
Airbnb dominated by professional landlords - frgtpsswrdlame
http://www.dw.com/en/airbnb-dominated-by-professional-landlords/a-39972379
======
3pt14159
Look, we have a couple problems: low interest rates, large variance in
productivity / earnings, really shitty hotels because they're operating on
old-world assumptions.

One under appreciated thing about apps like Uber and AirBnb is the star rating
system. I know I'm a five star tenant. I know I never shit in the sink. I know
I never leave a bunch of condoms or cigar butts all over the balcony or hotel
room. But the hotel doesn't know that. They need to steam clean the sheets and
install super-fat-person-proof toilets. And elevators for the disabled. And a
hotel room with a stove and usable fridge? Hah! Only two times have I had that
and one was in a room that cost $10k a week (don't ask, I was the +1).

Then it comes to AirBnb and global housing stock. Someone like me who is
currently in Kiev in an AirBnb is always going to be able to out-spend a
local. The key is to align incentives. I literally would not have come to Kiev
if they'd banned AirBnb. I would have gone back to Lithuania (love Vilnius) or
to Turkey or Estonia. With the drive to pull in tourist money going on
worldwide why should cities ban AirBnb (or Uber for that matter)?

"Because it's driving up rents!"

Ok, so let's solve _that_ problem. I have no issue with cities imposing a 30%
tax on AirBnbs and using the income to build up the housing stock for locals.
They should do this, it makes perfect sense.

"Because AirBnbers are loud and disruptive!"

Make hosts responsible for noise complaint fines and pretty quick loud tenants
are going to get bad ratings.

"Because I want community, not a bunch of transient AirBnbers that don't even
speak the local language!"

If it is getting really, really bad, (say 20% or higher of housing stock in a
community) maybe scale up the taxes to combat this. But let's not miss the
positives either. I've met a number of cool people both hosting them in my
place just before traveling or by interacting with them in areas I never would
have been in had I been staying in a hotel.

Don't throw out the baby with the bath water and all that.

~~~
archagon
Airbnb is one of those rare products that cracked open an entire world of
possibilities for me. For the first time, I've gotten the chance to live as a
local all around the world, for even less money than at a hotel or sometimes
even a hostel. Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past,
getting to know distant cities right from the ground floor. Adjustments should
be made on a city-to-city basis, but you can't put the genie back in the
bottle. The rewards are just too sweet!

(For the record, I've mostly stayed in shared accommodations, since entire
apartment rentals are very expensive for prolonged travel. It seems people are
mostly OK with this side of Airbnb.)

~~~
pixelmonkey
> Ordinary folks just didn't travel like this in the past, getting to know
> distant cities right from the ground floor.

Not quite true. In 2005, I did a long road trip in Italy. In that year, in
almost every gas station in Italy, you could buy books with listings of local
B&B's and "agriturismo" locales, which were essentially B&B's that were on
farms and usually included a farm dinner with the hosting family, in addition
to breakfast and accommodations. The cost to stay in these places was always a
fraction of the hotel. It was a little inconvenient to use them though: you
needed the books, and then you needed to dial the owners and ask if their
place was available ahead of your arrival.

You can imagine why this market exists in Italy: the hotels in every city are
geared toward tourists (thus, lots of $$$) but Italians have such a beautiful
(and geographically small) country, and they needed a way to do local tourism
at affordable prices. I imagine the fact that you needed to call the owners
(and speak Italian to them) acted as a barrier against tourists.

I am a huge fan of Airbnb. I point this out, however, because I always
personally viewed Airbnb less as an "improvement over hotel travel", and
instead as a "platform that brought efficiency to the B&B market".

Basically, B&Bs were a great way to travel, but most people didn't hassle to
do so, because inventory/availability was too hard to scan, and it usually
required at least a little local knowledge.

In 2005, if you had done a road trip through Italy like I had, while seeing
the kinds of transactions going online, you could have put 2 and 2 together
and realized this needed to exist as an international service. But, even I
didn't see it, then!

~~~
Camillo
> You can imagine why this market exists in Italy: the hotels in every city
> are geared toward tourists (thus, lots of $$$) but Italians have such a
> beautiful (and geographically small) country, and they needed a way to do
> local tourism at affordable prices. I imagine the fact that you needed to
> call the owners (and speak Italian to them) acted as a barrier against
> tourists.

That makes no sense. Of course Italians stay in hotels, and there are one-star
hotels for those traveling on a budget, and hostels for young people, same as
in any country. B&Bs were introduced later, as an even cheaper option. In
Italy they are literally called "bed and breakfast", in English, because they
are not a local invention: they were borrowed from the impoverished and
benighted country known as the UK.

The agriturismi were not invented as a way to keep tourists out: you may
notice that they have "tourism" right in the name. Quite the opposite: owners
of small farms were seeking a new revenue stream, and took advantage of the
fact that the Italian countryside is quite attractive in its own right. Think
hills with small farms, villages, churches and castles, not miles and miles of
corn. The idea was to visit the countryside itself, not to take a fifty miles
detour to visit a city because the hotels are too expensive.

~~~
pixelmonkey
> In Italy they are literally called "bed and breakfast", in English, because
> they are not a local invention: they were borrowed from the impoverished and
> benighted country known as the UK.

I think they refer to these as "bed & breakfast" (in English) these days
across EU countries, but back in 2005 when I traveled in Italy, that was not
the term they used. They referred to them as "affittacamere", which translated
literally means, "rooms for rent".

I never said that agriturismi (or B&Bs) were invented to keep tourists out.

I simply reflected on how it was an enjoyable mode of travel for local
Italians visiting different parts of their own country, and also affordable. I
remember how my own Italian family told me they _never_ stayed in hotels when
traveling through the country -- mainly due to cost, but also because it just
didn't feel authentic to them.

As for the agriturismi themselves, they have their roots in state law in
Italy; it's a special designation that, as you rightly point out, was meant to
provide farm owners a new revenue stream. However, you may be surprised to
learn that Italians themselves are often the customers. Usually cherished more
for the opportunity to experience family style meals cooked from local
ingredients than for the countryside views, but it's all part of the
experience.

~~~
bartvk
> Usually cherished more for the opportunity to experience family style meals
> cooked from local ingredients than for the countryside views

These people have their priorities straight.

------
cletus
Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want
where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem.

None of this is a surprise, so much so that AirBnB seems to be aware of this
and is acting in a way that's, at best, ethically challenged and, at worst,
illegal eg deleting listings before giving data to the state of NY that
"shows" most hosts only have one unit [1].

If people want to run a hotel, there's a legal structure for this. And zoning.
Go do that. I personally applaud efforts to shut down illegal hotels.

[1] [https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-
state...](https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11110594/airbnb-letter-state-
legislature-illegal-listings)

~~~
Jabanga
>Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want
where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC.

You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism. You get to stay in one of the most
geographically desirable locations in the world and in order to pay lower rent
you want to prevent others who live in much less geographically desirable
places from renting units in your locale so that they can get to enjoy
something you get to enjoy year round, for a few days of the year.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism.

I signed a 12 month rental agreement for an apartment in Reykjavik in 2015.
About a month after I moved in, the apartment above me was sold to an ABnBer,
and for the rest of the year I had a rotating troop of loud holidayers cycling
through. I took to sleeping with earplugs every night, and still often was
kept up until 1 or 2 on a weeknight. Needless to say, I moved the second the
contract expired.

You can't persuade AirBnB users to give a shit about the noise they are
causing, because they're going to be gone in 2 weeks. They don't care if the
rest of the apartment hates them. It was toxic behavior that lowered the value
of all the other apartments, and it harmed my quality of life quite severely.

But here's the important bit. This problem is not like someone buying a house
near an airport and then complaining about the noise. Apartments become AirBnB
rentals very suddenly, with no warning. There's nothing you can do to plan or
defend against it, and it can happen to anyone. It's life ruining stuff, it
harms your sleep, it harms your property investments, it increases your
building maintenance costs and it increases your rental costs[1], and it
happens randomly out of the blue.

It's an approach used by a lot of companies that I've started to think of as
"societal strip mining". AirBnB is making it's money by offloading costs of
business that it should rightfully pay itself to random other people around
it, and pocketing the difference.

A newly created hotel in the middle of an otherwise quiet suburb would be
required to soundproof it's premises and build parking under the site for it's
customers. AirBnB apartments ignore soundproofing and create a system that
encourages their customers to fight the locals for street parking (AirBnB
customers usually win, because they're not on a 9-5 work schedule). It's no
different to Uber saying "local regulations are not our problem, so we're not
going to pay for cameras in Uber vehicles, and we're not going to safety check
the vehicles every 3 months either. Whether our drivers do these things or not
is between them and the government". BAM, fleet maintenance costs drop to
zero, giving them a competitive edge against local taxi companies. Every now
and again someone gets brutally raped or a car goes off a bridge as a result
of pressuring their drivers to bypass regulations, but Uber isn't the one that
has to pay.

I'm not impressed by this NIMBYism argument. AirBnB is taking the piss.
They've had every opportunity to be a responsible business and work to support
the tourism boom in Iceland in a positive manner, and instead they've made the
lives of locals a lot harder and more expensive than it need be in the name of
a quick buck. I for one will embrace with open arms any legislation which will
shut them out of my city.

[1] 44% of Reykjaviks rental market is now listen on AirBnB, up from 23.5% 12
months ago, the average cost of rent has increase ~$1000USD per month in two
years.

~~~
IanDrake
That sounds terrible, but would it be less terrible if your loud and obnoxious
neighbors were long term renters?

My vacation rentals have rules, especially about noise. If you break the rules
I can literally force you to leave right then, as in, collect your stuff and
go right now. You have no recourse. The police will help me toss you if you
don't go willingly.

If I rented to you long term, I don't have that luxury. I'd have to evict you
over months of court precedings and you'd have plenty of time to vindictively
trash my property. In fact, this is one of the main reasons I don't do long
term rentals.

~~~
Jasper_
But as a host, you want the 5 star rating for fear of being delisted. If you
throw someone out, goodbye to your lucrative vacation rental.

Noise complaints from other tenants often fall on deaf ears.

~~~
IanDrake
As I said elsewhere, I wouldn't hesitate. I screen visitors well and I get 5
star reviews.

Any one star reviews can be explained away easily. I've never had to do it as
a host, but I've stayed at places with some one star reviews where the host
provided a reasonable explanation in response.

------
ricardobeat
'Our members own seven apartments on average, they are not big companies'

Amazing how people live in distorted realities. To the vast majority of the
population, owning seven apartments definitely puts you into 'big company'
territory. Plus not being 'big' doesn't mean you get any exemptions.

~~~
amarkov
If you own seven apartments with an average rent of $1k, your yearly revenue
(not profit!) is $84,000. That's microscopic by any reasonable standard of
company size.

~~~
user5994461
Depends where you are located and what kind of apartments it is.

The average rent in whatever is somewhere around 50% of the income, so if you
own 3, you don't need to work.

~~~
saimiam
Let's assume average income = x

So, rental income from 3 houses = 1.5x

Even if we assumed that all three homes were owned outright, you'd be on the
hook for property taxes, maintenance, and utilities for each house. About half
of my monthly expense minus mortgage is on these three line items.

Therefore, 1/2 of 1.5x goes straight to property taxes, maint, utilities
leaving your income at 0.75x. You have to pay your own rent/expenses out of
this.

Living off renting isn't foolproof at the levels you suggested.

~~~
user5994461
Living off renting is 100% foolproof with 3 properties. You don't have to pay
rent when you own your property.

I don't know if you said "houses" on purpose. Houses are going for more than
0.5 income.

~~~
saimiam
How can you rent out 3 properties while living in one of them?

~~~
user5994461
Assume that someone who rent 3 properties also have a place they live in.

Can be a 4th property. Can be that 1 of the rental is simply an independent
floor in their 4 stories house.

Either way, if you own at least 3 properties you can have enough income to
live.

------
jonny_eh
> Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city
> has a rent cap.

Maybe that rent cap is why landlords prefer Airbnb. Rent caps are never a good
idea, they have so many unforseen consequences.

~~~
rbehrends
There is no rent cap in Germany. The article is wrong.

Germany has only "soft" rent controls that limit YOY increases in rent and
(selectively) increases in rents when changing tenants.

German economic orthodoxy relies very much on the need to build housing in
order to deal with housing shortages and with rising rents due to housing
shortages. The "soft" rent controls simply buy time to get housing projects
underway. Without new housing being built, rents would still reach market
levels, it would just take a bit longer.

Berlin's current problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1)
from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of
foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already
evolved to accommodate English speakers. Various and sundry NIMBY problems
where locals oppose new housing projects also don't help.

~~~
mschuster91
> Berlin's currently problem is excessive urbanization driven by migration (1)
> from the neighbouring comparatively poor East German states and (2) of
> foreigners who speak only English and hence prefer a city that has already
> evolved to accommodate English speakers.

No. Berlin problems mostly stem from the city government colluding with
investor scum to build luxury apartments instead of actually affordable ones
plus doing their very best to e.g. kick squats out (which help keeping down
rents for all neighbors). Berlin government could easily break the necks of
the investors and protect the population instead, but especially the SPD has
chosen not to do so - and sell off priorly city-owned prime real estate to
investors.

The investors now do "Luxussanierungen" (basically, thermoclad the houses and
fix the more egregious stuff like bad wiring / plumbing that the city
government had neglected over decades) and price out all the lower-and-middle-
income people.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Governments mainly value people as taxpayers, because taxpayers pay into the
public coffers, which can then be emptied to ameliorate social disputes and
ease reelection. If you don't pay taxes and do consume services at the same
time, as a squatter does, you're making your leaders' lives harder and they
will find a way to get rid of you.

~~~
mschuster91
A squatter pays his/her share of taxes: VAT on everything he/she buys, income
tax on any kind of employment or other income sources.

The only tax that a squatter does not pay in contrast to an owner or renter
(indirect there) is "ground tax", which is a negligible amount anyway.

~~~
jackcosgrove
There is also the opportunity cost of the owner not living in the domicile and
not paying those same taxes, at probably higher amounts than the squatter. The
owner is probably wealthier than the squatter and thus will pay more taxes.

~~~
mschuster91
Squats usually end up in houses where no one cared in any way for years and
some times, like the recent short-term squat in Munich, for decades.

And the only interest which the "owners", mostly in form of offshore
companies, have is to make huge amounts of money at the cost of the city, so I
don't have a single tear left for them.

------
thisisit
Is this surprising at all? Most "sharing" apps are now overrun by
professionals in their field. The apps help the professional (or company)
achieve zero cost customer acquisition cost. In case the apps do catch up,
these guys end up being "promoted" because they are a good fit. The pros make
for much better "sales target" for these sharing apps.

~~~
tootie
Uber started out as ride sharing, now it's an international taxi service.

~~~
x220
And an international regulation avoidance service.

~~~
Rjevski
Which I couldn't care less about as long as they improve my daily life. I can
book and pay an Uber in two clicks and it arrives on time. Why should I care
about an idiot politician not getting their pockets filled because Uber aren't
complying with regulations forcing them to fill his pockets?

~~~
FridgeSeal
Right sure, because the regulations are _only_ there for a politician to fill
their pockets and for no other reasons, and fuck consumer protections let's
just let corporations do whatever they want because "fuck you I've got mine,
and I got it on time".

~~~
Rjevski
Well if Uber doesn't provide consumer protection then you're not forced to use
them. But personally I'd rather take the risk and give up my customer
protection (and be fine 99% of the time) than deal with a conventional taxi.
Judging by Uber's popularity it looks like I'm not alone.

------
BMorearty
Airbnb employee here. (Software engineer; I don't speak for the company.)
Personally, I like staying in listings that are owned and operated by the
resident. It's more personal and it lets me connect more with some locals. One
of my favorite nights at an Airbnb was a dinner with the delightful couple who
rented out a room in their Paris apartment. Much less enjoyable was a night in
a Seattle room--it was very clean and a five-star room, but it felt like a
hotel in that I was lonely.

Both of those were business trips. My vacation travel is different: I have a
wife and 3 kids, so it's almost impossible for the five of us to stay in
someone's private residence. For those trips, I look for places where the
owner only has one property, which to my mind indicates they give it--and my
family--a high level of personal attention. Sometimes it's a cottage in their
backyard, like the ones I've stayed in at Tahoe and Pescadero. Those a nice
because I can meet the owner and they're just 20 feet away when I need help. I
am also an Airbnb host of a cottage in my own backyard. It's booked about 90%
of the time but the neighbors on my street tell me they usually forget I'm
even hosting because they don't even notice.

But there are hosts who manage many properties and there are guests who stay
in them. I personally don't like the feeling of being tricked into thinking a
place is owner-occupied and then finding out it's managed by a property
manager, and I will say so in a review. (We have rules for employees; I won't
look at our internal systems when booking to try to see more than the usual
customer would see.)

The managed properties are more common in some large urban cities. That is why
last year Airbnb banned owners of multiple properties in some large cities
around the world. I honestly don't know the specifics of any one city such as
Cologne, which is mentioned in the article.

~~~
__strisk
God I hate those backyard cottages, did you label yours as a "casita" too?
Some AirBnB hosts literally go to home depot, haul a shed, plant it, add
crappy insulation and list it.

I actually find that to be the worst aspect of AirBnB, if I go to a hotel and
I do not like my room I can switch it. If I use AirBnB and the place sucks,
well, I'm stuck. Unless I want to go through a lengthy customer service
battle.

Listings managed by professionals are pleasant on the other hand, I honestly
do not want to check-in putting up a front after lining my "host"s pockets. I
pay for a service and receive service. Let's not pretend they're doing this
for any other reason. AirBnB damn isn't Couch Surfing.

~~~
user5994461
The disputes are usually quickly opened and resolved.

Just take pictures, explain the problem and open the dispute.

------
andr
If AirBnB gave me the option to filter actual lived-in apartments, as opposed
to professional operations, I would definitely prioritize those. I miss the
original feeling of booking someone's actual apartment, sharing their history,
books, way of life, even weird knock-knacks. IKEA catalog living rooms get old
quickly.

~~~
return0
Learning the knick-knacks of strangers you dont know in the slightest FOR A
PRICE is a weird feeling i have with airbnb. It feels intrusive, and it's
creepy, but we don't admit it because it's convenient. This is the wrong way
to satisfy our need for intimacy.

~~~
robocat
> It feels intrusive, and it's creepy

To you.

AirBnB hosts tend to be open and gregarious in my experience. The hosts who
are not (e.g. just need the money) you just change your behaviour to suit (or
avoid due to signals in their listing).

As a guest, if I don't want to interact with the host, I get a hotel instead.

------
trevyn
This is not a problem. In my experience, professional landlords & managers
offer clean, updated apartments that are a joy to check into and are a _way_
better place to stay than hotels. I love using Airbnb for specifically this
reason.

It seems like in Europe, professional short-term apartment rental is a common
thing anyway -- Airbnb just serves as a centralized listing platform. This is
less common in the US.

~~~
brandur
I think it's stated quite clearly in the article, but although professional
landlords might be fine for AirBnB tenants (and obviously good for the
landlords themselves), they're bad for cities and their residents:

> _Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of
> affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year,
> even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one of the strictest
> bans on holiday apartments - many other European cities also have some kind
> of regulation._

The problem with housing is that the supply is very fixed. A unit that's taken
off the market to become a full time AirBnB is one that's not available as a
rental for a resident of the city anymore.

There's an argument to be made for private property rights, but the further
trouble with real estate is that it's often made as an investment, and like
other capital, it tends to be reallocated disproportionately over time.

While it might seem obvious for someone to be able to rent out their vacation
home part time, it's much less so that an owner of 15 units in downtown San
Francisco should be able to hire a property manager and rent them all on
AirBnB full time — given a sufficiently enticing city for business/tourism,
eventually there won't be enough stock for the locals anymore (or more
accurately, the upwards pressure on price will make it unaffordable for nearly
everyone).

~~~
woah
Supply is very fixed? Most of the cities that you read about having a "rent
crisis" also have a very aggressive contingent of anti-housing construction
folks.

~~~
snogglethorpe
That, presumably, is one _reason_ supply is restricted ("fixed"), along with
other restrictive laws, like height or density limits, forced parking
minimums, etc.

Another contributor is poor transportation infrastructure, which limits
peoples' flexibility, creating more pressure on housing near train lines and
stations, etc.

~~~
brandur
> _That, presumably, is one reason supply is restricted ( "fixed")_

(I'm the grandparent.) Yes, this. I'm all for new construction to improve
supply and a streamlined bureaucratic process so that it can happen more
quickly.

Practically speaking though, you can look at any city that's had a problem
with AirBnB (Berlin, San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, etc. — pretty much
anywhere desirable to visit) and new stock isn't coming online anywhere close
to quickly enough to counteract the market forces introduced by AirBnB. As it
stands today, building is a very slow process, and it's likely to remain that
way for the foreseeable future.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
This is all fair and true, but then why isn't the answer "fix the outdated
housing regulations that are driving rents sky high", which is likely to have
a bigger impact than banning AirBnB.

------
vmarsy
> Some 58 percent of all offers on Airbnb in Germany are entire apartments or
> even apartment blocks - meaning professional landlords are effectively the
> core of Airbnb's business.

Someone working a full time job, who owns a primary residence as well as a
secondary one for vacation. Does renting that secondary location means they
are "a professional landlord" ? If someone who owns an apartment but is going
abroad for a bit for vacation/work and have a family member take care of
renting the place on AirBnB, are they "professional landlords" ?

I would assume professional landlord = landlord whose full time job is to take
care of the rentals, I don't understand the jump from "this listing is an
entire apartment" => "This is a professional landlord"

------
pfarnsworth
Is this a surprise? If you look at eBay, it's also dominated by professional
sellers as well. In some sense it makes it better because you have motivated
people handling the transaction, not one-off people that might not take the
transaction seriously.

~~~
solatic
> not one-off people that might not take the transaction seriously

But this is exactly what's needed to keep costs down. Consumers have the
choice of professionally managed and regulated hotels, for a higher price, or
to take a chance on some guy's couch in a basement, for very cheap, because
hospitality isn't couch-guy's day job and it's just a way for him to make an
extra quick buck. That couch-guy is a one-off is supposed to be the entire
value proposition why AirBNB can be cheaper. The moment professionals start to
get involved is the moment the law needs to be careful that professionals
aren't using AirBNB to skirt regulations.

~~~
chii
> using AirBNB to skirt regulations.

i'd like to hear what sort of regulations that are being skirted. I keep
hearing about things like fire safety laws, and escape hatches etc. Why does
being used as a hotel force an apartment to be more stringent than it
originally was? Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what?

As for zoning laws - those are arbituary lines drawn by the city planners. As
a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if airbnb
brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing value.
City planners cannot forsee this, and so zoning laws will be broken no matter
what.

~~~
solatic
> Shouldn't the safety regulations be the same no matter what?

No. Hotels are denser (in terms of people sleeping in a building) than typical
apartment buildings, because apartment buildings need to devote the square
footage to copies of kitchens etc. per apartment, which unnecessarily would
drive up the cost of hotel rooms. But leaving that aside (after all, the
argument is about apartment buildings being used in place of hotels, not hotel
buildings) - there's a bigger picture than just safety regulations.

How about taxes? Cities which attract tourism often like to establish high
taxes on tourists, because municipalities need to draw their budget from
somewhere, and tourists don't vote (well, they do, because they could decide
to vacation somewhere else, but barring a very steep price increase, tourism
tends to be somewhat immune from these higher taxes, by the very nature of
most tourists saving up money to travel to some specific fantasy location), so
municipalities will levy high taxes on hotels, knowing full well that those
taxes are passed on to tourists. When hotels start to be threatened by
unregulated competitors, that competition threatens that tax revenue stream.

> As for zoning laws - those are arbitrary lines drawn by the city planners

So what? As many objectors have pointed out, city residents have an inherent
interest in developing a sense of community, which requires people to commit
to living in apartments over the long-term. Ghost ownership threatens that
social good, and seasonal tourism threatens local mom-and-pop shops serving
local neighborhoods, which no longer get foot traffic in the off-season.
That's not to say hotels are evil - it's to say that one of the central tenets
of urban planning is to attempt to balance competing, mutually-exclusive
interests forced to live together by inherent urban density, for the common
harmony and benefit of all, and zoning is an integral tool for that purpose.

> As a property owner, you have to make the best use of the property, and if
> airbnb brings in more money, you _have_ to do it, otherwise, you'd be losing
> value.

This is a farcical argument. The highest return for urban property is turning
it into illegal drug factory. By your logic, investment apartments should
always be turned into illegal drug factories, because their investors have to
do it, otherwise they'd be losing value. After all, what's the qualitative
difference between breaking zoning laws and breaking drug enforcement laws? If
you're OK with operating an illegal hotel, to the detriment of the people in
the surrounding neighborhood, then why not be OK with operating an illegal
drug factory, also to the detriment of the people in the surrounding
neighborhood?

------
geebee
Adam Smith wrote, in the Wealth of Nations in 1776: "Disagreeableness and
disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of
labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house,
and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a
very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common
trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit."

Airbnb is a remarkable innovation that allows landlords externalize those
negatives, while keeping the profits.

------
throwaway413
The last Airbnb I rented was from a dude managing 28 other properties, all
listed on Airbnb.

~~~
sisyphusprotege
That's the kind of pluck and industriousness that made this country great.

~~~
cabaalis
Thank you, somebody who gets it. "But my neighbors are complaining!" has
somehow trumped "It's my property." in the modern age.

If neighbors don't like what their neighborhood is becoming, they should move.
Aside from homeowners group contracts, a person should be able to do as they
wish with what they own.

I'd bet that's the feeling of a good majority of people on this site regarding
computer equipment and personal electronics. Strange they don't feel the same
for real estate.

~~~
futurix
False equivalence.

Unlike with personal electronics, real estate typically does not exist in a
bubble and affects lives of other people living nearby.

Both you and your neighbours would be affected by noise or lack of trash
disposal.

If the people in the flat upstairs would flood their flat, the flats below
would be flooded and damaged too.

If your neighbours don't like what their neighbourhood is becoming - they have
the same right to decide what it should be as you do.

"Do as I wish" has limits in human communities.

~~~
cabaalis
So IMO what you are referring to is a difference between urban and
suburban/rural. Where I live, properties are well separated, and multi-tenant
apartments and condos already have rules for things like this. As I'm sure you
are aware, in an apartment or condo situation, you do not _really_ own
anything outside the drywall. I am speaking primarily about where I have the
most knowledge: single family homes.

~~~
futurix
Well, the original article was about urban environments - not single family
homes.

------
EGreg
And bitcoin is dominated by professional miners.

Open source and the Web is dominated by large corporations like Google and
Facebook.

And sports tickets and restaurant reservations are scalped.

I wonder if all these peer to peer marketplaces tend to become dominated by
professionals and even the original industry they are supposed to disrupt.

Wikipedia seems to have prevented this, as has HN.

Any solutions?

~~~
chii
why prevent professionals from doing anything? Professionals are professional
because they do it better than an amateur.

Scalping is a different issue - the ticket price is priced too low. Scalping
is a sign of market inefficiency (and scalpers are there to take advantage of
it). If the tickets are priced correctly (e.g., via an auction system), then
there won't be any scalpers.

------
jaclaz
Let us try to look at the matter in another way.

Take a city/place.

Calculate how many people visited it before AirBNB.

Let's say 1,000,000 stays per year, with an average expense of US$ 180 each,
including night at US$ 120 at the hotel and some
drinks/meals/souvenirs/whatever another 60 US$ .

The city/place (globally) has had an "income" of 180,000,000.

How many _more_ people visited the city place after AirBNB became popular?

Let's say 1,200,000, i.e. a 20% increase, and let's say that not only these
200,000 more stays are at AirBNB's (i.e. people that wouldn't have come if
AirBNB's were not available), but that also a part of the same people that
would have take a hotel room passed to AirBNB's, let's say 100,000.

Now, the hotels will have lowered their prices because of the competition, and
- more generally - an AirBNB user (with of course the usual exceptions) is
probably less prone to spend money.

So we have 900,000 nights at a "discounted" price of (say) 110 US$ i.e.
99,000,000 plus 900,000 at the same US$ 60 54,000,000 and some 300,000
AirBNB's at (say) 60 US$ , i.e. 18,000,000, plus 300,000 at a lower US$ 40,
that is 12,000,000.

From the 18,000,000 you have to subtract the commission AirBNB takes, which
should be on average (both guest and host commission) around 15% that "goes
elsewhere", i.e. 2,700,000.

The city/place received (globally) 99+54+18+12-2.7=180,3 millions, i.e.
roughly the same as before, while having (still globally), the increases of
traffic, garbage, noise, etc. due to the 200,000 more visits.

In the meantime, hotels and other trades had a roughly 10% decrease of income,
apartments/flats were not available to local population at "fair" long term
rent prices, the increased income from the rentals of the AirBNB's and
connected services very likely went in a lower tax bracket.

I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the
locals.

~~~
VMG
> I would say that it is not a particularly good deal for the city and for the
> locals.

What about the visitors?

~~~
empath75
What about them? They don't live there, they don't pay taxes there, they don't
vote there.

~~~
VMG
Why does them being from a different place allow you to discount the value
they derive?

------
paulcnichols
"Platform that makes people money dominated by people best at making money."
Shocker.

------
southphillyman
At least these professional landlords own the properties and thus have some
sort of stake in the matter. A friend of mine some how managed to rent
multiple apartments at the same time and then rented them all out via AirBnb.
He lived with his girlfriend, so he was essentially a professional landlord
who didn't own any property.

I like AirBnb but with time it's warts are being exposed. After being racially
profiled multiple times, having a host cancel on me at the last minute and
sending my money back via Western Union, and other annoyances I now consider
hotels about 50% of the time after almost exclusively doing AirBnb.

~~~
web-dev-123
Man I agree. AirBnB was awesome initially, a hidden gem with great prices,
great properties, and great people - but now they're kind of in this make or
break position I feel. Finding an amicable solution for both renters and
property owners will be tough.

------
samstave
Was inevitable, what I would like to know from airbnb data is what % of
properties are owned by or managed by the same accounts in a given area. "Show
me all the properties owned/managed by user X"

How many properties are owned by actual airbnb employees?

Also, wouldn't this basically result in some sort of price fixing at least
among the properties under a single owner/manager?

~~~
jaclaz
There was a "map" of Amsterdam _somehow_ similar to what you asked posted a
few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781253)

it seems like in the meantime has been expanded to cover other cities:

[http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/](http://www.dwarshuis.com/various/airbnb/amsterdam/)

Most probably using the same data source/API/whatever it would be possible to
do the searches you wish for (not the one about AirBNB enployees, but I don't
think they are that many).

------
sisyphusprotege
Person who bought an old triplex with a ton of deferred maintenance and has
been running it as a vacation rental for a long time here.

This is not an easy side gig. It's more than a full time job, and I have been
living in one of the units and only renting two and my SO helps out a lot.
Bringing on a third unit and I am about at the point of needing one full time
employee.

It is a never ending fight against entropy, as well as a not insignificant
number of guests who will lie to get over on you.

You have to:

Manage bookings/field inquiries and sell property in these exchanges/make
special offers to fill spots.

Accounting/legal/tax

Cleaning. This is very labor intensive. To properly clean a two bedroom
apartment to hotel standards takes at least 3 hours and that's if guests left
it clean. One stray hair in the wrong spot and you lose.

Maintenance. Decks/trim/walls need to be patched and painted each year. Things
break. A very heavy-set guest will crack a toilet seat and it needs to be
replaced in the 4 or 5 hour window you have between guests. You might get some
animal infestation that needs to be dealt with.

Guest relations. Guests will forget things and want them mailed to them. They
require handholding and strategies to keep review scores up.

People will constantly be trying to negotiate your price down, even though you
offer 4 times the square footage for the same price as a nice hotel in the
area.

I am working on automating and streamlining as much of this as possible, and
there are gains to be made there. I have made gains with superior cleaning
technology to save time as well.

FAQs and guides can help, but guests don't read them much of the time.

This is not real estate investing, its hospitality and meeting and greeting
guests and chatting with the friendly ones is what gives you the good reviews
where other less hands on places get the very critical ones.

Professional management is where this space needs to go in my opinion.

Vacation rentals have been a boutique industry for a long, long time. What was
disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and the
subletting of places people rent from others.

AirBnB has both made the space much more popular, and caused a lot of the ire
and animosity we have seen towards the space.

~~~
camus2
> What was disruptive about AirBnB was the opening of it to spare bedrooms and
> the subletting of places people rent from others.

Yet that's a minority of Airbnb's offers according to the article. The vast
majority of rentals are operated by "professionals" who rent all year long,
this is not like a "paid couchsurfing" service. People like you buy condos for
the sole purpose of renting it on Airbnb, and that's fine, but let's not
pretend like Airbnb is some grass-root charity.

------
vermontdevil
Not only professional landlords but professional managers too. In LA I met
with a woman who told me she manages 4 condo units in one complex and many
others. Meets with people like me to give me keys, parking passes and checks
on the unit when I leave.

Second AirBnB, same thing but he manages houses instead of condos.

~~~
jonesdc
In an AirBnb we stayed at in Nashville, the house was built in the last 3
years solely to be purposed as an AirBnb unit (spacious and many
social/convenient amenities)

------
IanDrake
According to this article I'm a professional landlord because I have more than
one property on airbnb?

I think that's a huge leap and was done to inflate numbers to re-enforce their
point, which would otherwise be poorly made by a meaningful statistic.

To be a professional landlord you need at _least_ 20 properties. That is
typically the minimum number of properties to provide a livable income.

------
megamindbrian
And now it's just as annoying to find a place to stay as it was dealing with
conglomerate hotel chains owned by Patel's.

~~~
nos4A2
*Patels (don’t generalize people, its not nice)

------
OJFord
Any Airbnb 'host' is a de facto 'professional landlord'. Next?

------
miaklesp
Dating websites dominated by professional hookers

------
bane
I'm one of those people who really doesn't like these kinds of x-sharing
services when they're just breaking the law. But when they aren't I'm all for
the competition and additional money making opportunities it creates for
participants.

I'm getting ready to go on my 3rd multi-week trip with housing provided almost
entirely by airBnB. So far I've been generally very pleased with most of the
hosts. In general, I've found the ones outside of the U.S. tend to provide a
better experience per dollar than in the U.S. I've also found myself at some
delightful B&B's who just list on AirBnB instead of other methods. On the
other hand, I've also found myself in some sketchy group home like experiences
with no owner to be found (mostly in the U.S.).

The hard part of it is this, I can put together a multi-location road trip
across six or seven countries in a few short hours on AirBnB because all of
the "vendors" list there (many times faster than doing it with hotels), and
the total price will be 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of doing it in hotels, _and_
the quality of the experience will be about on par with any 3-star hotel I'm
likely to find. I've yet to break $70/night on AirBnB (for entire
flats/apartments) because there's usually so much inventory. The locations can
be better than "hotel districts" and I can usually find something very custom
and suited to what I want.

The reviews also reinforce the honesty of the listing, whereas hotels will
show pictures of a model room with idealized lighting and the reality is often
not the same. Bonus, we've often gotten to talk with pretty interesting
people, seen interesting neighborhoods we would have ignored before and use
public transport much more fully than we would have otherwise.

I think the easiest way for hotels to compete against AirBnB is to simply
start listing on it and competing, room-for-room. Room 607 in the local
Marriott has a noise problem? It'll show up in the reviews. Front-desk clerks
rude in the Albany, NY Holiday Inn? It'll show up. Prices too high for what
you get? It'll have to compete against local housing inventory.

I'm also very sympathetic to many of the comments here regarding areas with
very high housing prices. In terms of local housing strategy, simply banning
these kinds of services should be part of a local multi-pronged strategy to
reduce housing prices (along with limiting other investment options). But I'm
not so sure it's a universal problem. Every time I've booked big trips on
AirBnB I've always found hosts who are renting out multiple properties and
don't live in most of them. However, in many cities, looking at the rates
they're charging, they're not suffering from the same kind of systemic housing
shortages places like SF or NYC are.

One other thing to consider in tight markets. If the local municipalities
aren't going to restrict investment ownership, AirBnB may end up being a
better user of the investment properties than people who simply buy up
properties and they lay completely abandoned for years. Because the market
that AirBnB has to work in is different than say, foreign investors, it also
might help better shape the kinds of properties that get built to eventually
be more affordable. e.g. 432 Park Ave is going to end up mostly uninhabited
even if the "tenancy" is at 100% and none of those apartments are going to end
up on AirBnB. This inventory of $30million dollar apartments is not going to
go anywhere. But AirBnB investory might be on the lookout for more affordable
construction to invest in, knowing that someday they'll sell the property off
to more regular buyers and need to rent it to normal people as well in the
meanwhile.

------
Jabanga
The discussion here reminds me of this:

"We have an ingrained anti-profit bias that blinds us to the social benefits
of free markets"

[https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-
an...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-anti-profit-
bias-that-blinds-us-to-the-social-benefits-of-free-markets/)

