Amsterdam Using Airbnb Listings To Identify Illegal Hotels

An anonymous reader writes "In a move that might dampen the popularity of Airbnb's site for Amsterdam, the city government is now using the accommodation listing service as a source of tips about illegal rental property. 'Airbnb is never a smoking gun,' said Jan-Jaap Eikelboom, spokesman for the city of Amsterdam, regarding use of the service. But the government does use Airbnb and its competitors to compare its own nuisance data with street listings on sites like Airbnb, and has been doing so for a while, he said. This combined information can come in handy when investigating suspicious buildings and can help with spotting illegal activity, he said."

Comments

Re:Don't rent vacation rentals in Amsterdam!

[Solandri]

if it's so good business renting them, you'd think they'd accommodate for it and just tax it accordingly.

Normally I'd agree with the free market approach. But having visited Amsterdam, I can see why they wouldn't want to accommodate it. Pretty much the entire city can be traversed by walking/biking (there are a *lot* of bikes there). If they want to keep it that way and slow the growth of the city, then they want to maximize utilization of the buildings that are there.

Tourists rental apartments which sit empty half the time waste space, and drive up prices for residents by adding tourists to the demand side of the equation. I can see the city's logic here. Divide the real estate economy into two separate groups - residents and tourists. Confine the tourists to hotels so the market prices for tourists' housing expenses are decoupled from the market prices for residents' housing expenses. That way as more or fewer tourists visit, the price for hotel rooms will rise or fall. But they won't affect the price of residential apartments in the city.

The market approach solves the higher housing prices by sprawling the city outward, expanding its size. Real estate on the periphery has (initially) lower prices, thus encouraging people to move outwards rather than stay in the center. But much of the charm of Amsterdam is in how accessible the entire city is by foot or bike, and the lack of skyscrapers. If the city wants to preserve that, then segregating tourist housing from residential housing makes sense.

Re:Are we all supposed to know what Airbnb is?

[PopeRatzo]

No, that's just a strawman created by left wing ideologues. In fact, what's objectionable about these kinds of so-called "health and safety laws" is that

We've really gotten to the point where food inspectors are part of the world collectivist left-wing conspiracy?

Too much AM radio.