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What Airbnb Did To New York City (citylab.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are two kinds of horror stories about Airbnb. When the home-sharing platform first appeared, the initial cautionary tales tended to emphasize extreme guest (and occasionally host) misbehavior. But as the now decade-old service matured and the number of rental properties proliferated dramatically, a second genre emerged, one that focused on what the service was doing to the larger community: Airbnb was raising rents and taking housing off the rental market. It was supercharging gentrification while discriminating against guests and hosts of color. And as commercial operators took over, it was transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
Several studies have looked into these claims; some focused on just one issue at a time, or measured Airbnb-linked trends across wide swaths of the country. But a recent report by David Wachsmuth, a professor of Urban Planning at McGill University, zeroes in on New York City in an effort to answer the question of exactly what home sharing is doing to the city. [...] Their conclusion: Most of those rumors are true. Wachsmuth found reason to believe that Airbnb has indeed raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification -- at least in New York City. "
transforming from a way to help homeowners occasionally rent out an extra room into a purveyor of creepy, makeshift hotels.
How about this: create a law that Limits the number of housing units AND number of days rented out per year which any 1 person or business is allowed to make available for short-term rent without a Hotel permit for each property --- including through any number of business partners or related entities.
So if you're a homeowner and have 1 or 2 properties which you rent out less than 80% of the year total across your properties, then FINE, allow that ---- You're allowed to have up to a total of ONE rental unit for short/temp housing accommodation (Count that includes Any and all sub-rentals across all properties that occur for a time less than 20 days) rented out 80% of the days each year, OR two housing accommodations rented out average 40% of the days per 1 year per unit, OR three housing accommodations rented out no more than average 26.67% of the days per 1 year per unit.
(In other words: the more units that are rented out to different tenants, the fewer days you may be renting them out per year.)
Thus if you have 3 properties in the same city Or have it rented out your properties for a combined total among your properties of more than 290 rental-days, then you're in a "Short-term accommodation business" and must have planning approval and permit your properties as Hotel space --- which if approved by Zoning includes regular inspections, and an additional Tax on each rental.
Reasonable regulation should allow reasonable rental revenue by an ordinary homeowner BUT prevent wealthy real-estate investors or corporations from exploiting Uber to make large-scale transformations of apartments to hotel rooms, etc.
wIth the phrase "New Orleans", and you would have the same story.
It's kind of like the Gotham TV show. Crowded, dystopian, dark, usually crappy weather.
Why anyone lives their is beyond my ken.
. . . that restricts the supply of new housing, and has strong rent-control in place, and people are SURPRISED that property owners will find a way to to generate revenue, and then optimize that revenue ??
You cannot gentrify globally. Not enough gentry, I'd say.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
and I do wish we could get folks to understand that. Cities didn't limit hotels to "Preserve the Character of the neighborhood" or some other hippy crap. They did it to stop this kind of rent seeking garbage. People have to live where the jobs and rich folk know that. So they can pay damn near anything because they know they can rent it back to somebody and make a profit. Sure there are limits, but they're frighteningly high.
This crap should just be shut down. Just like this crap was shut down when I was a kid and we called it sub-letting.
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The problem with these types of studies is you will never know if they are correct or not, because there is no way to see what would have happened if Airbnb never came to NYC. Maybe it would have gentrified faster without Airbnb. NYC was gentrifying way before Airbnb came to the city. Of course, speculation is now presented as fact. That will make the funders of this study (the hotel industry) happy though, and that is what this is all about anyway. They can now push to get Airbnb out of NYC.
Not like this is a surprise to anyone, but it's nice to get a set of data, rather than isolated anecdotes.
It would also be difficult to tout a report that is a leaflet that states "duh!"
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If you are going to pass housing regulations that are totally against 'market demand' dynamics thus driving up pricing of housing & especially hotel room pricing don't go blaming AirBnb for the result.
New York's problems are New York's problems of their own making, don't blame Airbnb for this or come crying to the rest of the country.
Get rid of rent control in the first place, nobody has a 'right' to live in NY or anywhere else. I got out of the SF Bay Area for many reasons but 'housing/rental prices' is one of them.
Hell why not just blame this all on Taylor Swift apparently she's buying up property all over the place.
Disruption!
Sharing economy!
Have your cake and eat it too!
But clearly, HAD they only used an agile blockchain app...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... it was "white flight" when middle-class people abandoned crime-infested, poor, dirty urban areas, and it was deemed bad. Now that people are moving back into these areas and the crime and dirt and poverty are leaving, it's "gentrification" and it's deemed bad.
. . . that restricts the supply of new housing, and has strong rent-control in place, and people are SURPRISED that property owners will find a way to to generate revenue, and then optimize that revenue ??
the landlords are breaking all the windows and then charging the tenants to fix them, over and over again
it is a problem with the system when landlords can collectively manipulate the market to the detriment of everyone else
housing is for living in, not for investment returns
You are attributing the actions of users to Airbnb itself. This is a dangerous mistake from a libel standpoint.
What Airbnb Did To New York City...Airbnb was raising rents... It was supercharging gentrification while discriminating against guests and hosts of color.
Let me see if I understand this:
ABnB works because ad-hoc rooms are cheaper than standard hotel rooms.
So people rush into the ABnB market, removing conventional apartments from the pool of long-term housing, driving up rents as the pool of apartments shrinks.
So if hotels are losing customers, why aren't they cutting hotel rates to be more competitive with ABnB? Hell, why aren't they slashing staff completely and converting some properties to ABnB only -- or becoming apartments?
Do we need to reduce regulation on hotels so they can better compete with ABnB?
Or is it some other thing, like hotels had successfully restricted competition and there was a practical shortage of hotels which drove prices too high?
Look, don't blame Airbnb, Uber or whatever company happened to come along in this moment, for all your woes. What you're actually mad at is the absolute failure of our governments, public institutions, and elected officials to adapt their services and approaches (or be allowed to do this by a public that seemingly wants to vote by popularity contest rather than efficacy of government).
Get mad at your fellow city residents who only vote in and approve of city ordinances that let housing stagnate, reward people who've just been here a long time and nothing else, foster complacency and lack of quality in taxi regulation, or believe that voters should have a say in everything and vote out people who happen to implement one rule they don't like.
Get mad at policymakers who are too distracted with getting re-elected and resisting PAC money to actually focus on governing and making reasonable policies, leaving our basic infrastructure to crumble while they go after higher profile symbolic issues.
Be mad at yourself, and this system we thought was the best in the world, but actually needs maintenance and dedication to make it work properly.
Companies are just the messengers.
I've tried to use AirBnB twice in NYC - in both cases the reservation was canceled, in one case the day before I was supposed to leave (!), because the landlords found out the apartment owners were listing units on AirBnB... I don't see how it can really be changing anything if it's already fairly illegal to list your place.
Do people seriously not think that the prices of housing there would not have gone up ANYWAY? To blame AirBnB for this is madness. Air BnB if anything is helping people in places like NYC actually buy more expensive places to live than they might otherwise, because they can subsidize part of the rent through rentals... or at least they could until NYC regulation fucked everyone over.
But then, that's the role of regulation - to fuck real people over so that the government looks like it is doing something about anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Politicians buy votes by stealing resources from one group and giving them to another group.
Capitalism, which demand voluntary trade, stands in total contradiction to such a scheme; politicians only tolerate capitalism insofar as it generates enough wealth to be plundered for politicians' own purposes.
lol....says who, o grand sultan/leader ? Ppl have been investing in housing at least since the ROMAN REPUBLIC... it's almost as if some people like to rule over other ppls lives...
Thinking like economists here, this suggests that NYC's problem here is not AirBNB but a lack of affordable hotel options.
Solution: incentivize the building of more hotels that are affordable.
We do not need another few hundred lines of law to join the millions already in force, usually misinterpreted, which cause higher costs for everyone.
Alternative Right.
I've worked construction and videography for guys, all guys so far, with dozens of apartments in New York City being turned into airbnb hotels. We build sleeping lofts in every room. One guy made a whole video advertising a midtown apartment as having a perfect terrace for brotastic partying. His face is all over the video and I had a chuckle about whether he realized he was confessing to at least instant lease breaking and probably hefty fines. And no I did not expose myself legally by making the video. Discussed that with a lawyer over beers. And got a good laugh.
I used AirBnB a few times about 4 years ago. But I got turned off by them when they pushed their updated EULA that required me to promise that I would not be a dick to people. The word salad they used was a great deal more hipster and included phrases meant to make them look like they were the perfect little SJW's. Bottom line is that I don't need some company preaching to me that I have to behave a certain way or I can't use their product. Fine, I'll do both. I'll continue to be a nice person and I won't use their product.
Honestly though, it wouldn't bother me if AirBnB is discovered to be a social evil and ends up at the mercy of government regulation or simply goes out of business. They demonstrated a great deal of hubris with that EULA demand and if you choose to believe this survey, appear to be worse than the people they wanted to socially engineer. And I still don't miss using their product.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Airbnb takes commission on both sides and when there is a major problem to deal with they disappear.
If you are lucky enough to book with a decent host you may get what you pay for. Unfortunately when you book with a scammer you are on your own. There is absolutely no help provided from Airbnb. This is based on my personal experience traveling for 30 years so your mileage may vary.
No business is perfect. This is not about perfection. This is bout what happens when things go wrong. You are thousands of miles away and may have limited funds available or in a completely different culture where communication is not easy.
Normally with a regular permitted establishment you can verify various independent reviews. On Airbnb only positive reviews are posted. You only find this out when things go wrong. Airbnb does not post negative reviews even though you paid for the full stay.
Permitted establishments normally are inspected by local authorities which try to ensure a minimum standards. This does not mean that something won't go wrong but there is a bare minimum such as fire regulations. Information posting. Emergency exits. With Airbnb you are no even guaranteed that there will be a place to stay. Again Airbnb takes very little responsibility as to the accessibility or even to the legality of the rental. They haven't even visited the location to ensure that it is fit for the purpose advertised.
So Airbnb takes commission on both sides of the deal and provides none of the advantages afforded from the regulated and established lodging hosts and when things go wrong you are left abandoned and screwed. The horror stories haven't disappeared they are just pushed under the rug. If it's so bad that the local authorities are left to deal with it, you may hear about it. You can't post negative reviews on Airbnb.
Airbnb is not a sharing service since you are not required to live with current occupants and takes advantage of the increased costs of regulations which it does not abide with and wipes it's hands from all and any responsibility when things go terribly wrong. Airbnb pretends to be a listing service but implicates itself in every aspect of the business which milks every possible penny and extracts itself from any form of responsibility. I don't know why anyone needed a report to point this out if an individual acted this way people would say that they were running a scam.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
In my town short term rental housing is prohibited. AirBnB hosts try to get past that by telling their guests to lie. The town has been aggressive about enforcing the laws.
To some it may sound draconian but no one wants a steady stream of strangers in the house next door.
One factor that the study did not look at was the number of vacant housing units. These are units which are purchased as second homes or as refuge houses by rich foreigners who want a place they can use occasionally when needed.
Most major cities have a lot of housing which sits vacant most of the year. London and Vancouver have recently been in the news for this problem. Rich people buy housing in case they might want to use it someday and it sits vacant most of the time. This removes housing from the city. They are truly "ghost" housing units.
Vancouver has recently imposed a 20% tax on foreigners purchasing housing and and additional tax of 1% of the value each year it is not occupied. This is an attempt to free up housing for locals who actually live in the city.
I live in a "resort area" which has a very high percentage of second homes (vacant most of the year) and also an acute lack of affordable housing for locals. It seems these problems are related.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This is why AirBnB is illegal in New York for stays under 30 days. A lot of people don't know this though, and are getting fined because of it.
Just you wait, the invisible hand of the free market will sort this out.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I really don't see a problem here. Airbnb is disrupting an out-dated hotel market and it is going to cause changes. Rents are rising because there is an increase in demand. This is how capitalism is supposed to work.An increase in gentrification is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a matter of perspective that the market can sort out. If you don't like living in a gentrified neighborhood, then you can move.
The only issue I can see is racism, but we already have laws on the books to prevent it. This is a matter of enforcing existing laws. Either way, if I own a house I should be able to rent it out to anyone I choose.
"Wachsmuth’s research was funded in part by some avowed foes of home sharing—the New York City Hotel Trades Council—and was cosponsored by housing and tenant advocacy organizations."
There is a constant war under the surface between AirBnB and the City of San Francisco. It is absolutely taking rentals off the market and increasing marginal rent. It is also being taken over by commercial operators.
The City is trying to regulate but AirBnB spends more than 10X on advertising (at least on the two ordinances we voted on).
I'm really of two minds here. I've used AirBnB on vacation and enjoyed it, but I do understand the damage it is doing to the City. It is kind of like Uber in that way. It is very complex and wrapped up in all kinds of issues like Rent Control, Prop 13, the Ellis Act (allows condo conversions in the City, and opponents say it throws the vulnerable out of housing).
It's not easy or clear what is going to happen (or should happen).
We've seen this struggle a century or so back.
People will, eventually, unionize to establish livable wages
> This report was commissioned by the Hotel Trades Council
For example, it tries to overstate the impact by saying airbnb raised median rents by $380, and you need to dig deep to see the estimated increase is $380 *yearly* or $32 monthly, which is probably well within the model and measurement error. (because seriously, whenever I leave the house in Manhattan I come back with $40 less spent on coffee and avocado toast and stuff)
It overestimates illegal rentals because the authors have no real way of knowing the number of units in many homes being rented out. For example, our building has only two units, so it is not subject to nyc short term rental law, but would qualify as part of their "illegal set"
Finally, the phenomenon of apartments being subdivided is very minor and would be reduced if the hotel industry focused on building affordable hotel rooms instead of trying to kill the competition.
Can't wait for the airbnb report on how the hotel industry brings tourists into town who slow down pedestrian traffic and spend money on crappy restaurants and mainstream broadway shows :)
I guess Airbnb hired a troll firm to "correct the record". Didn't know David Brock branched out.
The thing I've always 'disliked' about 'room-sharing' and 'ride-sharing' (and I guess to some extent E-bay and Youtube) is that people make it a full-time job instead of a 'community' thing.
I don't remember the taxi company complaining about the 'ride-sharing' board at the University. If you were going home for the weekend, why not take along a passenger that was going the same way. In general that's the basic idea of Uber and Lyft. I have a car, you're going my way, hop in.
There was also the 'couch-surfing' phenomenon of a while back. The differences between that and what AirBnB is now are what I see as the problem. It's one thing to allow someone to spend the night in your empty guest room because nobody else is using it. It's a completely different thing to buy a room/ apartment/ house dedicated to having people pay to stay there.
The 'problem' with Uber and AirBnB is that people have transformed the 'occasionality' of it into a permanent full-time job. It's not a sporadic and almost random thing they offer, it's 'the only thing.'
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
ABnB works because ad-hoc rooms are cheaper than standard hotel rooms.
The reason it works is for lots of reasons, that is the last of them. I have often paid more for an AirBnB unit than I would have for the nearest hotel.
Often you can find AirBnB units closer to where you want to be than most hotels, or in a more desirable location.
AirBNB units will generally have kitchens and washing machines, both of which may be very hard to find at any price just looking at hotels.
AirBNB units being housing, are often more secure than hotels and I don't have to worry about an entire staff with keycards being able to access my room, or being targeted by thieves because they know tourists stay at hotels.
Do we need to reduce regulation on hotels so they can better compete with ABnB?
That would help but I would still prefer an AirBnB unit if I could get one, over a hotel. Unfortunately because of restrictive regulation, most AirBnB units I've tried getting in large cities (mainly SF and NYC) have always been canceled so I can't take that risk anymore. In smaller markets they have been great though and really been much nicer than hotels.
and there was a practical shortage of hotels which drove prices too high?
One last note on this, it does not have to be a shortage of rooms or hotels - the last year or two the Apple Developer conference (WWDC) was in San Fransisco, the hotels decided to collude on higher prices - by that I mean 2-4x above normal rates for that time of year, because they knew they had a captive market for people who wanted to be around Moscone. I'm not 100% sure but it could be a reason Apple finally moved the conference to San Jose.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The 'problem' with Uber and AirBnB is that people have transformed the 'occasionality' of it into a permanent full-time job.>
But only if you want to - I have stayed at a number of AirBnB places where it was not a full time job, they just rented out a room for a bit more money...
Meanwhile, what is so bad about people who bought places just to rent out? It takes a huge amount of capital to build a hotel, or even run a "real" BnB. But now someone who wants to just dip their toe into running a place to stay can do so through AirBnB, and see if that works for them.
I have a friend who bought a mountain house specifically for use with AirBnB. It's great because they can stay in it when they like, or loan it out to friends - meanwhile the AirBnB rentals are paying for the whole thing, and in the end they have a second house in the mountains. Just what exactly is terrible about that?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Obviously there is a huge demand for affordable short term lodging in NYC. Instead of shooting the messenger and punishing homeowners, why not force traditional hotels to lower their rates? It is obviously their fault that rates are so high that people would rather use AirBNB instead.
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I say this every time, but it's worth repeating: all this bad stuff AirBnB does to the rental market, the existence of a rental market at all does to the housing market overall. Owners prefer AirBnB over long term rental which makes long term rental unaffordable. Owners also prefer rental of any kind over sale which makes homeownership unaffordable. Imagine a world where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced temporary housing at AirBnB rates? We live in a world like that already, where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced housing at rental rates.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
(NB that interest is merely rent on money, so that's got to go too or else it's just the banks instead of the landlords who end up owning the world. Rent and interest, collectively "usury", the fee for a use, are the central failing of capitalism, the mechanism by which wealth concentrates exponentially, undermining the promise of a free market with parasitism by the capital-owners).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
There are just some things that shouldn't be done. This sort of "service", while I'm sure it sounded like a great idea in the beginning, just as the articles says, it's turned out to be a horror. The internet isn't compatible with reality in all circumstances.
Instead of trying to fight these trends by suppressing property values, we should look at putting the gains back in the hands of the local citizens without significant barrier to entry.
There is so much wrong with this issue. People complain that thier property values are soaring - and it's true higher taxes force poorer people out, but it's also true if they own even a part of thier home it will bring them a significant to huge profit. People complain that thier neighborhood is ailing and dilapidated but are upset when it becomes nice and gentrified. Rising property values with a corresponding improvement in infrastructure and city landscaping is something everyone should benefit from. The problem at the root of this is the extraction of wealth from the poor through real estate investment barriers - it puts wealthy investors in a different finnancial boat from renters and owners which is guarenteed failure at step 0.
An interesting way to fix this is to have government backed coop housing. The government can buy properties, either turn key or with improvements, and sell shares to renters and locals. For example a person renting in one of these buildings would pay comparable rent, but a fraction of each months payment would go into ownership. If you lived in the city limits for the last 3 years, and you met a lower income requirement, you could purchase ownership as well. You could make the investment open to even 10-20 dollars a month and perhaps provide tax break incentives. Corporations wouldn't be able to own shares and individual people would be capped at some reasonable amount to keep consolidation from being an issue. But in this way the government could simeltaneously - increase the rental housing capacity, help local people benefit financially from gentrification and keep current private investors of property happy.
Imagine if the government had opened a program like this around the obama library and helped South Chicagoans make hundreds of millions of dollars alongside property investors instead of just the 1%ers. The area around the museum site was the third fastest growing in the entire United States of America, it's been a shitshow of exactly the issues in the article above, and Obama did let me down in his remarks on it.
I've seen the city and county use hotels as a wallet for taxes, every few years they keep raising taxes on hotels, 10 bux here, 5 bux there, repeat on and on.
And you wonder why a hotel is costing 150 a night for a dive. The sticker shock of renting a room and finding a city tax on top is disgusting.
AirBNB is the result of the overtaxing tourists as easy money.
Rowdy Roddy Piper took off the glasses and said, "That's strange. I take these off and I see sweet, caring politicians talking about protecting the people from dishonesty and danger. Put ’em back on... formaldehyde-face taking kickbacks from hotels and rich owners to knock Air BnB out."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Sellers can't increase prices. They can ask for a higher price, but they won't make any sales unless there are customers willing to pay the higher price.
Likewise, buyers can't decrease prices. They can wait for a lower price, but they won't be able to buy the item they want unless sellers begin to panic at lack of sales and lower their asking price.
This is the greatest check and balance in economics. The person wanting higher prices can't raise them. The person wanting lower prices can't lower them. They each have to wait for someone opposed to them to meet their price. So the only way landlords can do what you accuse them of, is if there are tenants willing to go along with them and pay them for it. And if there are customers willing to pay that much for crappy housing, then it indicates you have other structural problems (excess demand, inadequate supply to meet that demand) which need to be dealt with.
i.e. Higher rents are a symptom, not the problem.
and it has zero rent control and almost zero regulations on building new houses. When Builders build they're building luxury houses because they're surprisingly cheap to build and much higher profit.
It's got nothing to do with Rent Control or supply. The cities where this is a problem (San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle etc) are already out of land. They're being forced to build out further and further from where jobs are, resulting in 90+ minute commutes one way if you want affordable housing. The only way supply could be increased is if the city tears down single homes and replaces them with high rise apartments. But you can't really raise a family in those. Not the kind of families that can meet replacement birth rates
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You got the title right. But gvmnt can either remove the barriers or it can build those by the help of welfare programs that redistribute income from productive part of the economy to the have-nots.
I had to check from dictionary the meaning of gentrification. But I am still puzzled why it is considered bad. I mean that is it bad belonging to the middle class? Is it bad to have wealthier neighborhood? Or if the direction is from elite to middle class, why would the majority oppose houses becoming more affordable? To me this sounds the best kind of democracy money can buy.
So whereâ(TM)s the problem? Is it that money is not supposed to do good to people participating in economy, but just to outsiders and minorities not involved? But guess what? The socialist train left the station. And crashed a hundred meters away.
Sounds like AirBNB is just helping the supply and demand curves reach their equilibrium point. The problem is that people feel property owners SHOULDN'T have a right to do what they want with their own property?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...I was able to stay two weeks in NYC with my family (2 adults, 2 kids) in a clean 1200 sq. foot. two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights for $120/night. Comparable hotel would have cost me $300/night at least. And my (14 nights * $120/night) went mostly into the hands of an actual family living in NYC (two public school teachers with 2 kids of their own) instead of, say, "Hilton" or "Marriot".
you have a problem with "don't be a dick" you must be a Republican.
This is definitely a new phenomenon!
have you been to San Francisco or Seattle? There police presence is such that crime is nil
The evening news on KRON TV has non-Alternate-Facts about the issue of crime in San Francisco.
Get a popular service, find a way to go around regulations, taxation and obstables put in place to stop overgrowth and abuses, find a way to skip welfare and minimum wage/conditions for workers to make a living with it, and sell it as a new paradigm.
There is no easy route or shortcut for this people. If you are paying less to stay somewhere, paying less for transportation, paying less for services in general, someone is paying more. And there will be consequences for that.
It's no coincidence that some workers on those sectors are living in conditions reminiscent to the Industrial Revolution era. Crazy hours not enough to even make a living.
And yes, I fully agree that regulations are far from perfect, that they often don't do what they are supposed to, and that they frequently compose of abuse themselves for business owners... but skipping them away or going around them will eventually have predicted consequences.
Gentrification: the process by which garbage is swept away that so decent people can live in an area and actually walk around at night.
First, real estate is very expensive and renting is very cheap (relative to purchase price). It is impossible to put 50% down, buy a place and be cash flow positive there, while most of the country you can easily put 5% down and be cash flow positive. Rent prices do not reflect current real estate appraisals. Renting real estate out on a yearly basis is only profitable if you take into account the expected appreciation.
But if you go short term, aka AirBnB, then you turn cash flow positive.
Real world example: Place costs 600k, rents for monthly 2k. 24k cash will not cover the mortgage, let alone the taxes and Condo fees/HOA.
But if you rent it for 200/night, that becomes 6k a month, assume you only make 5k (1/6 days not rented), or 60k a year WILL cover the mortgage, taxes, and maintenance/HOA fees.
And, because it is NYC, renting out 5/6 days is not that hard to do.
Given that situation, you have to be a fool not to AirBnb.
But in other places, that won't work. First, the monthly rental prices for a 600k house outside of NYC is more like 4k a month. Second, you can't get the 200/night 5 days out of 6 for most other cities. Even getting 3/6 is a significant reduction in profit and takes just as much work
The safety of a single, reliable rentor, avoiding the possible legal issues of the AirBnB , all means most landlords would rather rent on a yearly basis not weekly
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
People don't like it because property taxes go up as often does rent. So they get kicked out of thier homes (often at a profit). The difference between welfare and this program is people pay INTO this program, not out. It removes risk because the owners don't run the place - it will work as long as the project isn't run by corrupt people. They could increase the tenants per acre by building upwards and smaller units, this could keep property values the same.
^individual property values and thus rent also.
It still doesn't take collusion. There is a common factor: occupancy. Each hotel can determine that they're at 100% for one week that coincides with a conference and each can choose to triple their rates without any contact with the others
The size of the Apple conference did not change the entire time it was held at the Moscone so the number of attendees was the same, and prices were raised the last two years in a row.
agreement between people to act together secretly or illegally in order to deceive or cheat someone
Which is obviously what happened, note that doesn't say "verbal" or "contractual".
How do you make an agreement with someone if you never communicate
Technically published prices are communication. I do not doubt there was a bit of other back-channel communication as well between at least a few places.
I don't doubt that the prices are multiple that for other times
Yes, but again, while it was higher for many years there was a HUGE JUMP for ALL HOTELS in a single year, that persisted from year to year. It was way more than the average conference jump which is normal and accepted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We already have laws that should prevent most Airbnb rentals in New York City. As the New York Times wrote: "The New York State attorney general believes most Airbnb listings in New York are illegal." You aren't allowed to rent a room for less than 30 days unless you are present throughout the rental. Also, subletting is explicitly prohibited in most apartment rental agreements. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
The disruptive geniuses of Silicon Valley have worked their magic yet again. Oh, the courage.
They get rich while society falls into ever deeper states of dysfunction and anomie.
#SociopathLivesMatter