Regular readers may have noticed that I use Airbnb a lot; I reserved with Airbnb for all of my personal travel in Italy in the fall semester, and the platform is almost always my first choice when making reservations.
Great read, and really thorough overview of the issues.
We saw this happening when we lived in Miami Beach -- more and more often, we kept running into tourists in our elevator and eventually they decided to take the condo we were renting out of the long term rental market.
Never used it that often, but almost always it was a bad experience (not clean, a hassle, too many fees) vs a hotel. The one good one was a houseboat on the Columbia River in Portland, but that was years ago. Generally, if it's a city, we just go hotel, the place designed for tourists. New York, Lisbon, etc should allow the building of many more of them; so housing can be for locals. If it's a resort town (Gulf coast of Florida, some mountain or lake second home areas) where VRBO just took the place of the older dominant short term rental industry, we'll still rent. I get that if cooking for yourself is a big part of your travels, that you seemed to have found the best compromise -- in someone's home with kitchen access.
In the U.S. I wonder how the likes of Airbnb and short-term rentals are compounding the effects of limited housing options due to restrictive zoning and NIMBY attitudes that prevent building more multi-family and mixed-use communities. Is the restrictive zoning keeping families from obtaining housing or keeping Airbnb rentees from scooping up new builds? Or both?
I think the main issue with affordable housing in the US is hedge funds buying houses. They can pay cash, no mortgage, which means that they can bid 20 or 30 thousand over the listing price but still end up pay more than 100 thousand less than a regular person would with a mortgage. They bought 27% of available single family homes last year.
I don't travel nearly as much as you, but my experience is identical to Ben's. I do currently live in a tourist-oriented coastal Maine town where AirBnbs are creeping in. Currently it's unregulated; we just voted on a few new provisions, not too controversial - you have to follow building codes, have fire extinguishers, etc. Nothing about volume or duration of stays. Still, it was enough to prompt a coordinated Vote No campaign. The funny thing was that the Vote No signs were in front of the AirBnB properties, so they were unoccupied in May. You could disguise yourself as a contractor or meter-reader and know just where to burgle - though, as you've pointed out, these places tend to have cheap furnishings. The provisions passed about 2-1.
Another effect AirBnB has had in my town is that rental leases are cheap and easy to come by, but are for 9 months. In the summer these people camp, live in their cars, move back with their parents, or crowd into the few available places. This is manageable if you are 22, but I know people as old as 70 caught in this loop.
Wow, that is awful - I hadn't even thought of that problem, people not able to get a 12-month lease because of summer Airbnb rentals.
Do you know anything about who owns these summer rental homes? Are they mostly second/summer homes that people spend a month or a few weeks in and then rent to others for the rest of the summer?
The really rich folks are only here a few days/weeks a year, but they don't rent their places at all. The ones that get rented seem to be owned by hedge funds/REITs and managed by local property managers, as you describe.
Good read, it’s something I have recently been struggling with as a frequent traveler and long time user of Airbnb. I have definitely tried to use it more responsibly recently as the awareness grows of just how detrimental it can be in so many places. Having just been in Cape Town, so many residential complexes are completely unaffordable to locals as they are all short term rentals many managed by companies, this is largely unregulated to my knowledge.
Great read, and really thorough overview of the issues.
We saw this happening when we lived in Miami Beach -- more and more often, we kept running into tourists in our elevator and eventually they decided to take the condo we were renting out of the long term rental market.
Never used it that often, but almost always it was a bad experience (not clean, a hassle, too many fees) vs a hotel. The one good one was a houseboat on the Columbia River in Portland, but that was years ago. Generally, if it's a city, we just go hotel, the place designed for tourists. New York, Lisbon, etc should allow the building of many more of them; so housing can be for locals. If it's a resort town (Gulf coast of Florida, some mountain or lake second home areas) where VRBO just took the place of the older dominant short term rental industry, we'll still rent. I get that if cooking for yourself is a big part of your travels, that you seemed to have found the best compromise -- in someone's home with kitchen access.
Again, great read.
Ben
Thanks Ben.
In the U.S. I wonder how the likes of Airbnb and short-term rentals are compounding the effects of limited housing options due to restrictive zoning and NIMBY attitudes that prevent building more multi-family and mixed-use communities. Is the restrictive zoning keeping families from obtaining housing or keeping Airbnb rentees from scooping up new builds? Or both?
I think the main issue with affordable housing in the US is hedge funds buying houses. They can pay cash, no mortgage, which means that they can bid 20 or 30 thousand over the listing price but still end up pay more than 100 thousand less than a regular person would with a mortgage. They bought 27% of available single family homes last year.
I don't travel nearly as much as you, but my experience is identical to Ben's. I do currently live in a tourist-oriented coastal Maine town where AirBnbs are creeping in. Currently it's unregulated; we just voted on a few new provisions, not too controversial - you have to follow building codes, have fire extinguishers, etc. Nothing about volume or duration of stays. Still, it was enough to prompt a coordinated Vote No campaign. The funny thing was that the Vote No signs were in front of the AirBnB properties, so they were unoccupied in May. You could disguise yourself as a contractor or meter-reader and know just where to burgle - though, as you've pointed out, these places tend to have cheap furnishings. The provisions passed about 2-1.
Another effect AirBnB has had in my town is that rental leases are cheap and easy to come by, but are for 9 months. In the summer these people camp, live in their cars, move back with their parents, or crowd into the few available places. This is manageable if you are 22, but I know people as old as 70 caught in this loop.
Wow, that is awful - I hadn't even thought of that problem, people not able to get a 12-month lease because of summer Airbnb rentals.
Do you know anything about who owns these summer rental homes? Are they mostly second/summer homes that people spend a month or a few weeks in and then rent to others for the rest of the summer?
The really rich folks are only here a few days/weeks a year, but they don't rent their places at all. The ones that get rented seem to be owned by hedge funds/REITs and managed by local property managers, as you describe.
Good read, it’s something I have recently been struggling with as a frequent traveler and long time user of Airbnb. I have definitely tried to use it more responsibly recently as the awareness grows of just how detrimental it can be in so many places. Having just been in Cape Town, so many residential complexes are completely unaffordable to locals as they are all short term rentals many managed by companies, this is largely unregulated to my knowledge.