
September 15 Is a Big Day for Airbnb - jobriant11
http://jeremyobriant.com/i-just-had-dinner-at-airbnbs-hq-september-15th-is-a-big-day-for-the-sharing-economy/
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JohnTHaller
One incorrect statement: "Requiring insurance coverage on the property of at
least $150k (Airbnb has this covered)"

From Airbnb directly: "The Host Guarantee is not insurance and should not be
considered as a replacement or stand-in for homeowners or renters insurance."

Last I'd checked, it didn't cover anything within the building outside the
rented unit. And only things within the unit owned by the renter... so no
appliances, fixtures, walls, common areas, doors, hallways, etc. Airbnb's site
is now very vague on what the 'guarantee' covers.

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dsl
I think one of the biggest advantages of the proposed laws is freeing up rent
controlled units that are currently be hoarded for Airbnb and not being used
as primary residences.

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cwyers
That seems like a dubious benefit to me. So we pass all these regulations
(rent control) that end up leading to inadequate market supply. The solution
to this is to... pass laws leading to inadequate market supply in temporary
lodging?

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untog
There is not one single 'supply' here. There is a supply of permanent housing,
and a supply of temporary lodging. Rent control was passed to ensure an
affordable supply of the former, not the latter.

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snowwrestler
I just got back from a week vacation, staying in a house we rented through
VRBO.com.

Can anyone explain why VRBO, which has been in operation for 15 years, and
explicitly focuses on renting out 2nd homes, has not faced the backlash and
scrutiny that AirBnB has? Is it just that they have not done enough volume to
get the regulators' attention?

Because reading about the proposed rules in this article, VRBO rentals seem
like they would violate at least one of them:

> -Requiring hosts to only rent out their primary residence and setting
> guidelines on how many days they must occupy the unit each year (currently
> 275 days)

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chadwickthebold
I think it has to do with the whole 'explicitly focuses on renting out 2nd
homes' deal. To me, it makes more sense to allow people to rent out properties
that they own rather than units that they themselves are renting. I'm fine
with someone renting their summer cottage on a lake in Vermont - less fine
with someone explicitly renting scarce property in SF for the sole purpose of
flipping on Airbnb.

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GFischer
I don't know how AirBnB works in San Francisco, but in other countries it IS
mostly a tax-evading hotel alternative, and renting out primary residences is
very, very rare.

I'm looking for rentals in a South American city, and there are quite a few
owners with 10+ properties (more the norm than the exception), and I actually
prefer those (I've had bad experiences with sloppy hosts, professional hosts
haven't let me down yet).

Such regulation in those countries would greatly diminish the appeal of AirBnB
to said hosts (they would probably look for an unregulated alternative).

~~~
_delirium
In Europe I've seen both. I rented a place in Finland that was a college
student's apartment; he'd rent it on some weekends and just stay with his
girlfriend those weekends. There are definitely people doing it "as a
business" as well, and some of the challenge in using it as a customer is
trying to figure out which is which (I prefer to rent from the person who
lives there). You can usually tell, from how many properties they have listed,
how frequently they have reviews, what their booking schedule looks like,
whether they themselves ever stay places or only host, etc., but it takes an
extra level of manual filtering.

For renting of rooms or couches (vs. renting whole apartments), a much larger
percentage are people renting out parts of their own living space, so you stay
with the resident and usually meet them or even hang out with them, kinda
"couchsurfing for money". Though there are some such listings (esp. in NYC)
where a shared rental is shared with _other_ AirBnB renters, not with the
permanent resident, and I definitely avoid those.

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S_A_P
Hey op, not a big deal but I found a spell check error in your post. Last
paragraph you say I continue to be memorized when I think you mean mesmerized.

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jasonkester
Hey, FYI, blog owner: You're serving some form of terrible dot-matrix font
from the 80s ("monserrat") to Chrome/Windows. This was the first time in
months I've had to dig in with the inspector and disable a font just so that I
could read an article.

Might want to fix that.

~~~
KnightHawk3
If I recall correctly, this is the (lackof I think) Direct Write bug.

Take a look in About://flags and toggle the one with Direct Write (I think
your turning it on) and it should look far prettier.

~~~
jasonkester
Are you seriously suggesting that he put a banner on his blog asking his users
to monkey around with experimental flags just so they can read text on the
page?

While I'm personally technical enough to deal with wackiness like this when I
come across it, most people are not. Given that, maybe a better solution would
be to choose a font that the most popular browser on the most popular
operating system can render out of the box. That's why I pointed it out.

~~~
dsl
No, he is suggesting you jacked up your settings and offered a solution for
you. Tested on a half dozen different combos of Chrome/Windows here and no
issues.

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emkusa
Sad how many people think its good to abolish property rights. Careful what
you ask for.

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mfringel
The phrase "[the] sharing economy" continues to grate. It's the "renting
economy".

A bunch of entities, through technological means, enable people to efficiently
make parts of their capital rentable.

There's no sharing involved, here.

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sudorank
Anyone else look at the seats in the top picture and think "back trouble".

I couldn't imagine sitting in solid wooden chairs for 8 hours a day! The pain
would be unbearable.

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coke12
That's their cafeteria.

~~~
sudorank
Thank god for that! :-)

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parfe
> _-Limiting those under rent control provisions to not make more from home-
> sharing than their rent (some people are not happy about this one)_

Hah. Talk about entitled. Complaining they cant rent for market rates while
living at below market rates. Not surprising though coming from people who
illegally rent out others property.

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sp332
If they have a rent-controlled apartment, and they're subletting it, where do
they live? And if they're getting "market rates" (which I doubt), and still
qualify for a rent-controlled apartment, then I say let them keep the money.

~~~
nedwin
My understanding is you don't "qualify" for rent control in SF. You
automatically get it when you move into a building built before 1979.

Then the landlord can only increase rent (as a general rule) by about 1% per
year.

So there are people living in 4 bedroom homes in the middle of the best parts
of the Mission paying $1000 a month in rent where market rate would be between
$6000-8000.

~~~
sp332
Man, I don't understand anything about SF housing :p At that point, the
landlords should be putting all their places on AirBNB themselves! Or
arranging for tenants to sublet at market rates and taking a cut under the
table, to reduce their chance of being exposed a bit.

~~~
sjg007
They can't just kick out the current tenants to do that.

