While I love Airbnb, it can truely be destructive to housing markets, at least to an extent. Here in Portland, OR it's beginning to become a larger problem as housing is getting bought purely to rent out.
I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record.
I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.
AirBNB is a very small part of the housing problem in Portland. As of 4/30/2015, Portland area had 1,110 properties categorized as "Entire home/apt". That same metric was 814 on 4/30/2014. Portland also has legislation specifically for AirBNB (they have to register with the city, pay taxes and get a "less than 30 days" lodging permit).
The primary housing problem here is an influx of people from more-expensive cities (LA, SF, Seattle, NYC) moving in and snapping up homes to actually live in. Meanwhile the city is making it difficult for developers to add any real housing density within the Urban Growth Boundary (and instead are thinking about expanding the UGB. Ugh.).
So there's no real "problem" aside from Portland is a desirable city to live in and people are flocking to here.
I used to love Airbnb. I've been on their basically since inception and have stayed in dozens of cities. Everything has been positive. Lately, though, it's been degrading in a few ways:
1. Pricing in major markets is no longer competitive with hotels. Since most Airbnb properties lack anything close to the amenities offered by hotels, it's just not economically compelling anymore.
2. The last several times I've stayed, I've felt the effects of the new scrutiny. I've been to clandestine meetings with hosts, purportedly on premises, only later to find out that the listed address is false. "Enter through the alley door," and, "Say you're my cousin, if anyone asks" are typically elements of the conversations. That's not what I pay for.
Now, my first choice is hotels, and it's only the rare case that I opt for Airbnb.
> while making it illegal to rent out (buy?) property purely to rent it
Why? You're making the notion of landlords illegal? What purpose does this solve, what benefit is there? Why should I not be allowed to purchase a house and then place a tenant in it?
In many places the rental community is larger than the homeowner community, these houses would simply sit on the market, rather than have someone buy it and put a renter in it. How on earth can you justify making home rentals illegal?
Technically, wouldn't home prices just fall until they were affordable enough for the community to purchase them? I suppose they could just sit in the owners hands forever, but that seems unlikely. I would think that, after some amount of time, they would prefer to have liquid capital over no capital.
Not taking any side in this debate, but that makes some economic sense to me.
Here's a very interesting article about the Portland real estate market. It argues that all-cash investment purchases are distorting the market. Similar effects are happening in many cities.
Don't ever move to a college town. I'd bet 90% of the houses near campus are rentals and roughly 35-45% of the remaining houses within 4-5 miles of campus are rentals year round.
It makes houses within walking distance 2-4x as expensive, houses in the target area about 1.5-3x as expensive.
Seems like an easy fix - just make it prohibitively expensive to own multiple properties.
All these problems revolve around rich folks investing in real estate to make a buck - that that is even a thing, is insane.
Housing is for people to live in, not for you to buy, renovate, sell. Or buy, rent. Or buy, tear down, build new, sell/rent.
It's all part of a greater problem - when folks can become multi-millionaires by gaming the system instead of contributing to it and do so with impunity, we have what we have.
Housing prices are inflated by people who buy/sell for profit, coupled with retarded regulations that favor that over people trying to live their lives.
Great, and then either the raised costs of owning multiple properties gets passed down to the renter or people decide not to rent out houses and property in the first place, making renting itself almost impossible. Then we'll end up of neighborhoods that could have grown filled with urban blight that no one wants to invest in due to the fear of their property value continuing to tank or neighborhoods.
I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record.
I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.