I love Airbnb when it was small and largely just people who wanted to share a spare bedroom. Now, it's just as commercial as any other listing website.
In Toronto, it's not uncommon to see tons of lockboxes outside some condos which are largely for short term rentals, as well as have tenants deal with experiences like this (copy and pasted from Toronto's subreddit):
"Have you ever wanted to live in a hotel, without the actual service of living in a hotel? You can at the Ice Condos! When walking through the lobby on any given day you're nearly guaranteed to see a few wide eyed, suitcase towing AirBNB guests standing around. Don't except to be able to speak with the concierge for anything - the AirBNB people will be arguing with them over the fact that the concierge won't just give out the keys to suites because people say they're supposed to be allowed in. Shout out to the guy last week who yelled 'This isn't a fuckking hotel!' to the woman doing just that last week."
It's particularly why I find their branding and messaging deceitful. They advertise in Toronto in a way that makes it seem like the company is merely a benign platform that helps citizens fund things on the side (one of their ads uses an Asian family with a kid, an appeal to emotion which I see through as an Asian Canadian). Except it's disconnected from a reality where people buy properties for the sole purpose of listing them on Airbnb as short-term rentals.
It's a similar problem in Europe, at least in some cities. My experiences, and anecdotes from friends:
Budapest: Prices are pretty good compared to hotels at all times. There are a few "professional" hosts but most are just letting out some spare capacity. Occasional bait-and-switch.
Copenhagen: Prices are equal with hotels, so it's really a lifestyle choice. Generally convivial hosts.
London: almost entirely professional, but the prices usually beat a hotel room by a large margin.
Barcelona: absolutely ruined. Completely professional, prices as high as hotels, and literally every room/flat in the city center has a Strict refund policy (i.e. lose half your money). Many instances of bait-and-switch (show you a nice flat, not available, take a look at this s*hole instead) and trying to screw you into cancelling (and keeping your money). Also had more than one friend have "break-ins" on the last day (often too late to sort with the police before your flight home).
AirBnB really need to crack down on professional hosts. Start with disallowing more than ~3 listings per host, and really punish bait-and-switch attempts.
Based on the stories I've heard from friends and colleagues about this in Barcelona, AirBnB is engaging in fraud. They should sooner pull out entirely that defile their customers in this manner - but then the real customer is apparently the landlord, not the renter, so I guess they are helping their customer defile the peasants. All of the stories involved AirBnB blaming the renter for not informing them immediately upon being redirected to a different apartment, while simultaneously being essentially impossible to get ahold of in a timely manner, you know after a 12 hour international flight and you've arrived at midnight. Getting a cot at this point has a very good chance of being accepted and AirBnB takes the side of the landlord that this is tacit acceptance of the entire bait and switch being valid.
Maybe it's unpopular opinion here, but why short term rentals are bad? I personally love short term rentals, hotels suck compare to them. I hopped over asia and europe with 4-10 days at one place at a time, using AirBnB and it was great. I want home-like experience when I travel, I don't want to stay in overpriced micro-rooms without kitchen where I can't even make a tea. Some people mentioned that condo inhabitants 'don't like living in a hotel', but what specifically is the problem? That many people are going in and out? I don't really know if it's the problem itself if those are decent people. And still most of the people would be full time If there are related issues, maybe it's best to address the issues (I don't know what they are though, nobody explained it)? Because AirBnb looks like a good platform to manage those issues, turn chaotic market into more sane and organized. I think best strategy would be for AirBnb and building-owners to work together, to keep asshollish visitors outside (they are the problem, not short term rentals itself), put more incentive for rent-givers to watch over who they rent appartment/house to, etc
P.S. I never was on another side of the fence (i.e. living in the building with many short term rental visitors), so maybe I don't understand/underestimate something.
Short term (especially weekend) tenants don't care about the neighbours or the building.
They'll have noisy parties, not know where the bins are and leave rubbish in the hallways, and clatter their suitcase up or down the stairs at 4:30 to take a cheap flight home.
> I think best strategy would be for AirBnb and building-owners to work together
I'd like to see a way for building owners, or local government, to get a feed of every listing on AirBnB. They can then terminate leases, or whatever.
> Short term (especially weekend) tenants don't care about the neighbours or the building.
So probably the smaller period the higher rating/experience of the tenant. And of course fines for landlords.
> I'd like to see a way for building owners, or local government, to get a feed of every listing on AirBnB. They can then terminate leases, or whatever.
You propose AirBnB give out gun to shot AirBnB :)
That's not what I meant, more like notifications who rented what, so building owners could report/fine right landlord later.
I think most people don't mind occasional short term renters, but if it is run as a business, without the downsides of such a business (taxes, hotel regulations, zoning, clear responsibility for dealing with complaints...) it has a negative impact on the surrounding community. In some areas, a noticeable percentage of space is taken by AirBnBs, which a) means a lot of people staying in those areas (not necessarily bad, but generally something cities want to regulate) and b) flats are not available to local people.
If my neighbor rents out his spare room or his entire flat while he is gone, I hopefully can talk to him if I have issues with his guests, and he has an interest that his flat with his personal stuff stays nice and safe. A larger operation with 5 or more flats is going to care a lot less about such concern and who exactly is staying there. (This likely also influences guest behavior)
AirBnB helping to manage this would be nice, but it has shown no willingness to work with cities and neighbors to work towards enforcement of existing legislation, so it's not surprising that tolerance for violations goes down, courts get involved and further, targeted legislation gets created.
If you want to look at data, the best set of actual numbers I've seen is this dataset about Berlin: http://airbnbvsberlin.com/
Flats not being available to locals is a major concern, though. Housing shortages are a concern in a lot of major cities, including the one in which I live. Perhaps cities should consider the possibility of enabling markets to potentially develop additional housing.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that an international business isn't enthusiastically embracing the notion of every city and neighborhood being a unique regulation snowflake. In business terms, it sounds like a complete nightmare.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that an international business isn't enthusiastically embracing the notion of every city and neighborhood being a unique regulation snowflake.
Which is why one (=I, as someone without experience in the field admittedly) would think they'd have an interest in providing some standardized tools (like a free-text field for a tax ID for commercial operations, or a permit code) that local authorities can hook into, instead of dealing with one court forcing them to share data at a time. Many city administrations will happily do enforcement legwork if you give them a list to check, that's their daily business.
1. Because the Strata (HOA in Canada) has no idea this is even an option.
2. Because most of them are in favour of it, (most likely).
A big issue with a lot of condos in major cities (particularly new construction) is that upwards of 50% of them (sometimes, even higher) are owned by investors not actually living in the building. It's only on site owners that care about the actual goings on of the space. Everyone else is just looking to make a buck.
The building manager is employed by the Strata, so in your case either the Strata bylaw already existed, or the Strata Council acted without explicit authorization. (Which they may have after seeing this issue regarding zoning.)
This is why AGM's, Strata bylaws and Strata Council meeting minutes are important to read, not just throw into recycling.
Our building always had a short term ban, last year we added a specific anti-Airbnb clarification to it. Also, while normal bylaw violation is a $200 fine, rental violations are $500 fine and if I recall correctly, strata can fine you every week for that amount. As crazy Vancouver is, it still could be worth it but I also believe that a repeated infraction even if you pay the fines can lead to a lawsuit.
Or maybe they could settle for 25% less profit, and work to maintain good will in the community. In the end, the lack of good will may cost them more. Or maybe they've already calculated this?
I've lived with crap neighbors. Not in an AirBNB setting. But I've read more than enough about rotating, crap AirBNB neighbors to have more than a bit of sympathy towards the anti-AirBNB side.
Zoning and regulations exist for good reasons, built up over decades.
AirBNB and its like "break" the paradigm by, in "crowdsourced" fashion, sort of "flash-mob" overwhelming the existing system.
Yeah, those existing systems may have some faults and inefficiencies. But I am not for throwing them out, wholesale.
Nor for neighbors shitting all over their neighbors for the sake of their own profit.
Like Uber with its discrimination and "dumping" via investor dollar subsidized rides. These "sharing" businesses have turned into parasites arbitraging the limited resources to enforce existing law and regulation.
Unfortunately, more and more people believe that "government is bad", so, instead of digging in to fix and improve what we have, it's left to the crooks to break the paradigm.
Again, as someone who's suffered under bad neighbors, repeatedly, I say... well, a pox on your house.
(Not to mention our return to piecework labor with no benefits and no insurance.)
If this starts becoming a pattern, that's how a $25B valuation becomes a $1B acquisition, where common stock becomes worthless. I'm curious how quickly Airbnb is pushing for an exit.
At least in New York, I can personally trace certain political activity to Airbnb behaving like asshats with their shareholders. Also, Airbnb are merging with a Chinese competitor [1].
Cities don't like to be seen as anti-technology which is why you don't see a massive crackdown on AirBnB and Uber. But if one big city decides to do it, it can give other cities enough cover to do it as well.
As you said, suddenly AirBnB's growth goes positive to negative.
This is a good thing. But I'm not celebrating over Airbnb's corpse or whatever. The first order effects of Airbnb are great.
It's a good thing to increase the number of travel accommodations so more people can explore the world. I like Airbnb's mission better than that of a lot of Silicon Valley startups.
It's unfortunate that, at scale, Airbnb becomes part of a larger problem: there is not enough housing in many major cities. This is an unforced error we are making as a civilization, because we have the technology to easily provide enough housing in an affordable way (elevators, concrete).
Due to the limited supply of housing, the price will be bid up by the most economically efficient use - shoving a stream of daily renters through your condo building's lobby at the highest rate possible. A better outcome would be new facilities dedicated for this use case.
When the pie is not big enough, we are inevitably going to have a lot of tough fights over how to break it up. In this case, the poor locals who can't afford a place to rent and richer locals who are annoyed by the foreigners in their condo building lobby are going to win out over the people who want to explore the world.
I'm strongly opposed to short term rentals because it's just giving rise to alt-hotel property management landlords that reduce housing supply. I'm sort of OK with it on an ad-hoc this is my primary residence and I have a spare bedroom.
I've only used the service for vacation homes (think cottages/cabins away from urban centres that would otherwise be vacant by the owner). Never really thought about the consequence for adding to house pricing pressures and rental vacancy rates. Thanks.
How many new 20 story condo buildings is that? 20?
In sf the numbers are about ~5000 units. But other data sources show there are about 30k vacant units and 10k are not for rent because potential landlords think the rental laws are too crazy and rather leave them empty. Not to mention all the potential missing units that SF doesnt build due to strong NIMBYism.
Toronto has lots of units the problem isn't supply so much as people don't want to live in hotels.
NIMBYism is fine when youre fighting against private individuals exploiting your home for profit. It's not like AirBNB is an issue of it has to exist just not here.
NIMBYISM is incredibly strong in Toronto, but missing units are not caused by NIMBYISM and NIMBYISM has very limited ability to do influence property development in ontario because if the city does something to stop development, the developer can take the city to a development court. The problem in Canada is that we have this investor class of buyers, and developers depend on their early entry to capitalize their projects. These investors are individuals who usually seek to put their money, or rather their ability to borrow at very low rates, somewhere that has a higher ROI then stocks or bonds or traditional investments.
> I'm strongly opposed to short term rentals because it's just giving rise to alt-hotel property management landlords that reduce housing supply. I'm sort of OK with it on an ad-hoc this is my primary residence and I have a spare bedroom.
I'm opposed to long term rental.
Wait no. I'm not actually "opposed" to it. I just think of it as a major failure and a big obstacle in modern times.
Who the hell think it is acceptable to be forced into an unbreakable lease for 1-3 years and pay 1 months of agency fee + 2 months of guarantee in advance?
I'm not even sure I could keep a job for an entire year. (and I'm not talking of a programmer in SV who got a better offer but of normal people who just can't get a permanent job in this era).
If you want to stay somewhere for 1-3 week, an hotel will do.
If you want to stay 1-3 years, a "normal" flat will do.
AirBnB fills the gap between.
Not to mention that it also fills the gap for people who cannot give all the bullshit paperwork of normal flats. Just pay and done, AirBnb does not reject a host for [the same] bullshit reasons [as agencies]. (I don't know how it is in the USA but in France it's a nightmare to get a flat).
That's a fascinating perspective that is entirely at odds with my perception.
> Who the hell think it is acceptable to be forced into an unbreakable lease for 1-3 years
Who the hell would want to live under threat of eviction every few months? When I sign a lease (there isn't really such a thing as an unbreakable lease, you just lose your security deposit) I know that I have a guaranteed place to live for the next year or two. I would not want to live without that guarantee.
Hey, isn't it nice that annual and monthly leases both exist, so you are the parent commenter's strongly held preferences are both met? This has been my experience in the US anyway.
Well, I'm not in the US, there are no monthly lease here. You really don't want to tell a landlord that you're unsure whether you'll be able to stay for year(s).
I remember when I was a student. There were "student accommodations" that had sort of special terms. People usually stayed there for 3-6-12 months to fit with the university/internship/apprenticeship cycle. That was quite nice. I'm sad that can't have that as an adult.
> I know that I have a guaranteed place to live for the next year or two. [I would not want to live without that guarantee].
I know that I have no guarantee to still have that job [or find another in the area] for a year or two. Thus I have no guarantee that I can stay in this place for the next year or two.
I would like to live with the guarantee of having a job, and a revenue, and a place to stay, and a girlfriend, and many other things... The world doesn't care about what I'd like.
Not the OP, but AirBnB has been turning into Uber lately with the way they are strongly lobbying (and filing lawsuits) against consumer/resident protection laws. It's the type of behavior that's guaranteed to erode the public's goodwill.
I don't know Airbnb's demographics on travel (as in, who is hosting outside of USA and Canada, and who uses it outside of USA and Canada) but I wouldn't worry about this too much. Even if their usage is curtailed in the US, they can push for marketing and usage in other countries (they are eyeing the second largest home sharing company in China currently[1]).
However, I really wish Airbnb (and companies that use the same strategy, like Uber) would really try to work with cities rather than fight them. I mean, when you spend $8MM on tone deaf ads in San Francisco to fight some proposition rather than working with the city to come to a compromise, it's pretty bad. For example, the article mentions a specific bylaw for the area where the user in question in this article lives. I know things move slowly in law, but I feel it would be relatively simple to work with the city of Toronto (and the county(?) of North York) to get the bylaw removed or amended. I wouldn't be surprised if Airbnb demonizes the new SF law[2] once users get fined by the city, and to me this seems backwards. I think it would be smarter to try to work with the cities, and if you lose one, it sucks but that's life.
This assumes the law is simply antiquated and most of the locals would be happy or otherwise wouldn't care if it was repealed. However, it is possible that many Toronto citizens could be against short term home rentals. See the numerous complaints about condos turning into hotels and prom parties in suburban homes. I'm not sure where I stand, I've used Airbnb a few times, mostly my more positive experiences were when I rented a room, the whole homes felt much more commercial.
It's really odd that hotel prices have not changed that much.
Maybe hotels are really for corporate/business stays - and that AirBnB has simply expanded the personal travel market.
Like how airlines make 50% of their profit off of business travellers ... Hotels are 1st class, AirBnB is 'coach' (purely from economic perspective, I understand people might value things differently).
Or it could be that the extra safety/quality/taxation requirements of hotels make them uncompetitive vis-a-vis AirBnB.
A chance encounter with a stranger gave Joe Gebbia an idea to help pay his rent. That idea turned into Airbnb — a company that now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world.
if mix of short and long term residents is such a problem why not build condo buildings which specifically permit (basically intended for) AirBNB short terms? Why such a hard binary choice - either long term condo or crappy hotel. Why there can't be option in between - normal condo building in normal location which explicitly allows short term from the start?.
Maybe this will happen eventually, but you don't just call up your buddy on the weekend and decide to throw up a new building. Even if it's as small as three or four condos, you're talking about a large amount of money and a long process of design and review before you're allowed to break ground.
Plus, if this is your intention, then no matter how you spin "It's cool, these are _totally_ condos, just for short term rental!" you actually are building a hotel, and zoning plus public opinion might get in your way.
Airbnb is a joke. Who the hell would actually rent their home out to a complete stranger for a $100 payday one weekend?
Not to mention you can just rent out a single room in your home. Like you want some stranger to temporarily live with you for a day or two and invade your privacy, all for just a few dollars.
The site was clearly meant to look one way yet allow people to run illegal hotels. The only people I've ever heard renting out on Airbnb are ones who buy homes specifically for Airbnb.
Airbnb is everything that is wrong with SV, so disconnected from the real world. I just don't understand who would let totally random strangers from the internet live amongst them or even just their possessions.
> Like you want some stranger to temporarily live with you for a day or two and invade your privacy, all for just a few dollars.
It's not just a few dollars. Some stays are easily in the $1000+ range, for less than a week's stay. Idk what salary bubble you're in as a software dev, but that's a lot of money to some people.
> Who the hell would actually rent their home out to a complete stranger
Everyone on couchsurf disagrees with you. Oh and they usually do it for free. And as a short term landlord you do have some control over who stays at your place. In fact the more you charge, the higher end clientèle you will typically get.
> Airbnb is everything that is wrong with SV, so disconnected from the real world. I just don't understand who would let totally random strangers from the internet live amongst them or even just their possessions.
There are many issues wrong with SV, but Airbnb is the least of its worries. This says more about you than SV or Airbnb. Not everyone is misanthropic to this degree.
> The site was clearly meant to look one way yet allow people to run illegal hotels. The only people I've ever heard renting out on Airbnb are ones who buy homes specifically for Airbnb.
Maybe in the US, where credit is so easily available. This is definitely not the case for a lot of less fortunate places in Europe and 3rd world countries.
Zoning isn't there to prevent the coal fired power plant from being built next to your house, it's to make it less bureaucratic to build in zoned areas - no need to get individual "planning permission" for any new permitted structure.
Countries that don't use zoning would still prevent the scenario you envisage.
Without making any judgement on the issue, this will probably mean a general reduction of housing prices, and hence a bunch of people going underwater, no?
I've always found the way people cheer on rising property values a little odd.
The basic things everybody needs are food clothing and shelter. How is it a good thing that something everybody needs should get more and more expensive? I think the relative amount I spend on food and clothing has dropped over the past 25 years, but my housing expenses have skyrocketed.
You're totally right. Rising property values are a bad thing. As a society we shouldn't be spending resources on arbitrarily defined lines on land. We should be using that money to do things like funding scientific research, or rebuild infrastructure, not making some landlord rich.
Cap rates don't take into account a property's appreciation, does it? If I own a building and the property value doubles but I don't increase my rents, my cap rate stays the same even though my wealth has increased a lot, right?
Cap rate is the net cashflow divided by the purchase price. In other words: the current cap rate is a function of the price you paid (ie : appreciation up until now)
Another investor will not buy for a higher price unless the rents also increased (ie: cap rate is in a certain acceptable range)
The statement "...property doubles in value but I don't increase my rents...." Is misleading since presumably no sane investor would pay double price for the same income stream. If the cap rate is 5% for a 1 million dollar property then it earns 50k per year. The property price that other investors are going to pay will be a function of a cap rate they are OK with ( which bakes in the price and earnings ratio). 2.5% cap rate means 2 million dollars still earning 50k year. No thank you
Additionally, the equity in an investment is not wealth... yet. It has to be sold to get money that can be used to put food on the table.
Rising real estate prices are not a good thing, but in this case they would be a sign of a good thing: the real estate has become more useful. We should distinguish between price increases due to building restrictions for example and price increases due to more efficient uses, better civic amenities, etc.
If the housing prices are artificially higher because people could use it as an illegal hotel business, a correction would be better for the communities. Now someone who bought into the GTA housing frenzy with minimal downpayment as an investment can go underwater; so what? That's how investments work, no?
It does add to fears that people won't be able to rent out their places at those rates. Especially in Toronto where everyone's long-term plan is to own income properties. Everyone is looking to get out of careers and get rich on real estate. It's madness.
Uh, I'm not sure who you hang out with but this is not my experience at all. Taking care of multiple properties will be a career and a lot of work. I grew up in Toronto and know many families that could easily afford income properties and probably be profitable but they don't. Nowhere near everyone's goal is to rent out properties.
The parent is right. A lot of people in Toronto are dabbling in real estate .. especially condos. Some builders are offering a mgmt company which rents for you. In a previous building I was renting in, it was surreal to see people pick their keys from one person and handing it over to the mgmt office people right across. These were crazy priced, super fancy condos.
Article specifically states it is a vrbo listing not air bnb during the incident. However doesn't mean it wasn't also on Airbnb. Still a bit of headline attention grabbing.
Well wtf they completely swapped the article out. When I read it it was a "this quiet suburban neighborhood... The street time forgot" and now it's directly about the court case. In the previous version of the article it explicitly states that the rental period in question was under vrbo. Now that's gone. Rip hn karma.
"This is the first conviction for the city’s municipal and licensing department in the booming area of short-term vacation rentals such as Airbnb and VRBO."
They mention them in general, not specifically this house.
> Under an old North York bylaw, ... short-term home rentals must be seven days or more.
Seems like an arbitrary law.
There's got to be a better way to structure laws for short term rentals in a sharing economy. Or is the sharing economy similar to the tragedy of the commons in that the end state is an end to sharing because of abuse and we all end up with commercial short term rental properties that are run more like a hotel than a spare room.
Given that they had created a company to rent out the house and are selling it now it sounds like this was a "commercial short term rental property", not a "spare room".
Seems like I wasn't clear. By commercial I meant something more than an individual with a business license, something more along the lines of a hostel experience where there is a lobby and staff like a security guard.
That would be a _responsible_ commercial enterprise. This property (and many other AirBNB) properties are commercial, but effectively skirting all regulations that would normally apply.
This specific house was rented and a massive party thrown where someone was shot. Hostels and hotels spend money (e.g. security) to ensure the environment is safe and this kind of thing doesn't happen.
AirBNBs can be responsible, but it means things like actually renting spare rooms, having someone nearby (you or a neighbour) meet guests and keep an eye on things, etc.
Would you call a limit of, say, 5 days out of every 30 an "arbitrary" limit? That's what we're dealing with, here: limiting frequency or duration.
Many people simply don't want a constant stream of strangers coming through their living environment. That's not arbitrary, even if you happen to feel comfortable with it yourself.
Yes, that still seems arbitrary. The abuse seems to be related to people committing crimes or breaking noise bylaws, not how long they stay. So, legislation for the length of stay strikes me as addressing the wrong problem.
Really the solution to the problem is to ask the data questions. Do airbnb rentals have more noise complaints/crime, than similar non-airbnb residences. If the data suggests airbnb promotes bad things then ok, maybe that frequency limit isn't so arbitrary. I wonder by what means could a city demand airbnb's data to discovery which residences are being used for short term rentals.
In Toronto, it's not uncommon to see tons of lockboxes outside some condos which are largely for short term rentals, as well as have tenants deal with experiences like this (copy and pasted from Toronto's subreddit):
"Have you ever wanted to live in a hotel, without the actual service of living in a hotel? You can at the Ice Condos! When walking through the lobby on any given day you're nearly guaranteed to see a few wide eyed, suitcase towing AirBNB guests standing around. Don't except to be able to speak with the concierge for anything - the AirBNB people will be arguing with them over the fact that the concierge won't just give out the keys to suites because people say they're supposed to be allowed in. Shout out to the guy last week who yelled 'This isn't a fuckking hotel!' to the woman doing just that last week."
It's particularly why I find their branding and messaging deceitful. They advertise in Toronto in a way that makes it seem like the company is merely a benign platform that helps citizens fund things on the side (one of their ads uses an Asian family with a kid, an appeal to emotion which I see through as an Asian Canadian). Except it's disconnected from a reality where people buy properties for the sole purpose of listing them on Airbnb as short-term rentals.