
Airbnb gets into the property management business - matteogamba
http://all-about-airbnb.com/post/150019756336/experienced-superhosts-property-management-platform
======
randomsearch
I love Airbnb. It's one of my favourite startups, from both a user's and
entrepreneur's point of view.

I really loved the way Brian described it as - this is how it used to be, go
to a place and stay with a local. I don't like the formality, isolation, or
artificiality of hotels so Airbnb has been a wonderful opportunity.

Recently, though, I've found more and more properties managed by one person.
It's hard to be sure I'm staying with a local making some cash off their spare
room, rather than someone "farming" a bunch of cheap properties. I wondered if
Airbnb were permitting or encouraging this; the article suggests it is the
latter.

For me, this ruins the whole point of Airbnb. Long-term it will devalue the
experience by turning it into a substandard, impersonal distributed hotel. I
really hope they change direction. If not, I expect a new startup to come
along providing "what Airbnb was supposed to be."

What I find most puzzling is how such great founders could lose sight of the
wonderful vision they had.

~~~
dvcrn
But this is exactly what's happening. The natural way of progression.
Landlords realized that they can earn a lot more through AirBnB vs classic
renting out. The only problem was the management of the places getting more
annoying.

The next step was then to have companies take over this missing segment.
Landlords can now give their property to a AirBnB management company that
makes sure it always get reposted, the key given to the right person and so
on. Profit is still higher than what the landlord would make through normal
renting out.

I worked for a real estate startup and we had A LOT of overseas investors
solely wanting to buy properties for renting them out on AirBnB.

In the past I also ended up in one of these managed places by accident once.
It was a big house with a bunch of walls put in between rooms to rent out each
little part of the house as a separate AirBnB room. The avatar and description
made it look like it's the house of a young woman trying to make an extra
buck.

I don't like it either and think it's a little bit sad that things progress
this way, but it was unavoidable. I'm crossing my fingers that this won't harm
the normal renting and guesthouse/hostel market too much.

AirBnB shouldn't be a machine too make rich people even richer and the
apartment search for the normal guy harder and harder.

~~~
ethanbond
Not sure how your fifth paragraph follows.

First, it is at least somewhat avoidable. Banning management companies would
be one solution. Only allowing users to post their homes for a fraction of a
rolling 12 month period would be another. Only allowing users to have 1 or 2
simultaneous postings with different street addresses would be another. These
are the things Airbnb should do and doing so honestly probably would have
prevented them from getting totally screwed by NYS/NYC legislatures, which
leads to my second point.

 _Of course_ it harms the normal rental market. What else could it possibly do
besides that? Not only that, but the backlash against the system harms those
of us who do wish to actually legitimately rent out our homes while we're not
in them. Airbnb should've been more proactive about this from the get go, but
I don't think it's necessarily too late. With this news, though, it seems they
don't even think this is a problem despite getting them outlawed in the
largest city in the US.

It's really a bummer, but it's not unavoidable and not unfixable.

------
jerf
Thought for discussion: Does the "gig economy" fundamentally encompass
economic forces that make the gig arranger ultimately disintermediate their
own suppliers? If so, are the "gig economy" businesses ultimately just very
fancy wedges into existing markets with players too entrenched to come at
directly, and little more? If it weren't probably impossible due to regulation
and the business model probably not working out, would AirBNB ultimately just
want to run their own facilities entirely?

(Honest questions for thought. To the extent they're a _bit_ leading, it's to
make them interesting enough to think about.)

Is there some other highly-entrenched market that could be cracked this way
that nobody's considered?

~~~
brianwawok
Uber end game is self driving cars. Why wouldn't air bnb end game be hotels?

There is a reason we gave had hotels for 100 years. Kinda nice to get
consistent quality with no big process to find a room.

~~~
vkou
Because the point of the gig economy is to profit off the capital owned by the
working class.

Uber would have never gotten off the ground if it had to finance ownership of
its own cars. AirBnB wouldn't be profitable (Or, more specifically, would be
in an extremely risky line of business) if it had to own all the property it
rents. They both capitalize on inefficiencies in driver/host use of their
vehicles/homes, essentially borrowing them at a discount, compared to owning
the asset + paying their own employee to drive/host.

I can already get consistent quality with no big process to find a room. I go
to any hotel's website, and book a reservation.

Said hotel will also let me check in at 3 AM, will happily extend my stay, and
will assist me with any travel emergencies.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You're being generous when you say they're capitalizing on inefficiencies;
they are straight up freeloading, having platform users shoulder the capital
costs.

~~~
icebraining
The users are shouldering the costs _and_ getting most of the money. How is
that in any way freeloading?

That claim is even more absurd in the case of Airbnb, which is a pure
marketplace. They are no more "freeloading" than your local newspaper is/was
freeloading on the posters of classified ads for renting.

~~~
bogomipz
I think it would be considered "freeloading" if they person who was the AirBnB
host was renting the property from an actual owner(the landlord) no?

------
sidlls
Third party property management is generally done by a licensed real estate
agent or their proxy where allowed. I am not allowed to provide property
management services for my neighbor's house unless I'm licensed to do so.

This is yet another area where Airbnb seems to be skirting close to breaking
the rules.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Wrong. This is true for long term rentals, but not for vacation rentals. I.e.
- anyone can manage a vacation rental, but you need to be a broker to manage
an apartment that is leased for 12 months.

~~~
gatsby
Eh, sort of. In my state (and many US states), the first rule that dictates
short-term is whether a transient/occupany tax is paid (which it generally is,
by Airbnb for their hosts: [https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/653/in-what-
areas-is-occ...](https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/653/in-what-areas-is-
occupancy-tax-collection-and-remittance-by-airbnb-available)).

But many states are cracking down on what "short-term rentals" mean and who
falls into this transient tax category. Here in CA, the DRE recently released
the following:

>>>First, while the Code refers to “transient occupancies”, the language that
is most often used with reference to such occupancies refers to “short term
rentals” and “vacation rentals”. As mentioned above, the maximum time period
of such rentals cannot exceed 30 days.

>>>Second, the exemption refers to those who handle transient occupancies as
agents on behalf of “another or others”. It does not refer to what is commonly
described as VRBOs or vacation rentals by owner (s).

Source:
[http://www.dre.ca.gov/files/pdf/adv/LicenseeAlert2016shortte...](http://www.dre.ca.gov/files/pdf/adv/LicenseeAlert2016shorttermrentals.pdf)

And anytime you get local departments of real estate involved, they'll go down
kicking and screaming and make it as difficult as possible for Airbnb, VRBO,
etc.

------
charonn0
I think they're asking for a lot of the same trouble they've already had with
government regulations, only this time they're without the "it's just people
renting out their own spare room" defense.

------
the_common_man
I have still not understood how legal Airbnb is. If I own a house, can I just
let it out for rent for $$ with no consequences? What is difference between
this and running a hotel? (I assume you cannot sublet in most places even
though I have seen people do this :/ )

~~~
TeMPOraL
A question I never see being brought up: do people pay their due taxes from
their AirBnB earnings?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Surprisingly, AirBNB only reports your host income if you have over $20,000 in
earnings and 200+ bookings [1]. (These thresholds are set by statute)

Sounds like a legal fix is in order to get that down to a $600 threshold as
applies to traditional 1099 reporting, but I'll assume a fix won't be made as
the threshold was most likely set high as a compromise to enable such
reporting to occur.

Luckily, AirBnB will collect occupancy taxes and can remit them to taxing
authorities directly.

[1] [https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/481/how-do-taxes-work-
fo...](https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/481/how-do-taxes-work-for-hosts)

~~~
gamblor956
The federal threshold for reporting payments of income is $600, and there is
no federal statutory threshold with respect to the number of bookings before
reporting is required.

Curious that a technology company can't manage something that low-tech
property management companies can handle without issue. This type of tax
reporting is very easily automated, so AirBnB doesn't really have any excuse
not to do it properly.

~~~
toomuchtodo
IRS guidelines (1099-K instructions) state the thresholds I stated; if they're
not defined in law, the IRS is dictating the thresholds themselves.

------
acveilleux
At some point, these superhosts provide hotel services in a distributed,
piecemeal way.

There's going to be a watershed moment where a "host" offering 10-20+
properties is going to get the hammer of the law on them for running an
unlicensed hotel and quite probably for some form of tax fraud as well (hotels
often have many extra taxes.)

------
_pmf_
Great; what we need is less affordable housing and more companies siphoning
money off the real estate market.

------
thrway633
Airbnb cohosting: [https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1244/how-can-i-add-an-
ad...](https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1244/how-can-i-add-an-additional-
host)

------
ArtDev
Airbnb needs to provide an easier way to differentiate between a host company
and a host person.

I still prefer staying at airbnb, even when its more of a company than an
individual. Its still much better than a typical hotel.

------
tea-flow
Super host here.

This is fascinating. I wonder how one becomes involved...

------
fiatjaf
I hate Airbnb for a lot of reasons, but I'm on their side when they're facing
the State regulations.

~~~
gumby
That's an odd statement. Are all state regulations inherently bad?

~~~
randyrand
Inherently, no. But typically congress does a bad job when it comes to
promoting new comers into an established market. Google Fiber, Tesla
dealerships, etc.

~~~
gumby
Congress shouldn't be promoting newcomers (or incumbents -- perhaps that's
your complaint?). And FWIW the barriers faced by GF and Tesla are at the state
level, not congress.

