The End of Airbnb in New York::Thousands of Airbnbs and other short-term rentals are expected to disappear from rental platforms as New York City begins enforcing tight restrictions.
A blessing, really, for cities experiencing housing shortage.
True! Getting rid of these AirBnBs probably doesn’t hurt things though. Now they might actually get a long-term resident.
It probably doesn’t but you have to wonder why that company was so successful to begin with. I feel like we are celebrating a weight loss company getting banned.
There is a housing shortage, there is a hotel room shortage. Someone took advantage of that. Getting rid of that someone doesn’t stop the next person.
A bummer though for anyone visiting as hotels become the only option, and prices go way up, beholden to moneyed corporate interests who lobby politicians in their favor and pockets.
Ed: just wow on the downvote brigading. Upvote/downvote is supposed to reflect whether or not the comment contributes to the conversation. Not killing the messenger when it’s some info someone doesn’t want to hear.
This is just very standard macroeconomics supply and demand, plus regular institutionalized political corruption.
Yes, Abnb sucks shit, and their prices are stoopid high, but that’s the free market.
Ban them and watch hotel prices go up. Simple as that.
AirBnB is just as corporate and lobbyist bullshit as any other company. Arguably worse, in that AirBNB breaks the laws and then tries to get laws changed.
Hotel chains at least try to lobby to change the laws before breaking the rules.
In my experience over the last two years hotels are either same price OR less expensive due to AirBnBs bait and switch pricing. The taxes, cleaning fees, and random add ons are absurd.
In a recent example, staying at some Yurt for three days was $248. After taxes and fees it was around $515. Like wtf?!
I’m at the point where even if the pricing was flat, a hotel is 10X less hassle to deal with than AirBnB.
Airbnb was nice when it was just a way to rent someone’s extra bedroom for the night. I’ve met some amazing people this way.
hotels are either same price OR less expensive
I don’t think that really contradicts what they said though. It doesn’t matter which is more expensive, they both exist within the same market and removing supply will make what remains more expensive.
Kinda related I stopped renting cars many years ago because of this stuff. The price says X amount of dollars a day, the bill says 2X.
The last few times I’ve tried to book an AirBnB the price difference from a standard hotel room was almost nothing. AirBnB has been trash for awhile.
I find AirBnB to be cheaper when renting an entire house vs 3 or 4 hotel rooms. But an apartment vs a hotel room is even or the hotel is cheaper
I think it’s been too long since you’ve looked at Airbnb. Prices are no longer a deal in contrast to hotels. It’s all inflated trash and no longer accessible for regular people.
People downvoting either aren’t old enough to remember how bad hotels were, or are wearing rose colored glasses.
When airbnbs came to my city, after a few years, hotels finally lowered prices and made a effort to give a shit. I hope it doesn’t fall back to that.
But then again, the past few years, Airbnb rentals seem to be run by shady companies instead of by homeowners with an extra room.
Good. That was kinda the whole fucking point of Airbnb in the first place. If you want to own property for the sole purpose of short term rentals buy a hotel.
Yep. Just like Uber it morphed, from people sharing a ride or their place while on vacation, into full time drivers and landlords. Not the philosophical intebt of the original service, and it ruined it for everyone.
I mean Uber started as a black car service and wanted it to be possible for drivers to do it full time if they wanted. Neither Uber nor Lyft were ever billed as “make some money sharing a ride to where you are already driving”, the platform doesn’t even account/allow for that.
I fully agree on Airbnb but I don’t think the Uber example works.
Smart. People can still rent out an extra room, but can’t squat on an apartment solely for Airbnb.
That’s how airbnbs were when I’ve used them in the past, things like a place where you can sleep on someone’s couch, or a house with a spare room you can crash in. Those kinds of arrangements were way cheaper than hotels and very appealing.
The rent for regular apartments has basically doubled in the past couple years. You see studios go for $3000/mo, and 1 bedrooms for $4500+ quite often. I really hope this will have a helpful effect on lowering for the people who already live here, who can’t make ends meet because of absurd rental prices and hikes lately. There needs to be more housing and reasonable prices for people who live here. Compared to the median income here (and not the mean, because it’s not representative to count the billionaires), it’s literally not affordable for the people who grew up here and started their lives here, to afford to have a roof over their head. That’s why you see shit like 5 unrelated adults in a 1 bedroom apartment together, or a big extended family of multiple generations, partners, etc., all living under the same roof. Nobody can afford anything better here.
It is a serious crisis in many places throughout the world. Especially considering the income stagnation. I have lived in many cities and have heard this cry across multiple continents, from coast to coast, and at most income levels (except the ultra wealthy).
What I’m hoping becomes more popular are ways to make the short term rentals not as profitable. I really like the idea what other cities are doing by limiting the number of days they can rent it out.
Sure, rent it out for 45 days a year and get $10k total revenue and try to scrape out a profit. Or rent out the unit as your primary residence for the entire year for a similar cost.
It’s not absolutely perfect, but it will greatly reduce those willing to buy places to use as an investment for short term rentals. And that should put negative pressure on housing prices, while also opening up more units for primary residence housing.
Generally speaking, housing costs don’t decrease without a major economic event. Positive economic circumstances that raise housing costs set the benchmark, and negative events reset those.
Isn’t this quite a major event? More empty homes -> more places to choose from -> more competition -> lower prices
Huge. The short term rental housing boom is unlike almost anything we’ve seen before. Estimates put short term rentals as about 20% of the global real estate market.
If that demand drops rapidly, it will mark a major shift. Tons of buyers and capital will be wiped off the table.
I agree with the usual perspective that housing prices almost always rise over time. But this is an unprecedented event in scale, and if reversed, it will have unprecedented ramifications.
This doesn’t need to immediately lower housing costs to have a positive impact.
Hypothetical numbers… If housing was going to go up 5% in the next year and this change causes that to go down to a 1% increase, it will have made things better. Of course, we’d all like to just go straight to lowered housing costs. But individual changes can still do good and bring us towards that goal without strictly accomplishing it.
I hope that these type of easily exploitable services just absolutely die. New York is the last place I would have expected to hear these type of services turned scummy to start to disappear, but I welcome it and hope it spreads across the country.
