Current Events > Coronavirus is exposing how Airbnb caused rent worldwide to skyrocket

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/airbnb-coronavirus-rental-marker/

For years now, housing experts have pointed to Airbnb as the cause of the worlds ever-dwindling housing supply and skyrocketing rents.
Now, according to property website Daft Media, there has been a 64% increase in rental properties across Dublin. Other tourist destinations like Edinburgh and London also saw increases in new rental listings, at 62% and 45% respectively.
New York housing activist Peter Harrison, inventor of tenant organizing app HomeBody, points out that the same is happening in the U.S. market as well.
Woof. Btw this is happening all across the US too. Show me a city with a housing crisis and Ill show you @Airbnb being front and center, he tweeted. Over the course of that decade, Harrison has watched Airbnb skirt regulations and lobby politicians in the name of profit.
Its a very good small idea and a terrible big idea, Harrison explains. The idea that you have an extra bedroom you occasionally put on Airbnbthats fine, but of course it quickly manifests into professional landlords.
He recalled to the Daily Dot that the first time he stayed at an Airbnb in Los Angeles, the owner had been a working actor who stayed at a girlfriends home while renting out his own on the platform to make money.
Just a few months later, Harrison returned to the same Airbnb and noticed the owner now used it as a permanent rental. He kept checking on the property and saw the owner eventually grow to hold multiple listings and expand to other cities over the course of just under two years.
This is the kind of trajectory some Airbnb hosts followrather than using the platform for one-off rentals, they invest professionally in multiple properties.

Harrison points out that while Airbnb tends to argue that its services benefit New Yorkers, a 2018 report from the School of Urban Planning at McGill University found that almost 50% of the rental revenue Airbnb earns in New York City comes from just 10% of the hosts there.
Its already something based in economic insecurity, he says. People cant afford their rent so they rent out their place. Its manifested as this monstrous land grab for host entrepreneurs who buy up multiple places.
An even earlier New York City Attorney General report found that in 2014, while 94% of Airbnb hosts in New York City rented out two units or fewer, the other 6% of hosts rented anywhere from 3 to 272 units. As of 2018, AirBNB had roughly 50,000 total hosts in New York City, which means that several thousand used the platform as an investment model.

Because only about 100 users on the platform had 10 or more properties, the Attorney General report suggests that these housing investments come from individuals rather than massive real estate companiesthough both use Airbnb.
The problem is that kind of entrepreneurship impacts everyone elses rent as well. Generally, landlords can make up to 200% more on short-term rentals than on a long-term lease. Without regulation, landlords have no incentive to take on longer-term clients, meaning the supply of rental units dwindles. According to the Harvard Business Review, a 1% increase in Airbnb listings in one city is associated with a 0.018% increase in rental prices.
This can be because tourism drives gentrification, so it is difficult to make a direct causative connection to Airbnb itself as a company.
But now that people arent renting on Airbnb, major cities across the world report declining rents.
COVID has exposed this obvious underbelly of the housing crisis, says Harrison. Its a long time coming.
Hosts with multiple properties have multiple mortgages to pay and need money fast, flooding the market with extra supply.

Are Silicon Valley industrialists still trying to convince us the "gig economy" is gonna save us all tho?

---

Goverments all around the world should crack down on Airbnb and yeet it to the void.

---

Hope Airbnb goes out of business after this

---

Airbnb is great. Stop hating.
---

lilORANG posted...

Airbnb is great. Stop hating.

if they know how to balance long term/short term living.
we can't afford giant astronomical rent.
---

AirBnB as intended is great. How it works in reality is awful.

---

kingdrake2 posted...

if they know how to balance long term/short term living.
we can't afford giant astronomical rent.

But I can afford an airbnb at 45 bucks a night, as opposed to a hotel room at 160.
---

bump

---

shockthemonkey posted...

Yeah it?s good for vacationing and ruins local housing economies

"Ruins" by raising the property values
---

why do people hate on Airbnb? What's so bad about it?

---

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

why do people hate on Airbnb? What's so bad about it?

When it gets out of control it contributes to local housing problems, skyrocketing rents etc

There's lots of condo buildings in downtown Toronto that are basically ghost hotels for Airbnb. These would otherwise be properties people could rent to live in or buy themselves but they're off the market.

Now a lot of these aribnb hosts house of cards have come tumbling down with the coronavirus crisis and they're in big trouble

---

This reads like satire. My favorite part:

Frolex posted...

According to the Harvard Business Review, a 1% increase in Airbnb listings in one city is associated with a 0.018% increase in rental prices.

In other words, Airbnb has such a small impact that even if the number of listings doubled, rent in the city would only increase by 1.8%.
---

lilORANG posted...

"Ruins" by raising the property values

Which literally only matters if you already own a home.
---

Bio1590 posted...

Which literally only matters if you already own a home.

Buy a home then. The minuscule increase associated with airbnb is not going to be prohibitive to home ownership lol.
---

Manocheese posted...

This reads like satire. My favorite part:

In other words, Airbnb has such a small impact that even if the number of listings doubled, rent in the city would only increase by 1.8%.

From the Harvard Business Review article:

This means that, in aggregate, the growth in home-sharing through Airbnb contributes to about one-fifth of the average annual increase in U.S. rents and about one-seventh of the average annual increase in U.S. housing prices.

Guarantee if Harvard research had found that something like Obamacare was responsible for 20% of the increase in rent prices across the entire United States, you would not hesitate to rush here to make a thread about it.

---

Why not ask why property owners would rather list on Airbnb than lease or sell?
If things are so fucked up that it's better to rent the place a weekend at time rather than a year at a time, let's look at that.

Fuck airbnb

---

lilORANG posted...

Airbnb is great. Stop hating.

Nah fuck that shit, it displaces entire neighborhoods

---

I used Airbnb to plan a trip to Portland in April. After all this Corona shit happened I tried to get a refund and they insisted on only providing a partial refund (some dumb policy of half refund after 48 hours of booking) even after they 'updated' their policy to address the pandemic. I tried contacting them for days and they neither answered nor got back to me though their customer service messenger lol

So I called my cc company to reverse the charge. Fuck em.
---

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why not ask why property owners would rather list on Airbnb than lease or sell?
If things are so fucked up that it's better to rent the place a weekend at time rather than a year at a time, let's look at that.

The fact the short-term rentals are more profitable per unit than long-term rentals is not an issue of how "things are so fucked up", it's a basic reality of how economics work. The problem with AirBnB is that it provides an easy way for property owners to transfer properties that have been zoned and developed for long-term rental into the short term rental market.

---

Frolex posted...

The fact the short-term rentals are more profitable per unit than long-term rentals is not an issue of how "things are so fucked up", it's a basic reality of how economics work. The problem with AirBnB is that it provides an easy way for property owners to transfer properties that have been zoned and developed for long-term rental into the short term rental market.

Alright, now, why is there such a disincentive towards long-term rentals?

Why do apartment buildings even exist, when hotels would be more profitable?

dude you're 45 can you for once try make a point instead of endless rhetorical questions that you think will make you look insightful

---

NinjaBreakfast posted...

dude you're 45 can you for once try make a point instead of endless rhetorical questions that you think will make you look insightful

Alright fine. Property owners are greedy fucks and everything would be perfect in a beautiful socialist utopia.

You gotta think about these things, even if it means dipping into absurd extremes. There is clearly a huge market incentive to airbnb your second home (or third, or fourth, or that brownstone you bought at the county tax auction), instead of an incentive to lease it out long term or just sell.
Why? How did this happen? Is there anything that can be done to make long-term housing market-viable, other than kneecapping the market that's emerged? Why did that market even emerge?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Alright, now, why is there such a disincentive towards long-term rentals?

Why do apartment buildings even exist, when hotels would be more profitable?

1.Not all areas of the country even have a significant tourism market sector that creates a market for any substantial amount of short-term property rentals.

2.We have laws to designate how many housing units are even allowed to be allocated to the short term market

NinjaBreakfast posted...

dude you're 45 can you for once try make a point instead of endless rhetorical questions that you think will make you look insightful

Maybe we should instead be asking why someone would try desperately to make himself look himself look reasoned and insightful on a videogame message board rather than putting a modicum of effort into understanding the basic function of housing markets in the US

---

Frolex posted...

rather than putting a modicum of effort into understanding the basic function of housing markets in the US

The short-term renters were outbidding the long-term renters, up until about two or three weeks ago.
That's the basic functionality of housing markets in the US, especially in 'tourist' areas.

Questionmarktarius posted...

The short-term renters were outbidding the long-term renters, up until about two or three weeks ago.
That's the basic functionality of housing markets in the US, especially in 'tourist' areas.

Almost as if there might be some pretty obvious potential issues with the fact that there's a factor in the market even allowing short-term renters to "bid" on long-term housing units in the first place

---

Frolex posted...

Almost as if there might be some pretty obvious potential issues with the fact that there's a factor in the market even allowing short-term renters to "bid" on long-term housing units in the first place

You think long-term renters don't also "bid"?

Questionmarktarius posted...

You think long-term renters don't also "bid"?

They're normally bidding against other long-term renters. Why are you trying so hard to pretend you don't actually understand this conversation?

---

Damn I didnt realize this at all, fuck AirBNB never booking with them again

---

Every city and town has housing ordinances, right? This prevents, at least on a policy level, redlining and collusion. It also keeps workers in an area and prevents every major city from becoming a tourist town. Obviously this is falling through the cracks because it isn't regulated.

I have no sympathies. I was actually kicked out of my rented room when the lady wanted to convert it to an Air BnB. She was a nice lady but she told me she needed the increased revenue. Which is her prerogative, but when push comes to shove, like now, she's going to be screwed. Now, I actually liked that lady, in contrast with the sharks who are turning this into a regulation-free real estate business. Those are the people I hope kick rocks

---

Frolex posted...

They're normally bidding against other long-term renters.

No, they're bidding against anyone else who wants to use the property for any purpose for any period of time.

berlyman101 posted...

I have no sympathies. I was actually kicked out of my rented room when the lady wanted to convert it to an Air BnB. She was a nice lady but she told me she needed the increased revenue. Which is her prerogative, but when push comes to shove, like now, she's going to be screwed.

maybe you should ask if the room is available.

Questionmarktarius posted...

No, they're bidding against anyone else who wants to use the property for any purpose for any period of time.

No, they're not, because we have laws that prevent people from renting any property for any purpose for any period of time. If you really have this much trouble understanding these very basic concepts, you'd probably be better served spending a few minutes on google rather than shitposting in this thread.

---

Professional landlords running Airbnb properties has ruined the Airbnb experience entirely.

It's like staying in a hotel (and about as expensive), only you have to do your own laundry and cleaning and the reception is never available to help you.

It was cute when you were staying at someone flat and they looked after you, but not so cute when the host doesn't know who you are and he sends a porter to hand over the keys and read a piece of paper telling you not to use any of the equipment.

---

Frolex posted...

No, they're not, because we have laws that prevent people from renting any property for any purpose for any period of time.

And airbnb weaseled around that, much like etsy weasels around laws forbidding having a store and/or light-industrial in your house.

pinky0926 posted...

Professional landlords running Airbnb properties has ruined the Airbnb experience entirely.

It's like staying in a hotel (and about as expensive), only you have to do your own laundry and cleaning and the reception is never available to help you.

incidentally, if airbnb were legislated to death, that would be all that's left.

lilORANG posted...

Buy a home then.

Watch out for the peasants there, Antoinette.

---

Questionmarktarius posted...

And airbnb weaseled around that, much like etsy weasels around laws forbidding having a store and/or light-industrial in your house.

And the fact that it has has created serious market failure, which is what this topic is about. Good talk.

---

Frolex posted...

Good talk.

o...kay.

I wonder what the viability would be of a airbnb knockoff for long-term... Hmmm...
Maybe a Priceline knockoff would be better.