What happened to Airbnb? (www.vox.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 04:00
https://lemmy.world/post/7761460

What happened to Airbnb?::Financially, the Airbnb is thriving, but guests, hosts, and cities have had enough.

#technology

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KevonLooney@lemm.ee on 04 Nov 2023 04:25 next collapse

They were never going to be big without breaking hotel regulations. It makes no sense why they’re big anyway. They don’t own any real estate. They should take 5% at most, like a payment processor.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 04 Nov 2023 05:24 collapse

It’s chokepoint capitalism, where you don’t supply, produce or consume, you just control the conduit through which people do those things.

Also though just owning property shouldn’t entitle you to an income. Fuck landlords in general, it’s just airbnb figured out a way to be even more exploitative.

KevonLooney@lemm.ee on 04 Nov 2023 06:25 collapse

Running an AirBNB is a lot more work than renting out a house. There’s cleaning and a lot more toiletries and furniture to buy. You probably clean the entire place more often than you clean your own house. You also have to communicate with the renters all the time and arrange to give them keys 10 times a month. Sometimes you do all that and the people cancel.

Stop trying to make “chokepoint capitalism” a thing. AirBNB doesn’t control prices on anything. Tourists determine what’s expensive with their dollars.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 04 Nov 2023 06:38 next collapse

AirBnB are the chokepoint capitalists, not the owners.

And I’m so sorry you have to do actual work instead of just hoarding property. It must be tough when just having extra houses you don’t need isn’t enough anymore because chokepoint capitalists got in on your scam.

And supply & demand is completely unsupported by evidence. It is entirely an article of faith of orthodox economics.

KevonLooney@lemm.ee on 04 Nov 2023 06:51 collapse

  • AirBNB is definitely not the only rental site out there. There are better, more specialized ones.
  • I don’t have any rentals, I just know how much work they are. Can you find anything wrong with my description?
  • Supply and demand is very easy to prove. Just go to any auction. The market clearing price is what someone will pay at the time.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 04 Nov 2023 07:15 next collapse

You don’t have to be a monopoly to hold a chokepoint. The industry holds the chokepoint.

Your description was irrelevant, but also… cry me a fucking river. If they don’t like doing the work, maybe they could get some sort of agent to handle the tenants for them, and maybe the agent could get them to sign long term leases so they can vet them more carefully. Why not do that? Because that already exists and makes less money? Okay? Who cares? Jobs are work, here’s Tom with the weather.

Auctions suck for the most part, that’s why ebay mostly just sells things now. Look at the uproar when Uber does surge pricing. People don’t put up with it. Turns out that outside of a very few artificial situations like an auction, sellers basically just set prices, because unless they’ve specifically opted into an auction environment, consumers don’t put up with it.

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 04 Nov 2023 09:33 collapse

Sellers can set prices, but for many things there are alternatives and hence more than one seller. Apple sets the iPhone prices, but you can substitute an Android pretty effectively, and there are multiple manufacturers of Android phones at lots of price points. If Apple decided to set the base price of an iPhone to 100k, people would not get mortgages, they’d buy a 500 dollar Android.

This holds true for lots of things, but housing is distorted by lots of factors. But housing doesn’t disprove supply and demand.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 04 Nov 2023 10:10 collapse

I am aware of the extremely simple story that you will learn in econ 101 - and sadly in more advanced courses as well.

It’s just that it’s only a theory. You should perhaps pay attention to the information you gave, and how you didn’t say, “observation of market behaviour bears out the supply & demand theory”, you just waved vaguely in the direction of a mechanism, with no reference to data.

If you look at the many studies into the matter where economists accidentally - and sometimes intentionally - did science on this, they found no actual data to support supply and demand as a model of pricing. It simply doesn’t hold true, and yet it’s taught constantly, and if you try to google this, you’ll just find publication after publication talking about the “law” of supply & demand. But it’s not a law, it is simply an assumption.

When looking at market behaviour and when talking to price setters, there is no data to support the theory, and nobody in the business pays attention to supply & demand. All the models that seem to work share the feature that they are set by the supply chain.

This article gathers the relevant information and has sources linked: strangematters.coop/supply-chain-theory-of-inflat…

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 04 Nov 2023 21:21 collapse

I don’t mean supply and demand in the extremely vague sense of that essay though. I mean individual people purchases and company sales. Something is happening when a person decides or not to buy something.

If in the aggregate people buy one product instead of another, that affects the business and they need to either appeal on other grounds or drop prices to compete.

I know there are different demand elasticity for different people for different things. That doesn’t mean that price is completely arbitrary and buyers have no leverage at all. I think most of that essay is just saying to ignore macroeconomics, which as far as I ever learned (as taking the required class and a very minor interest in terms of expertise - so not much) was a major simplification to express large groups of people’s actions. So of course it comes down to individual transactions. But I think the idea makes even more intuitive sense there.

Lets say I’m at a craft fair as a buyer. Someone wants to price their ceramic mug at 50 dollars. They can do that, but I am going to pass and look at other sellers. If the seller 30 feet down also has artsy ceramic mugs, but for 30 dollars - then that might make people there question the 50 dollar mug. Prices tend to affect demand and hence volume at least in my personal experience.

It’s not the end all of things. I would take more flights if the price was 1/2 of what it is, but I don’t know if I would take even more as it went cheaper. There’s only so much travel I want to do in a year.

All that said - I agree that business just set prices but outside of maybe hospital bills, they’re not arbitrary. If a business is constantly selling out they will raise prices I would argue that it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of “covid” pricing was businesses just charging more and seeing if people would pay.

On the flip side, businesses regularly set lower prices on stuff that isn’t moving. This ranges from simple “manager markdowns” all the way to the liquidation of merchandise to sellers like Ollie’s. For small businesses they’ll often see if you bite on something at the arbitrary price, but if not and the item has sat there too long they might haggle with you to get something vs an unending storage cost.

Even if you argue that we don’t have an auction for many of the things we buy so the price is arbitrary and set by the seller - we still are almost always buying something that there are other potential buyers for. If I don’t want it at price X+10%, the impact of that depends on how many other potential buyers will step in to buy it. When I talk about demand, I am simplifying a paragraph to a word.

Whats more, scalpers and ebay resellers will do the whole restricted supply driving prices up for the company even if they don’t want to. We see that all the time. At that point it seems worse for the economy as the scalpers are just skimming money from buyers with no actual value provided. At least the original manufacturer could get a bonus or invest in more capacity if they grabbed that money.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 05 Nov 2023 07:52 collapse

So I pointed out that the supply & demand theory is just a bunch of storytelling with no data to back it up and you responded by telling me a bunch of stories with no reference to any sort of data.

Do you see a problem here? Who taught you to think that this was an acceptable way to understand anything? It was orthodox economic theory, wasn’t it? There’s nothing special about the economy that exempts it from science, except how much incentive there is to tell stories that justify the hoarding of wealth rather than doing research to understand reality.

Also, I don’t know how you’re differentiating what you’re talking about from what the article was talking about. You’re describing how price setting and inflation happens, and so are they. It’s just they’ve actually done the work to understand it. If you dig into their references I think you’ll find that there isn’t really some other context where supply & demand does apply. They are talking about how the economy in general is shaped by these microeconomic principles.

They covered all the stuff you’re talking about, for instance how companies will set negative margins on some products for various reasons. Cost-plus-markup pricing doesn’t necessarily mean the markup part is actually positive. It can be negative and this is captured by the studies. I don’t know why you felt the need to go into that level of detail about all these ideas, except perhaps to intimidate me with your level of “knowledge” and bury me in the weeds.

Except again, you’re telling a bunch of stories and expecting me to believe not only the stories but the conclusions you say come from them. The research tells a different story. You can pay attention to that research, or you can act like most economists and ignore it in favour of the doctrines you’ve read about in textbooks.

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 05 Nov 2023 20:07 collapse

The problem with the data referenced is that as far as I can tell it’s a bunch of surveys. And I really don’t understand how you expect to discuss microeconomics at the level of one seller like the essay references without it being talking about anecdotes.

In general, (not specifically economics) I find ignoring the consensus of experts in a field leads you to conspiracy theories. So yes, in terms of sources reliability and my rating system for who to trust, I will take the standard college classes and consensus of experts.

It feels like each thing I address just has you pulling either a non-sequitor or just lambasting standard economics.

I also don’t really see what you are arguing with me about except for a pedantic definition of supply vs demand or if those are even concepts.

The main argument in the essay is that the money printer doesn’t lead to inflation. I never claimed it does, and all but one standard theory referenced in that essay agrees with you and the essay writer that it’s not a straight “hydrolic” relationship.

The anecdotes you’re both ignoring is that unless you’re rather well off, if you get a raise or a stimulus package - almost everyone spends that money (or pays off debt, which is less direct but does free up spending power down the road). And we have seen shortages that pretty much were driven by hoarding in the pandemic. One vital part of that is having the money to spend - there were few reports of stealing actually leading to shortages.

And you completely skip the scalpers - did we imagine the PS5s being only available on ebay for 3x or more the MSRP? Did not having more money enable people to pay more to bid up the going price for the few available? What is that if not microeconomic supply and demand curves meeting at ebay sold prices?

I suppose the link you’re disputing is getting from individual sales to the economy at large, but that’s the problem this theory has, the reverse of the issue the essay claims traditional economics has.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 05 Nov 2023 23:25 collapse

So like… does traditional economics have any data to back up supply & demand? Because you’re still just telling stories and dismissing the research as not good enough for you.

I would like to see this much better research that is good enough for you.

I’m not going to get distracted with your stories and forget that you haven’t supplied any data of your own.

This isn’t a “non-sequitir”, it is the core of what I’m saying.

But if you absolutely must hear a response on one of your stories: scalping is a very localised and minor part of the economy. Most of the economy doesn’t behave that way. This is hardly creating the dominant law that traditional economics tells us about.

Edit: And you still haven’t given any data to prove the anecdote about scalpers, only told a story.

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 07 Nov 2023 19:05 collapse

…stlouisfed.org/…/the-science-of-supply-and-deman… for instance used the COVID economic data to show how lack of supply, or lack of demand depending on the industry bore out what one might expect.

On Scalping - I don’t know that anyone has done a study proving the existence of it, but it’s a major part of news stories over the last 10 years, and there’s papers about how scalpers often set ticket prices in the secondary market, and how it also more effectively allocates the tickets: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=43245…

tomshardware.com/…/how-scalpers-justify-their-act… points to numerous news articles, and denying that this happens when there’s high demand for items in low supply is like denying there’s a war in Ukraine right now because there’s no study proving it.

Finally, maybe you just aren’t understanding me - are you saying you’ve never been to Ollies or Tuesday Mornings or seen liquidation or end of model year sales? You need a study to prove to you this happens pretty much all the time? You are arguing that if you’ve got a bunch of IDK 2022 Camrys on your lot when the 2023s start coming in, you’re going to have less demand and less ability to sell those 2022s if you price them the same as the 2023s (i.e. demand dropping causing prices to need to drop to sell)?

Look - maybe you think “supply and demand” is too simplistic, and I agree. But if you’re saying NO WHERE in the economy does supply vs demand affect pricing then I don’t know what to tell you - just watching the News or living life buying stuff proves you wrong.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 08 Nov 2023 05:45 collapse

First of all, I’m not saying there is never a correlation between supply & demand, what I am saying, and what that article I linked you was saying, is that the causal mechanism between macroeconomics and actual price fluctuations is not given by supply & demand theory. I am saying that correlation is not causation, and if you want a functioning, usable theory of economics that makes predictions that can be trusted, you need a mechanism. Supply & demand doesn’t have one. It finds some correlation and then says it’s following a law, without ever doing the work to explain how.

The COVID studies are showing people debating about what the shock was, assuming supply & demand is in operation, but ultimately the only conclusion you can draw is that whatever correlation exists must be co-causal. Both supply & demand shocks were caused by COVID. That’s like… obvious. If you wanted to establish more than that you’d need to dig into the causal relationship, but they don’t. Unless they do in which case… can you please show me where?

That first article is exactly the problem that I’m talking about. It spends the entire time trying to convince the reader that a correlation exists, and telling stories to explain why it doesn’t always fit. It’s pure post-hoc justification.

But I want you to look at this graph:

…stlouisfed.org/…/POE2103Fig5_20210219101335.jpg

Like JUST LOOK AT IT. Nobody makes that graph if they have the data available to make a real graph. That is a doodle. It is two perfectly straight, perpendicular lines forming a cross, on a graph with no scale. That is there to illustrate the concept of correlation as if it weren’t perfectly obvious. That is what I would show a small child if I wanted them to grow up to fundamentally misunderstand statistics. I have seen that diagram, but I didn’t mention it earlier because I didn’t want to strawman you. Apparently you actually think that’s worth showing me.

If you had spent any time in hard sciences you would know two things:

  1. Correlation does not imply causation

  2. People with data will show you the data. They did hard work for it, they are proud of their graphs, and they want you to see the details and insights they are able to wring from it.

Any scientist would be absolutely horrified to present something like that. They would be too afraid of insulting their audience, either by implying this pair of lines they clearly just made up means anything, or by implying the audience were actual children.

And they don’t do this:

The Science of Supply and Demand
by David F. Perkis

“A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an out-side force.”

—Isaac Newton

Science Is Everywhere

We live in a world governed by the laws of science. From gravity, to electromagnetism, to sound waves, our lives are filled with scientific phenomena that structure and affect every facet of our daily routine. As a species, we have attempted at every turn to channel the laws of science to our own benefit, constantly working to build better products and to develop improved means of manufacturing. However, sometimes science unveils itself in unanticipated ways—ways that often force its will on the distribution of goods in markets.

What the hell is this? What is it? What are they talking about? This is someone trying to coopt the aesthetics of science without doing any.

I can’t access the scalping paper, but honestly if supply & demand dictated pricing, why don’t ticket prices rise and scalpers get squeezed out? That is what the law of supply & demand would dictate, wouldn’t it?

What the scalping situation shows us is companies working hard to fight scalping WITHOUT raising prices, in direct contravention of the law of supply & demand.

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 13 Nov 2023 16:56 collapse

I don’t actually think economics is a science like physics is a science. I work with world class experimenters in high energy and x-ray physics daily. They have experiments that can be isolated and reproduced, and generate pretty objective data (until you get into the weirder quantum stuff). I don’t pretend to understand all of it as Im not a physics PhD but I do get how their lab experiments are obviously different from any attempted economics experiment.

So I kind of doubt you can realistically do a random controlled study on any economics. The best we have is observational studies, which, I’d say are comparably weak. So you’re kind of asking for experimental data that doesn’t and I’d kind of argue can’t exist. We can’t have 3 versions of the US economy at the same time and vary one variable and see what happens.

And I think you finally agreed with me, or at least I communicated well enough for you to understand - supply and demand as a concept - an idea - is one part of what’s happening in price setting. It’s not the only thing, and I don’t buy any of the “hydraulic” ideas.

My point of the scalping example was that companies can ignore supply and demand and try and contravene it, but others will step in and make money on the arbitrage. Do you remember what I said in the previous comment about why I think that’s worse than the companies capturing that revenue? I was agreeing with you that it’s not a “Law” in that companies have to do things that way, it’s more that they’ll just create secondary markets that bid up the price a la scalpers. The average person doesn’t then get access to choose the “company price” or “scalper” supply/demand price - the people making it a business have bought all the tickets / PS5s whatever at the “company price” that’s ignoring supply/demand and so the person can either go without or pay the scalper price that did take into account supply/demand.

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 14 Nov 2023 01:59 collapse

Right, so you’ve admitted the data doesn’t exist in the way you would want it, so what does that leave? Surveys, perhaps? The thing you denigrated as “anecdote”. But like, you know surveys are done all the time in science, right? Have you ever heard the saying “the plural of anecdote is data”? That’s why those researchers not only did surveys, but the paper writers looked at many surveys across many parts of the economy. They are doing science to determine the causal mechanisms at the microeconomic level, because those mechanisms add up to macroeconomic phenomena. You can talk about rates of exchange or whatever all day, but in the end it is many exchanges happening at the micro level.

Another place where this happened was the stock market. You’d think if you wanted loads of fluctuating prices responding to supply & demand that would be the place to find it, right? Supply & demand would suggest the market would stabilise and level itself, but doesn’t explain the volatility we see. Well, the theory of how the market worked used to be of rational actors working to maximise their self interest, but that model doesn’t predict the behaviour of the stock market when you simulate it on a computer. You know what does? Simulating irrational actors making decisions based on entirely randomised and arbitrary internal rulesets. That gives you the boom & bust cycles that we actually see in reality.

And my point about the scalpers is that the behaviour is aberrant. Companies don’t do it, even though supply & demand says they could, because they know that it would destroy their good will with customers. That should tell you something about how prices are set elsewhere in the economy, and wouldn’t you know it, when people talk to the price setters, they find that they avoid raising prices until their supply chain forces them to. The markets favour stability over price changing, because they don’t want to piss off customers.

Companies raising prices wouldn’t be better, it would just make ticket prices high across the board. Your scenario of scalpers buying up the entire supply doesn’t actually happen. That’s probably due to them needing to hedge their bets. They can’t sell every ticket every time, they have to guess at how many they can sell, which requires high margins and thus very high prices. Oh look, it’s a supply chain explanation for scalping. I don’t know if it’s true because I have no data, but it’s an explanation. Apparently that’s all you need. I expect my fake nobel prize any day now.

Also, saying you “work with” people in hard science is pretty telling. So you don’t actually do hard science then? You never got any training in it? Because again, if you had been trained in any actual sciences you might have noticed that the data people show you for instructional purposes tends to be real. It tends to be messy. It is not a bunch of doodles.

Anyway, that’s besides the point because you’ve already admitted what I’ve been saying this whole time: the data isn’t there. Supply & demand is an article of faith until someone does the work to look and see if it’s there. Well, people have looked, and they haven’t found it.

NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 07:18 collapse

Supply and demand is very easy to prove. Just go to any auction. The market clearing price is what someone will pay at the time.

Some markets are dominated by the buyers, others by the sellers, others change from time to time.

gothic_lemons@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 10:05 collapse

Oh wow are the basic responsibilities of the thing ppl do voluntary tough? Maybe don’t do it then ya chokepoint capitalist.

electric_nan@lemmy.ml on 04 Nov 2023 04:38 next collapse

Enshittification.

SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 04 Nov 2023 04:55 collapse

Enshitty-vacation if we’re talking AirBnB.

electric_nan@lemmy.ml on 04 Nov 2023 15:14 collapse

Damn, you nailed it haha. Wish I’d thought of that one :)

pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml on 04 Nov 2023 04:56 next collapse

A lot of this anti air bnb stuff feels like astroturfing by hotels. Sure there are plenty of annoyances, but everyone I know still likes them even if they like to complain about them.

The society harm is a real thing though. companies buying up homes to rent them is a real problem. But these articles that treat airbnb like it’s so obvious that no one like them feel very artificial.

Romanmir@lemmy.today on 04 Nov 2023 05:02 next collapse

We had the chance to stay at an airbnb when our house was being worked on.

We found that most of the places around us were trying to compete with Hotels on price.

Which is fine. Except that the hotels had more/better amenities… for the same cost.

p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Nov 2023 05:39 collapse

I can barely trust some rando to drive me around to a destination in the city. Why would I trust other randos to let me rent and use their house? And not break housing or safety laws in the process? It is 100x more complicated than just driving me from point A to point B.

ABCDE@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 06:48 collapse

Lots seem to trust Uber/Grab/Lyft or whatever to drive them around. I don’t think it’s that complicated.

p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Nov 2023 14:45 collapse

That’s precisely what I was comparing it to. Transporting somebody in a car for 15 minutes is much different than providing housing, a bed, and a livable space for a week.

ABCDE@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 04:04 collapse

Neither are that difficult.

ChexMax@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:48 next collapse

My circle has all turned on Airbnb. It’s a gamble. It used to be the gamble was worth it because it was cheaper than hotels, but now that they’re the same price, it’s not worth it.

Last time went great, the time before was not properly cleaned to guest standards, and they restained the wood walls in the kitchen so the whole place was permeated with an awful chemical smell that kept me from sleeping. At a hotel, you can just switch rooms if anything is suboptimal. At an air BNB, you’re stuck. Everyone in my circle has had half good half bad experiences and it’s just not worth risking your trip over.

Chetzemoka@startrek.website on 04 Nov 2023 18:19 collapse

Annoyances? The last time I used AirBNB, there was literally no HEAT in the unit we were staying in. Just because it was San Diego in February doesn’t make that legal. We left and got a hotel the next day and I had to fight with them to get a refund.

That’s the last time I ever used the service, and I used to be a regular.

Raiderkev@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 05:05 next collapse

I can’t afford a house in my hometown in part because cunts buy houses to be airbnbs. Fuck them. I will always book a hotel unless there’s literally no other option. I don’t want to give my money to grifters who are ruining the housing market. I also ratted my mom’s neighbor out to the city for running one out of his house. He timed the market and bought after '08 when he was working for a small social network startup. Now he doesn’t even live in that house anymore and instead of selling, uses it as an airbnb. He is an exec at what is now a very large social media company. He absolutely does not need the money, but keeps the house as an asset and rents it on airbnb. I didn’t win the birth year lottery and get a chance to buy the dip. Instead I came of age with an all time high housing market that has only gone up. Then rates went up because fuck u specifically Raiderkev. Fuck air BNB. Report every last one to the city. They are likely in violation of some ordinance. People need to vote with their wallets and drive these grifters to sell and not let it be profitable for them.

wahming@monyet.cc on 04 Nov 2023 05:33 next collapse

This is a myth. Airbnb has too few properties listed to actually have any impact on property prices. The shortage is real, but it’s not of their making.

Want lower prices? Build more houses. Somehow, this simple solution is being rejected in favour of blaming scapegoats.

Edit: The best cherrypicked statistic somebody could show was that Airbnb drives prices up by $1800 / year. Setting aside the accuracy of it, if that’s breaking the bank, you probably shouldn’t be buying a house anyway.

thefactremains@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 05:46 next collapse

I guess you heard that from a friend? Maybe try to question things more and do your own research. There’s tons of verifiable information out there and it’s easy to access.

marketwatch.com/…/does-airbnb-really-make-housing…

wahming@monyet.cc on 04 Nov 2023 05:52 next collapse

Based on the median growth in Airbnb listings nationally, the short-term rentals contributed to an annual increase of $9 in monthly rent and $1,800 in home prices for median zip code, the study’s authors found.

Does that really seem like a lot in context of buying a house? It certainly doesn’t look like it to me. Also, lay off the ad hominem attacks

honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 04 Nov 2023 06:09 collapse

$9 x 12 = $108 increase per year. Also, you chose that sentence probably because it was the lower one despite the first paragraph being:

Short-term rentals via apps such as Airbnb contribute to housing shortages and rent increases, according to research published last week by Felix Mindl and Dr. Oliver Arentz, researchers at University of Cologne in Germany. They attributed 14.2% of overall rent increases to short-term rentals or 320 euros ($385) per year for new tenants.

wahming@monyet.cc on 04 Nov 2023 06:17 collapse

$9 x 12 = $108 increase per year

It’s an ANNUAL increase of $9, not a monthly increase. That aside, my original point was about property prices, not rentals. I picked that line because it’s the first line I found discussing sale price. I made no claims about rental prices and still don’t.

TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 06:35 collapse

the ban has made not one iota of impact in Honolulu.

shartedchocolate@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 09:54 next collapse

This type of rhetoric seems to always point at “oh but it’s something else that’s the problem, leave my airbnbs alone there are too few of them”

www.toronto.ca/…/backgroundfile-166717.pdf read some actual studies and see how much of the real estate stock is held by short term rentals and tell us about how those few properties have low impact on property prices. I’d love to see what kind of impact Toronto would have if those 9100 dwellings would be available to Torontonians. That’s about 56 dense,mid rise apartment buildings of housing.

Sorry, but the financialization of housing is a real issue that needs to get addressed.

wahming@monyet.cc on 04 Nov 2023 10:01 collapse

I’m pointing at ‘Build more fucking housing so I can afford to buy some’, I’m not sure why that appears to be so controversial.

shartedchocolate@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 10:15 collapse

Because you’re saying “don’t worry about the already built housing people sit on for short term rentals, those don’t count” they do count, there are a lot of them. How long would it take to build 9100 units in Toronto vs immediately dumpstering the airbnbs and forcing sale or long term rentals. There’s a part of the issue that you just might not be aware of, it’s the fucking vacant homes that sit there empty, making loads of cash during busy season.

You’re right, building more is good, but without bans on short term rentals and proper regulations around multi home ownership we’re just gonna build more units for landlords.

wahming@monyet.cc on 04 Nov 2023 10:21 next collapse

without bans on short term rentals and proper regulations around multi home ownership we’re just gonna build more units for landlords.

I disagree. The main issue is lack of supply. Freeing up a few units here and there is merely providing a little short term relieve without doing anything to address the main issue. Get sufficient housing built, and the short term rental market wouldn’t be an issue.

ThatsMrCharlieToYou@sh.itjust.works on 04 Nov 2023 10:39 collapse

You seem to completely disregard the fact that freeing up “a few units here and there” will have a material impact that lessens the need for immediate building of more houses in already overpopulated areas. I’m not saying, by any stretch, that we shouldn’t build but obfuscating the issue with another does not help. The short term rental market is an issue for a lot of people.

Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works on 05 Nov 2023 05:42 collapse

Not to mention, new buildings are excluded from rent control in Ontario.

Fuck that, in every sense. Why should the people already struggling for housing have to worry about landlords suddenly deciding to jack up rent by thousands, just so investors can have an easier go with AirBnB? That kind of expectation worsens a community, and absolutely contributes to the homelessness situation.

Nothing will make me support things like AirBnB at this point. People having homes should be more important.

Raiderkev@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 01:16 collapse

My dude. Go take econ 101. Supply and demand. If there are houses being sold to people that intend to use it for air BNB, then it is both reducing available supply, and increasing demand. When that happens , it drives up price. Families now have to bid against these investment chucklefucks. It’s not a scapegoat at all. The housing market has gotten to where it is for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to investors buying them for Airbnb. You can add in firms like Blackstone backed invitation homes also buying housing to be corporate landlords, the Fed keeping rates too low for too long allowing the people with the most assets to gain equity, and leverage themselves beyond what they’d normally do because money was essentially free for them. Add foreign buyers into the mix, and baby you’ve got a housing clusterfuck going. Our solution to everyone losing their houses in '08 was to let big firms buy houses and rent them out. No one can buy a house now, but man is the economy purring. If all these leeches lost their asses, and were forced to sell, we might return to affordability. Until then, you will own nothing and be happy.

grayman@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:53 next collapse

So there’s this company that’s been buying up about 30% of houses in many cities to turn them into rentals. They outbid everyone. That’s a bigger issue than the few air bnb.

curiousPJ@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 15:38 collapse

I lived in one of ‘those homes’ once… All 5 bedrooms and the garage which I stayed in was at least 1000 a month. And it was bare minimum amenities. One refrigerator shared with everyone, stove top was broken the entire time, one restroom and shower, and half of the folks had no idea how to clean dishes.

fart_pickle@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 09:04 next collapse

What happened to Airbnb?

Good old corporate greed fueled by an unreasonable shareholders/investors expectations.

Buddahriffic@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 18:11 collapse

Also every single provider on airbnb is also an investor potentially looking to maximize their money. I say potentially because not all landlords are min/maxing entitled assholes.

AcornCarnage@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:01 next collapse

I do still look for Airbnbs every time we travel because we’re a family of 5. Not a lot of hotels will accommodate 5 to a room and separate rooms means twice the price. Airbnb offers a lot more options for a family with the added benefits of a full kitchen and having a place that can actually be a short term home rather than a room with a bed.

Here’s the last one we rented: www.airbnb.com/rooms/794199620391731129

I get that Airbnbs take some homes off the market and in some areas (like mine), that sucks because demand is high and supply is low. But they aren’t going to be the reason for a housing crunch. Here in Portland, Maine, we’re a small city on the ocean, thrive on tourists, have great restaurants, and are an easy drive to Boston or to ski resorts or Acadia. The housing market has been bonkers for YEARS and it isn’t going to change if we ban short term rentals.

surewhynotlem@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:26 next collapse

Do hotels not provide an extra cot anymore?

grayman@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:49 next collapse

Fire regulations for almost every hotel limits the room to 4. They’ll give you a crib but not another bed.

surewhynotlem@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 14:31 collapse

Ahhh, that sucks. I never realized just how tailored everything is to the ‘nuclear family’

AcornCarnage@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 15:28 collapse

There are places where we can all squeeze into a room, and we do. It all depends on the trip and what we’re looking to get out of it. We don’t mind sharing beds and putting someone on a sofa, but it’s harder as the kids are all getting into teen years.

witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 13:53 collapse

“AirBNB is good because I had a bunch of kids but I don’t like paying a bunch of kid prices.”

Cheesus@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 14:25 next collapse

OP was saying Airbnb still works for some people today despite the many complaints outlined in the article for users.

AcornCarnage@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 2023 14:25 next collapse

Weird take, but okay.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 12:14 collapse

Maybe ‘a family of 5’ is two grandparents, two parents and one child. Or another combination. Why are you assuming it’s three or more children?

witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 14:22 collapse

Maybe a big family vacation being a little cheaper for this poster is still a lesser priority to people having homes to own? We can just focus on the part where they want things cheaper for just them and not the makeup of the family.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 14:26 collapse

That’s not relevant to what I was saying, which was there’s no reason to assume someone has a bunch of kids just because they’re traveling with five family members.

[deleted] on 04 Nov 2023 13:53 next collapse

.

Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee on 04 Nov 2023 18:39 next collapse

Air BnB has destroyed the property market in my town. I’d rather not travel than contribute to the problem.

ohlaph@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 04:54 next collapse

When I’m on vacation, I don’t want to make time for chores. Airbnb wants to charge me a fee for cleaning and have me clean up.

And the horror stories of cameras, and stupid rules. No thanks. I’ll pay less at a motel and have breakfast included.

JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world on 05 Nov 2023 11:59 next collapse

Buy a new condo and suddenly a bunch of weirdos turn up on weekends. It’s worse, because only managed properties can afford he units these days.

Kushia@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 2023 05:52 collapse

I’d rather stay at a motel with full cleaning and amenities than some bozo’s house anyday. At a motel I can just focus on why I’m staying instead of how.