-convenient.
The lawsuit is about helping them using non-public data from other companies. Nothing stops the platform from making all the rental data public and giving the same recommendations.
If I had a group of graduate students at my beck and call I'd love to try to factor out what effect single-family rentals have had on the rental market in toto - because once you remove appreciation, they're often losing money each month, which means they're subsidizing the renters (and willing to do so because they're making it up on highly-leveraged appreciation).
> because once you remove appreciation, they're often losing money each month
I'm curious if you have a source for this? Intuitively, it makes sense, but I haven't actually seen any figures that support this. Although my guess is that data would be hard to come by.
Why would the math be different for apartment buildings? They also appreciate and they usually have better accountants to make sure no money is left on the table if it's available.
Apartment buildings get handled in a business-like manner, but are also apartments (which have downsides for the renters).
My theory is that single family homes get rented below what it costs to rent them and the landlords make it up via appreciation.
It's pretty obvious that there are places like this, where the rental prices are substantially below 1% of the purchase price (one of the "rule of thumbs").
I think it’s safe to call this a fact in markets like the Bay Area.
In college three friends and I rented a 1000sqft 2 bed 2 bath apartment with one parking spot for $X, then the next year a 2000sqft 4 bed 4 bath 2 car garage for $1.15X. Per zillow, the owner was renting it to us for 0.3% of the purchase price. The only way for them not to be losing their shirt is crazy appreciation.
I think it’s a good thing that laws are being passed to make it mostly impossible for AirBnbs to be in residential areas and to make it easier for residents to find affordable houses instead of tourists
I don't trust the laws. I think they're either implemented on behalf of the hotel chains, or else they only entrench people who already got "permits" for short term rentals, which now become basically golden tickets. I seriously doubt we'll see rents drop significantly anywhere.
And that’s how it should be - a hotel is a business in a commercial zone with professional management, pays taxes and doesn’t negatively affect home affordability
I think the idea is that your neighbors didn't sign up to live next to total randos. How valid that argument is is up for debate.
And it's not like you can't still rent out to friends or the like. Just totally financializing and anonymizing that interaction turns it into a different sort of interaction. Social trust is a thing, and avoiding having _every single human interaction_ pass through some broker and be financialized is not the worst.
But really... a touch of social proof never hurts.
So should I be able to build a butcher shop right by your apartment and let you deal with the smell?
There are zoning laws for a reasons.
Do you own “your” apartment?
I’m asking because some places consider it an “apartment” if it’s a rental and a “condo” if they are individual buyers and other countries call it an apartment regardless
Why shouldn't your neighbors be able to use their powers as voters to lobby their government to pass laws preventing their quiet suburban street from being used as a distributed hotel?
Your framing is such a good defense of the arbitrary and thoughtless use and abuse of political power. "Use your power as a voter", what could go wrong?
Why shouldn't our neighbors use their powers as voters to keep their peaceful suburban street from being used as housing for migrants, minorities and other undesirables? I'd bet that'll affect housing desirability far more than short term rentals.
Why shouldn't they use their power as voters to ban the construction of affordable homes in their vicinity?
Why shouldn't we use our power as voters to proscribe alcohol in their town? What could go wrong?
Your power as a voter isn't supposed to be the power to arbitrary meddle in other people's business.
So, you think there is an equivalence between migrants and minorities who are long term renters who had to pay a deposit, got a background check and credit check compared to short term Airbnb “guests”?
Are you okay with a meat packing plant in your neighborhood?
Yes, all of those should be legal. And other voters can oppose them. For example, by electing national politicians who can pass laws like the Civil Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act.
This. I hate staying in hotels and love varied and individual places like airbnb has, but this is simply valid.
As a consumer, it has to be good enough if there are only some areas where it's allowed, and some where it's not. Or maybe allowed but only up to a certain density or percentage.
Anywhere it would be allowed without limit I would probably not want anyway, just like a hotel. Most airbnbs are run like little hotels now anyway and I hate most of those, but at least there is variety and plenty are good still.
Because contrary to what tourists think Amsterdam is not a theme park. Normal people live and work there.
When tourists come home drunk at four in the morning they wake up families who have to get up at 7 to go to work and school.
There is a reason why we seperate tourists in hotels.
AIRBNB stopped catering to digital nomads and went straight into the hotel business.
It’s amazing how much more it costs to be a legally run, commercial short term rental that is professionally managed , follows all regulations and pays the legally required taxes isn’t it?
BTW, I live in (and own) a vacation home almost permanently - a condotel - that meets all of the above requirements.
In fact we can’t live here more than 179 consecutively without leaving for some time and renting it out to follow the law.
I knew what I signed up for and we made that choice. It would be completely different when we bought our house in the burbs that was zoned “residential”
Really? Because people need a place to live. If you haven’t seen it yourself, there is a worldwide epidemic of people who are addicted to needing shelter for survival.
> For example, it used to be about impossible to get into Amsterdam, because of rent control and renting regulations; no supply of places to let. Then AirBnB came along, and everyone and their dog let places on AirBnB. You could get in, and at a good price. Then AirBnB was essentially banned, and now you can't get into Amsterdam.
Slightly off topic, and not aimed at you in particular but at tourists in general: For the love of god visit other cities than Amsterdam. Amsterdam is expensive and overcrowded. There's a whole country worth of interesting places to visit instead.
Will you say the same for Paris, London, Rome, Milan, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Beijing, Tokyo, Hongkong, Singapore, and Seoul? All of those cities (and more!) fit this template: "X is expensive and overcrowded." Yeah, and they have lots of interesting culture so people want to visit. They are willing to pay the high prices and put up with crowds.
I've got no first hand experience of those cities, so no I won't.
The point I'm trying to make with Amsterdam is that it's really nothing special when compared to a bunch of other nearby cities. Sure if you want to visit the Anne Frank house you need to go to Amsterdam and stand in a long line. If, however, you are more interested in the culture of the country you can find that nearly anywhere. Pretty much any city of reasonable size will have a FEBO and a pancake restaurant and a couple of neat museums. No need to queue for those, and yet people DO queue for those in Amsterdam for some reason.
Beat on Instagram influencers all you like but popular cities tend to be popular for good reasons. I might go meh to a few cities on that list but quite a few of them would be high on my visit again list.
That is exactly my point. The OP read like a moaning Amsterdammer. I see it a lot: residents of that city complaining about the tourist crowds. I think a better idea would be a very high tourist tax -- like 100 EUR per day charged via hotels etc. (Business travelers would be exempt.) Then, you can exclude all of the low end tourists that few people want in their crowded cities -- they can enjoy second tier cities, or day trips from a nearby city. I cannot find it now, but there is a group of small Italian seaside villages that implemented something similar to limit the number of tourists. My point: Go for quality of visitors, not quantity. The tourist tax can be used to improve tourist infrastructure.
That's a terrible idea. Why the insinuation that only very rich visitors are "high-quality", and that "low-end" tourists are icky and undesirable?
I'm a university student, and I enjoy traveling by myself, as long as I can do it on a reasonable budget. In North American cities (and in plenty of other countries), I pretty much blend in with the crowd, am not loud, annoying or obtrusive. What exact quality is imbued into someone who's willing to throw away EUR100/day that everyone else doesn't have? Doing this in large, world-class cities would turn any major destination into VIP hangout clubs for rich people. Not to mention that it's probably flawed financially - even if tiny towns that are over-capacity with tourists might be able to justify it, enormous cities will be forcing their businesses to lose money. Fewer people would travel to the city on account on it being too expensive, and the people who do travel would spend less money since they're paying the tax.
I'm very glad I don't live in Amsterdam, commuting there is bad enough. I'm actually trying to convince people to visit, among other places, the city I live in. Spreading the tourists around more will make everyone happier. Including the tourists.
I never once heard that about Amsterdam. The YouTube channel NotJustBikes goes on and on about how amazing is the bicycle infra in Amsterdam (and other cities in the Netherlands). Can you be more specific?
Oh don't get me wrong, the infrastructure is amazing! Commuting to Amsterdam is mostly just bad compared to commuting to other well-connected places. There's only so many times you can get stuck behind a group of tourists blocking all the check-out gates simultaneously for 10s of minutes on end before it gets on your nerves.
Then don't distinguish. Both pay the same. The goal here is not to increase the cost of doing non-tourism business in your city. Another idea: Allow people travelling on business to apply for a refund. Example: It seems weird to charge a salesperson going to see their client. Business people use city resources and infrastructure in a vastly different way. For example: They don't use (limited) cultural resources in the same way.
> The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I'm also a digital nomad. new country every 1-3 months and I completely agree.
I'd love to find an alternative but the one month discount is critical for keeping my costs fairly low. booking doesn't even allow you to book over 30 days.
I think a lot of landlords are worried about letting anyone stay more than 30 days. That's usually when tenant's rights kick in and removing someone becomes a complicated process with housing court and potentially months without rent.
One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
Governments gradually made AirBnB illegal or effectively illegal, largely or wholly killing off AirBnB in given cities, or countries.
For example, it used to be about impossible to get into Amsterdam, because of rent control and renting regulations; no supply of places to let. Then AirBnB came along, and everyone and their dog let places on AirBnB. You could get in, and at a good price. Then AirBnB was essentially banned, and now you can't get into Amsterdam.
It was always that there were a lot of people offering places who didn't know how to price what they had; so you'd see a lot of properties, but a lot were crazy money. Still, if there were enough, there would be enough places at sane prices you'd get somewhere.
These days, I still look at AirBnB, but I see that their fees have continually risen over time, and are now like 10% or 15%, and there's just no content. I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was one what I concluded was a scam, a very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
Finally, AirBnB itself, regarding "large company", became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time.
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB suspending my account for a few days, until support get back to me.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness.
So - fees are now rather high, support don't bother - anything but support - I had to backdoor my own net traffic to use the service, no viable apartments in most locations.
It was great, but now it's really not.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.