> Airbnb has recently been attacked by San Francisco politicians for driving up the price of housing in the city.
The high price of housing in San Francisco is caused by one (and only one) thing: NIMBYism.
If supply is constrained and new high-rise developments are held back, there will always be higher prices and a distorted market.
In reality, Airbnb doesn't have any measurable effect on the price of housing. (Still, it may help alleviate the situation slightly for some people living in the city.)
There’s no strict need for high rises to satisfy Bay Area housing requirements. A modest proportion of 4–6 story low-rise apartments throughout the region would be entirely adequate. The problem is that the whole region is almost entirely zoned for single-family houses, and designed on the premise that everyone will commute by car.
If people take residences that would otherwise be available to long-term tenants and make them only available as short-term rentals, how is that not further constraining the supply of housing?
I completely agree that the lack of new housing is a huge component of the high prices, but it is reductive to pretend that a particular pet issue is the only thing causing SF's housing shortage. It's a huge problem with myriad causes.
They address this in the article - less than 1 in 1000 residences are renting enough nights to break even on rent, implying that it's not a supply problem.
Residents in SF and the peninsula are pretty quick to try to put the housing-problem blame [1] on anything tech related, but traditionally haven't wanted to increase the supply (high density housing).
Except that lack of high density is one of the City's more appealing attributes. I don't like the simple call for more housing without any acknowledgement of the consequences.
That's a great way to think about it. You can drop popular (eventually it gets to expensive that you reach a new equilibrium and people stop coming!), but it's hard to say at what point in the future that actually happens.
I wouldn't exactly say San Francisco lacks high density. It is true that it is not nearly as dense as New York, but it is pretty densely populated compared to other U.S. cities. I think it is right though when people say that San Francisco can still increase its density via 4-6 story housing ala Paris without destroying its charm, and without becoming Vancouver or NYC.
This atrocious bill is yet another example of how the biggest unicorns are facing a kind of challenge they aren't built to solve: the political one.
Until now, the rise and of tech companies has been determined by the double-edged blad of innovation. Someone makes something new that works better, gets big, and then someone else makes something newer and displaces them. Repeat cycle over and over. It's why in tech, we specialize in the art and business of innovation.
What we don't know how to do is navigate murky political waters. We're really, really bad at it. Can you imagine another $10BN company even letting this kind of bill happen, that would kill their largest market if it passed?
Airbnb isn't alone. Uber hired Obama's campaign manager because they realized they're biggest existential threat is a political one too. But see their ongoing lawsuits and outright bans in other countries – they haven't figured how to solve the political question either.
Meanwhile, car companies with a lower market cap, like GM, could figure out how to get a bailout from the government – right after it bailed out another huge industry, banks.
Those guys are just better at it. They have been for a long time. They get things like "don't optimize to something that solves problems. Optimize optics." Or that real deals get done behind closed doors, because you can control what happens there. That by the time it becomes a public debate, you've already lost the game.
We in tech have a disgust for politics. Rightfully so. It's useless at best and harmful more often. It doesn't follow the clear, hard and fast rules that the rest of tech does. But if we don't hold our nose and figure out how to play the game, or better yet, reinvent it, we'll get outplayed on the biggest board of them all.
"a kind of challenge they aren't built to solve: the political one."
And yet these are the battles that "technology" companies like Uber and Airbnb had to know were coming. At best, they live in a legal gray area. You can't start a company skirting existing laws and expect politicians to look the other way.
And it's not just politicians that are responsible for this. As a condo owner, I specifically don't want Airbnb to be available in my association. There are reasons that there are laws against leasing and subleasing apartments, and it's not just to screw over startups.
Uber and Airbnb grew to huge valuations on the back of pushing externalities onto others. Airbnb is taking their cut and looking the other way on things like taxes, zoning regulations and such until they are forced to deal with it. Uber pushes similar things off onto their "contractors".
Now the political environment is catching up to them, and it's time to deal with the same legal environment that every other company has to deal with.
Strongly agreed. If you are running an 1) illegal cab company or 2) illegal hotel company, you have to expect this. At a certain scale you are tolerated, but when you are a major player you will get some scrutiny that cannot just be "disrupted" away.
$10BN companies have laws passed that go against their interests all the time, car companies, who have a combined value far in excess of $10BN (particularly when you consider up and down the supply chain) face all sorts of regulatory hurdles. The reason they do is not because of lack of influence but because the thing they do has a significant impact on society. Citing the auto bail out as some sort of triumph of lobbying is silly, practical considerations, the sort of considerations that influence politics and political choices all the time, had a lot more to do with the bailouts in the financial crisis than some out-sized political influence by car companies.
I for one do not have a blanket disgust for politics, I am mature and realistic enough to understand that it is a necessary part of having a functioning government.
I think it's a dumb bill. And you're not entirely wrong but I think some of your self-righteousness is misplaced. Politics doesn't happen in a vacuum. They're a manifestation of the interactions between different stakeholders in society.
If you run a $10 billion company that's in the business of housing, one of the most sensitive subjects not just politically but socially, and you don't anticipate pushback, then the problem isn't politics, it's a lack of social awareness. There's nothing murky or unknowable about it: people care deeply about the character of their communities and if that's your business then you've got to get ahead of their concerns before they blame you when changes happen that they don't like.
To ordinary people, disruption is a bad thing. The onus is on the people hoping to profit from disruption to explain to people why change will be for the better. You can't do that if you cultivate a disgust for the political process.
We in tech have a disgust for politics. Rightfully so. It's useless at best and harmful more often
Speak for yourself. Uber and AirBnB's businesses are extracting profits by ignoring the costs of complying with regulation, or by pushing those costs onto others. In an apartment building, probably none of the other residents signed up for the additional wear and tear on the common parts of the building, the noise and the security risk of a hotel suddenly appearing in their building - but they quite literally pay for it, and the "landlord" pockets the difference.
Similarly Uber isn't a tech company, they are just unlicensed minicabs, something that most cities stamped out with good reason.
I have trouble feeling sorry for AirBnB with this. It has had numerous opportunities to put forth a reasonable view on how this should all work and AFAICT, has not.
First, most (all?) HOAs and landlords forbid short term rentals, and for good reason (short term renting is generally disliked by neighbors).
Second, city zoning policies are implemented for a reason, again, a good one. Residential neighborhoods generally prefer little or no commercial activity as well as inhabitants who care about the neighborhood.
I have not seen AirBnB weigh in reasonably on these important issues. For that, it's possible it deserves Prop F.
The thing that troubles me the most about AirBNB is the general feeling I get from them that they feel concerns about their social impact are simply not worth addressing. Not just disagreeing about the degree to which the things you cited might be problems but being dismissive about the whole idea that there may be any problems at all.
feel concerns about their social impact are simply not worth addressing.
Welcome to VC land. The game is: collect everybody else's money and resources for yourself at any cost. It's even easier when laws and regulations are either toothless or only get applied across 8 to 16 year time periods, so you can flaunt them with no repercussions.
After spending some time dealing with social impact concern activists, I've personally found that it's something of a bottomless pit. No concern is too small, every concern is hugely important, no concern is irrelevant, everything needs immediate addressing with all the money, every concern is your immediate direct personal problem, etc.
So it's easier to not bother at all and catch flak than it is to do an "insufficient" amount of addressing concerns and get the same amount of flak from the same people.
Yeah, saying airbnb is good for housing prices is like the people who think a universal income will help people live easier. hint: if you give everyone an extra $20k/year, housing will magically go up by $20k/year to match.
with airbnb, if you can't afford your $3,000/month rent so you take in a share tenant, maybe now you can afford $5,000 month in rent. now housing prices know everybody can make $5k/month appear through tenant-izing, so all prices go up. now nobody can afford a place unless they take in co-habitating renters or are DINKs.
The article states that "75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes". I don't really see how economics would get in the way of that driving up rents.
I agree on the income-elastic pricing part, but the demand capacity for AirBnB is tiny compared to the supply. Not that many people are able to subsidize their income and move up.
The AirBnB (airbnb, Airbnb, AirbnB?) argument actually has two facets, and any argument with more than one part is too nuanced for arguing in public, sadly.
The two parts are: fast-flux roommate discovery versus entire apartments.
Fast-flux roommate discovery is generally okay. You may have a roommate anyway, but this just lets you cycle them out daily/weekly/monthly. Plus, if the person is bad/rude/evil, you have to deal with them as well as your neighbors. You've got skin in the game.
The fast-flux roommate thing gets shady when the owner says "i'll just sleep on the couch while you visit" or other variations of not really having enough room for a roommate, but making do. A lot of listings have that weird dynamic.
The second, and more damaging, part of the AiRbNb story is when people become management companies and rent a dozen or a hundred apartments in a city to be 100% aIrBnB units. That is where real problems start. Rent apartments for $2,000 per month on a yearly lease then turn around and market them as short-term rentals for $200 per night. It's so common there are multiple concierge startups focused around cleaning and key-providing for short term sharing economy rentals taken out of the local for-natives housing supply. It's so common there are routine 'airbnb lies' your bookings are supported to tell to all the neighbors or doorman or building security if they get asked who they are (oh, I'm Sally's cousin!!!)
(oh, and the third way, a middle ground between the first two, is when you rent out your apartment just while you're on vacation or whatnot. This is more of a traditional sublet scenario, just facilitated by an evil megacorp who charges too many fees. This falls into the "generally okay" bucket like fast-flux roommate discovery.)
Right, the management agency supply problem would only exist if AirBnB demand were high enough to impact the housing supply.
But as the article said, less than 1 in 1000 units rent enough AirBnB nights to break even on rent in SF, which means that unless the agencies are subsidizing their income elsewhere, it's not a problem.
The second, and more damaging, part of the AiRbNb story is when people become management companies and rent a dozen or a hundred apartments in a city to be 100% aIrBnB units.
Which is already illegal in SF, so if this is happening (the article states that it is not), SF needs to actually enforce its laws. This isn't a problem or criticism of Airbnb.
City zoning is only voted on by the people who currently live there, not the people that would like to live there. They use threats of violence (government force) against property owners that would like to help others move into the city.
I'm not sure how a better solution would be implemented -- allow people to choose which jurisdiction their vote applies to?
That is how representative democracy works. You decide how things work in the area where you live. Imagine if I got to decide how things worked in your neighborhood without living there, that wouldn't be fair.
People who _want_ to live somewhere have no rights to it. They are by definition not yet part of the community. That's like allowing job applicants vote on company policy. I'm sure they would want to, but communities are defined by those in them.
I get what you're saying, and what you're saying does indeed sound fair to a certain extent.
The problem is that it encourages and allows NIMBY attitudes to proliferate, and creates an environment of stagnation. I certainly think we should balance the wishes of current residents, but there has to be limits.
I do live in SF, and I'm pissed that other residents are allowed to slow down housing development. SF is turning into a less desirable place for me to live because of the housing crunch... and I'm not even talking about my rent costs. I don't want to live in a city where only high-income people (and entrenched incumbents with ridiculous rent control) can afford to live. The NIMBYs are the problem, here.
"In 2014 (the most recent year with available data) there were about 387,000
housing units in SF. About 38% were owner-occupied, and the remaining 62%
or 240,000 were rental units."
I wonder why this is... My first guess is that hardly anyone that works in SF can afford to own housing, my second is that real estate speculators are buying up and renting a lot of San Francisco property.
Prop 13. Very low property taxes create tremendous incentives to hold on to real estate you own. People paying 2000 level property taxes on real estate with 2015 level values are making a killing on rent.
> Prop 13. Very low property taxes create tremendous incentives to hold on to real estate you own.
Very low property taxes should be relatively neutral between holding and trading compared to higher property taxes.
Prop. 13 encourages holding over trading because, while it does control property tax rate, it also constrains tax basis value increases to small annual increases while you hold property, but reassesses at full market value when you buy a new property. Which means, it increases the incentives to hold on to property once you've purchased it and decreases the incentives to purchase property, because the property is (net) higher value to the current owner than a new purchaser with otherwise similar profile, since the new purchaser would have to pay higher annual property taxes.
That would be normal in any big city. For over a century the general rule was "Move to the suburbs if you want to buy a house. If you stay in a city then you rent." Things have only changed slowly, since the 60s, with the rise of condos, that has made ownership slightly more common in the cities.
The data cited here makes the bill sound ridiculous, though it also leaves me wondering how many more units are being rented out on AirBnB with less frequency than these 340 units. Still, SF was pricey before AirBnB. It is ridiculous to try to blame local housing prices on this one company.
It looks like AirBnB meeds to do some serious PR work. I think thier rapid rise is helping create the illusion that they impact the local housing market more than they actually do.
They are on it: Sam's post is part of the PR work.
Why else would he say the fix to the housing problem is to put more housing on airbnb?
A huge part of the problem is that people are renting places just to sub-lease them. Guess what that does? Yup. It increases pricing where you are paying the zero value-add middleman more.
But hey, that can't possibly be part of the problem. /s
I'll leave you with this:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
A) I did say up front that I wondered what the other numbers are that Sam is not putting in the article -- the other half of the picture. I have, in fact, read "How to lie with statistics" and I am well aware we are being intentionally given a certain framing from a party with a vested interest.
B) However, I also lived in the bay area at one time, in Solano County, and was pursuing education with an eye towards going into some kind of urban planning related career. In fact, I founded and moderated a subforum for a time on the most successful urban planning forum around at that time. So I have some familiarity with how crazy prices were back then, before AirBnB was a gleam in anyone's eye. And also I have some familiarity with the various factors that go into forcing housing prices up. Saying AirBnB contributes to the problem is not crazy talk. But acting like they are the single most important factor meriting the passage of a bill intended to kill them off -- I want a tad more data than "But look at the crazy high local housing prices, man!" Because that falls far short of proving they are having that big of an effect.
C) Yeah, I am very familiar with the saying. I am well aware of how hard it is to be both profitable and ethical. So far, I have managed to be pretty ethical. I am also dirt poor. So I am a little tired of hearing that anyone making money is clearly The Devil. The fact that this is part of a pro AirBnB PR campaign does not ipso facto make it inherently evil. The other side is also engaging in a PR campaign, and they also have vested interest that you can put a dollar amount on. Sometimes, people are actually doing work they actually fucking believe in. Those people still need to EAT and put a roof over their head. I am so goddamn sick of the idea that all the good people are dead martyrs and, if you still draw breathe, you need to feel guilty about every single fucking thing you do to try to keep body and soul together.
I don't think anyone can with say that airbnb is the sole reason prices are up. That's crazy.
Moreover, I don't think anyone can actually prove or disprove something like that (there will always be a "but did you consider that?" argument to be made). Which makes sama's earlier comment asking for proof disingenuous.
Maybe it's hard to be ethical and profitable? idk. And, I don't mean to imply EVIL(!). You don't need to be evil to ignore a piece of info that might harm your livelihood: we are all equipped with brains that come standard with a range of cognitive biases we can subconsciously choose from :)
Look, the problem as I see it is that you can genuinely in your heart of hearts believe this is the Right answer and you can have come to that conclusion independently of making any money off it and the minute you make money, people will piss on the idea that you are suggesting something because you really and truly for realzy realz believe it is the right answer.
This is a thing I am very familiar with. I have a serious health problem. I have gotten myself dramatically healthier when doctors say it cannot be done. It precludes me having a normal job. I do freelance work online and I run a number of websites. I had a health site for years and it really did not make money and I was given absolute hell from all sides for having ads on it or a donate button or affiliate links. I was decried as the devil, endangering people's lives. blah blah blah blah blah and all kinds of other shit. The fact that I actually fucking have this serious condition and actually fucking got myself healthier with the things I was talking about made zero difference. I was (THEORETICALLY but not actually) "making money" for sharing the information, so, clearly, I was a snake oil salesman, trying to get rich off the suffering of other people.
The nanosecond you make a plug nickel off of anything, people will hang you high. I don't care how ethical you are. I don't care how much you really believe in it and have tested it yourself and are the real deal, people will riot in the streets about how the only possible reason you are saying that is to make a buck and not because you genuinely think it is true and thought it was true before there was any money involved.
So I am a tad burnt out on hearing how "If someone is making money on it, they are all liars and con artists and suffer cognitive bias and blah blah blah blah." Those accusations mean that NO ONE can promote anything unless they are martyrs who are getting absolutely nothing out of it at all ever under any circumstances.
I am well aware of cognitive bias and the mental models we don't even know we are operating under. I spent a lot of time in therapy and I still spend a lot of time examining myself and other people around me with an eye towards "actions speak louder than words" -- with an eye towards believing the patterns of behavior I see them engaging in, never mind what they are telling me. But I am the wrong person to have this argument with. I am so incredibly sick of hearing this from people.
Let's say Sam does what the founder of Habitat for Humanity did and gives away all his wealth and goes campaigning for housing solutions in San Francisco and at that point he concludes, based on years of study, that AirBnB is part of the solution and not part of the problem. At that point will you accept that he isn't just "suffering cognitive bias"? Is that what it takes for him to make an argument and not get accused of being specious?
I have news for you, I doubt it. I am HOMELESS. I still have to hear shit from people about being a snake oil salesman and a liar and a teller of tall tales and endless utter and complete shit.
So, sorry, you chose the wrong person to try to make this point to. I just am the wrong person to talk to about this.
Edit: For some reason, your follow up comment to me is dead, so I cannot reply to it directly.
You saying Sam is in a bubble of yes-men carries more weight with me than "Well, money!" But, in essence, attacking Sam and his reasons for saying what he is saying just pisses me off. Attack his argument -- come up with stats about how AirBnB is impacting the SF real estate market and argue whatever it is you think is the truth here. But please don't talk to me about the vested interest he has and how that causes cognitive bias. That is damn close to being a personal attack and it is basically an unfounded bullshit attack because both sides have vested interest or they wouldn't be arguing it. Duh. So what is the fucking point in poin...
I'm saying they are likely to kick into gear when your way of life depends on it.
I'm implying it's fishy that sam is asking for evidence when the bar is so high. In doing so, I'm being a bit of a jerk by not assuming good faith behavior. This is me playing devil's advocate to the YC circle-jerk. Yup. But the point is still valid.
I'm not sure what you mean. You are saying a lot, but what's your actual point? Is it just that people will interpret actions counter to how you mean them? Welcome to the internet.
Also note: liars+ con artists are not the same as people with cognitive biases so you shouldn't be putting them in the same sentence. Because what people mean to do matters. The former are lying to you. The latter to themselves. I don't, for a moment, think sam is the former. I trust pg's judgement too much for that. But, I do suspect that sam is smack in the middle of a insulated/yes-men/bubble culture which is why I'm bothering to say something. If I assumed that his post had malicious intent/was underhanded, why would I even waste time engaging?
Given your interest in urban planning, what are your thoughts on what could realistically cause housing prices to decline in the Bay Area? Particularly interested in the Peninsula.
The main thing I've kept my eye on is interest rates, but there are obviously other factors. I'm not convinced rising interest rates would even have that much impact--there will always be people with more money who want to live here for the weather/culture/food/location.
I haven't studied it (the specifics of what is going on in SF) well enough to make specific recommendations for San Francisco. If I were on a task force looking for answers, I would start by reading everything I could get my hands on concerning a) California real estate taxes and b) rent control. I would look for studies, I would look for what we can quantifiably show has a measurable impact.
Then I would look at trying to find ways to incentivize making small spaces with housing basics more available.
I would also look at economic factors like the fact that you can live in SF without a car, so some people can afford the nosebleed rental prices because they are paying only for rent rather than rent plus a car. And I would consider creating a PR program around that angle. Walkable communities typically are more expensive, because humans value the high quality of life they afford, and they are mostly zoned out of existence. A lot of things that historically created walkable communities cannot be recreated under modern car-centric zoning laws.
Edit: To be clear, those are things I would start with, not everything I would do.
Thanks for sharing. Since the Peninsula doesn't have rent control, but DOES have Prop 13, it has separate circumstances, but still many of the same symptoms.
Am I the only one who is furious about the cost of housing in SF, and the apparent lack of action by city government? It was my dream to live in SF since I was a young kid. Unfortunately, the average working professional cannot possibly afford to buy a home. Finding affordable rentals, is not an option either.
How much longer will the professional, middle class populous, put up with their savings being drained by over inflated housing costs? Sadly, it seems far too many people see SF as a professional vacation place, and not a home. When I moved there for work, I also moved there to live. I wanted to do so in a sustainable way, which means saving money every month for retirement, and possibly buying a home. That's a pipe dream in SF, even with a nationally competitive salary.
I cannot figure out whether there is blatant city corruption, or a complete lack-of-caring about the middle class. Or is it that there aren't enough developers trying to develop?
No, you're not the only one. The policies that keep housing unaffordable are infuriating. Everything from prop 13 to local ordinances needs to change. It's worse than a lack of action ... it's really silly policies preventing any actual progress.
The issue of housing in SF and its surrounding areas is the #1 reason I would never move back. Too much money chasing too few decent places to live == cost++++. How people who work at Starbucks survive is beyond me.
Unfortunately, some of the problem may be the language we use to advance our points. Here's a phrase that I think really does illustrate this:
"Making it harder to share your home in San Francisco may make it impossible for some of these hosts to afford to stay in their homes and in this city."
I really do want to discuss this reasonably, but to me, this is clearly a misuse of the word "share". There is a powerful emotion around "sharing", and to say that San Francisco is making it harder to "share" your home does have a different ring than saying it is making it harder to "rent out your home short term".
I will certainly agree that there can be some ambiguity around the word "share". For instance, if two people both pay equally for a large sandwich, they might say they "shared" it rather than "split it". But when you list your room on a website for a certain price, and someone pays you for it, I don't think we're anywhere close to that ambiguous grey area. This is clearly a quid-pro-quo commercial transaction. They can be friendly transactions, people can get to know each other through these transactions. I'm not even saying it's an undesirable transaction (more or less everyone I know things that airbnb has its place, though there is great disagreement over how these rentals should be regulated).
But I really don't think it's "sharing" by any reasonable definition of the term.
Yes, it's not "sharing" when a middleman takes a fixed percentage of all transactions and works for maximizing their revenue.
The way you get your astrotuf terms to be less astro-turfy is to use them as often and in as many non-hostile situations as possible while still engendering them with a sense of "this is all for the best."
This is putting it politely. Using the word "sharing" in this context is more than a misuse, it is a deliberate misrepresentation. As such, it represents an clear ethical failure. The fact that it's so public signals that you are dealing with a company that, on a very fundamental level, lacks an essential measure of courage, foresight, and integrity. It is—in simple terms—total bullshit.
I say all this having just returned from a wonderful weekend that was made much better by Airbnb. It was a great service, I enjoyed it immensely, and it's sad to see that something so good could be ruined by leadership that threatens their brand by describing what they do with such overt dishonesty.
The sharing economy is real, it is also cash free. That's by definition. If you were making money you are not "sharing" anything. You are conducting short term rentals, and that's a very different beast. If you insist on using language like "sharing" anyway, don't be surprised when people respond with a few choice words of their own. If those words sting, consider that proof that your own use—or misuse—of words really does matter.
Related: when facing a political backlash, don't make your own position worse by giving your enemies even more ammunition.
"Sharing economy" is just the marketing term for it. If I share a bench with you, I'm not charging you for the privilege. I agree that it is the word we use, but it doesn't accurately communicate what we're talking about.
It's a difficult line to walk. On the one hand, sharing sounds nice. Even as capitalists we are suspicious of efforts to make a profit. And many of the "sharing economy" services are about using things that you personally own and selling use of them to the public.
On the other hand, when AirBnB/Uber/etc try to make an economic argument for their services, it is clearly not around sharing. We're exchanging value (my empty home, parked car, etc.) for value (your dollars, as a proxy for work you have done.)
I used to share a ski house in Tahoe. Should I expect to pay part of the rent or not?
I think the term "share" is strictly agnostic on who pays but also does have a gifting connotation that appeals to marketing. I have no problem with its use here but if there is a better word what is it?
I get that you're trying to break down "sharing economy" by the semantics of the word "share", but even in your hypothetical the bench is [presumably] owned by the city, who has granted already access to it for everyone.
By sharing access to economic goods and services that were previously unavailable, waste from market inefficiencies are being eliminated. Just because companies are profiting from this waste elimination doesn't negate the fact that shared economies can still be beneficial.
Even so, considering the size of these markets now, I don't think people are going to confuse "Sharing economy" with altruism.
People have chanted "sharing is caring" at demonstrations against greater regulations and restrictions on short term rentals. I think we're stepping close to a deliberate ambiguity.
Sharing means using some resource jointly, it doesn't matter if money change hands, if owner uses the resource too. Your definition of sharing sounds more like gifting.
I disagree. I acknowledge the existence of reasonable ambiguity in the term "sharing". However, airbnb is no where near this zone of ambiguity. Airbnb rentals are clearly a quid-pro-quo commercial transaction, and it is absurd to try to call this "sharing".
My understanding is that AirBnB was originally envisioned as more like couch surfing, but with money involved. I have never done it, but from what I have read, couch surfing really is about sharing your home. It is not just about finding a place to sleep, but about meeting people and making new friends. I have read articles about AirBnB where hosts talk about time spent with renters in their own home and how the social piece is as also important to them, not just the money.
I am not saying you are outright wrong to feel the way you feel, but I am saying that for some people, AirBnB really is about sharing their home and their lives, not just subletting for money.
> I recently reached out to Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, to learn more about this.
I didn't reach out to any of the sponsors or advocates for Prop F, such as the political figures and organizations listed at http://www.sharebettersf.com/endorsements-propf-prop-f-airbn..., of course. And while this post is full of stats that sound a lot like the kind of thing you'd get from Airbnb PR, nowhere in it am I going to inquire further and link to an opposing view, or really engage with opposing views in any material way. I'll just dismiss them by saying that the solution is for SF to allow more building, as if making that happen hasn't been the most contentious and complicated issue in the city literally for generations.
One could also argue that I myself have helped drive up the high cost of housing in SF, both by running a program that requires the people it admits to move to SF in order to participate, and more generally by being part of a hype ecosystem that aims to convince impressionable young people that the only way to be successful in tech is to somehow jam yourself into this already bursting-at-the-seams city. I'm not really going to engage with that line of thought either, though.
> The mean revenue per host was about $13,000 per year
Otherwise known as the income that one would have previously obtained by renting a room to a permanent resident. The big difference with Airbnb is that the service is removing potential rooms and roommate situations from the market. I'm not going to say whether Airbnb is a good thing as honestly I'm leaning toward it being a net benefit. But to say it has not made finding a place to live permanently in places like SF and NYC more difficult for 1st time and early in life renters is difficult for me to agree with.
All progress has a price. And often that price is worth the benefit. But let's not pretend there are not people out there that will be worse off in the short term.
Otherwise known as the income that one would have previously obtained by renting a room to a permanent resident.
Not true. If I want to rent my place out for a week while I'm out of town, that would be income that could never be provided by a permanent resident. If I rent out a spare room to someone in town for the weekend, that's not a permanent resident. Maybe I don't want a permanent roommate, but just want some supplementary income here and there.
You're certainly welcome to argue that I shouldn't be allowed to do that, but I'd disagree with that point of view, and that has nothing to do with whether or not a permanent resident could be served by the space.
> Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage. 75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses. Making it harder to share your home in San Francisco may make it impossible for some of these hosts to afford to stay in their homes and in this city.
This is why Airbnb helps maintain untenable pricing levels. There's more money to go around and rates can keep going up with no bearing on vacancies.
A rental management company with 20% vacancies wouldn't be so quick to raise prices; but, as long as the tenants magically come up with ways of catching up with increased prices, the prices will continue going up.
Both of us look at the same evidence, just interpreted differently.
If the stats you brought are correct, that means that there exist a considerable amount of tenants which couldn't afford their apartments if not for Airbnb. Ultimately, as rental markets balance their price against vacancies, market rates will go up.
Isn't it impossible for AirBnB not to either drive up price levels or drive down availability?
If you have a property, AirBnB immediately makes it more valuable, as it is now possible to generate a (reasonably) passive income from it - you can use it more efficiently than before. If you own a home or rent.
What economics are you using in which it doesn't immediately follow that this would eventually reflect in the rental/purchase price of housing units?
Ahh "rent control and regs" you say! Ok fine, then the market tries to reach its equilibrium on quantity and fewer units are available. AirBnB makes housing more valuable, and if there is any vestige of market forces in SF housing, its effect on price/supply is unambiguous.
This DOES NOT, however, mean that AirBnB is a bad thing. I firmly believe it is an incredibly beneficial thing for everyone and it boggles my mind how people can be so against a service whose only function is to allow us to use our resources more efficiently. If this energy were instead spent on analyzing all the distortions that our wonderful political system has introduced in the system, we'd be much better off.
It's a reasonable conclusion to draw, given your claim that people are able to "make rent" using AirBNB.
Without AirBNB, people would have to find alternate ways to do so, and if they couldn't would likely not be able to continue to live in their selected housing. That reduces demand on apartments (as people can no longer make money).
When two income families arose, San Francisco ultimately required two incomes to buy into a house. Now we will be creating a necessity in that only those who operate private hoteling will be able to afford to buy in the city anymore.
Those who don't operate an AirBnB business in their homes will be economically priced out as a disadvantage to those who do. This means that residency in SF will ultimately require it ... and that entire neighborhoods will ultimately be transformed to be dominated by private hoteliers. Squeezing out the poor sap who doesn't optimize reselling each unused square foot of their home.
> About 33,000 of these were vacant, generally as a side effect of rent control laws. (I don’t honestly know if rent control is a net good or bad thing—I assume more good than bad—but it certainly keeps units off the market.)
I will never understand why most Americans generally favor a tough-luck, fire-at-will attitude for employment, but are in favor of rent control and making eviction extremely difficult.
Coming from New Zealand, it's the other way around (it's extremely difficult to fire people, but there is no rent control and you can evict anyone with 90 days notice).
Not saying one or the other is necessarily better (I personally think somewhere in the middle for both approaches would be best), but strict eviction laws and rent control always seemed very un-American to me.
Eh, I wouldn't say that's universally true. As an employee, I've appreciated it when it's been (fairly) easy for the company to e.g. get rid of a peer that was dragging the team down.
Several of the (smaller) companies I've worked for would not have survived if not for at-will employment. That's certainly helped me as an employee.
Fortunately I haven't yet fallen on the "wrong" side of that equation; I imagine I might feel differently if I had... but then that's kinda irrelevant.
The price of housing in SF has about doubled in the past 5 years, according to the post. What has happened to the price of hotel accommodations over the same period?
Sam means well, but he does live 200% inside the internet hype machine bubble vortex:
The whole magic of the sharing economy is better asset utilization and thus lower prices for everyone. Home sharing makes better utilization out of a fixed asset, and by more optimally filling space it means the same number of people can use less supply.
"better utilization out of a fixed asset" is how we talk about factory machinery, not so much living space.
Housing has physical implications and psychological cost. If we wanted optimal space filling, we'd put 10,000 bunk beds in a warehouse and tell people to deal with it. The proles can have their bunk bed warehouse while the billionaires can have estates in San Francisco. et voilà, optimal filling of space allocated by level of monetary expenduture.
> Housing has physical implications and psychological cost. If we wanted optimal space filling, we'd put 10,000 bunk beds in a warehouse and tell people to deal with it. The proles can have their bunk bed warehouse while the billionaires can have estates in San Francisco. et voilà, optimal filling of space allocated by level of monetary expenduture.
You know, if there were such arrangements, I'm sure that there would be people who would jump on them. I'm a little surprised Google hasn't built company dormitories, since they've got people living in vans in the parking lot rather than paying $3000 a month for a studio apartment.
> In fact, Airbnb worked with economist Tom Davidoff of the University of British Columbia and found that Airbnb has affected the price of housing in SF by less than 1% either up or down.
Airbnb commissioned this economist[1]. That doesn't necessarily mean his conclusions aren't credible, but commissioned research that supports the agenda of the company that commissioned it should be subject to a higher level of scrutiny. Is there any independent research Altman can cite?
> Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage. 75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses. Making it harder to share your home in San Francisco may make it impossible for some of these hosts to afford to stay in their homes and in this city.
What about their neighbors? If I'm paying good money to rent an apartment or I shell out big bucks for a new condo, why should I be forced to live in a hotel-like environment because a neighbor decides to violate the lease or association CC&Rs/bylaws?
It doesn't matter how well-intentioned a host is. It's callous to have sympathy for hosts who are violating leases and condo association association CC&Rs/bylaws and no sympathy for the neighbors their selfish behavior negatively affects.
My own individual and anecdotal story: as an individual whose neighbor was AirBnB-ing his apt next door to mine, seeing dozens of unfamiliar faces (and, without going into detail, the behavior and antics of some of these occupants) did not make me feel safe. If anything, they should severely restricted under this guise, not "affordable housing". (Though I do agree that more housing would generally improve the situation for all).
"Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage. 75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses."
C'mon Sam, you can do better than this. Just about everyone's income helps them pay their rent or mortgage regardless of where it comes from. And let's not pretend (a) parkinson's law doesn't exist or (b) people allocate specific income sources to specific expenses. If you make more, you spend more. If you have to pay your rent on the 1st, you write a check from your bank account–you don't pull cash out of your "AirBnB income" envelope.
And, BTW, I've never rented an AirBnB in SF who wasn't (a) a young professional that could afford to live there or (b) someone 40+ who clearly had lived in SF a long time and bought prior to the spike in prices. These statistics and stance just don't compute for me.
Look, I love AirBnB and I think it's a great service. But it's just that–the best short-term/vacation rental service. Nothing more. I'm a little tired of them (and their apologists) acting like they're some kind of cultural juggernaut.
I always knew they'd have huge political forces to answer to (my friends and I would often wager who was more likely to succumb to governments: Uber or AirBnB). They're going to have enforce bed taxes. They're going to have to police municipal laws, HOA regulations, and more. And after it all shakes out, maybe this isn't as profitable of a business as people thought (for both AirBnB and hosts).
Of course, like Uber, they'll likely take the lobbyist route to fight this (maybe they already have). But this is a case where a little humility would go a long way IMO. Would it be so hard for AirBnB or Sam to say "yeah, there's a housing issue and we might even be part of the cause. so let's work together to find a solution or compromise."?
Careful... "deserve" is a bit of a loaded term there. I don't think I'd say that people "deserve more income".
Having said that, I think Airbnb is a fine way for people to earn some money making use of their existing spare housing. I may dislike the PR/marketing bullshit that is the term "sharing economy", but I'm pretty disappointed that this thread seems to be full of Airbnb bashing. While they may not be the ideal solution to SF's housing woes, it's pretty clear that they're not part of the problem... or if they are, it seems they're at least doing more good than bad.
> I think Airbnb is well aware of the housing issue and more than willing to work together on solutions.
I'm sorry, that's just not true, and Sam, I admire a lot of what you've said on a lot of issues, but I cannot believe that you are sincere in this article overall, unless you are just naive.
Any property owner in San Francisco has always been able to go to the Planning Commission and request a conditional use permit to turn their home into a bed and breakfast, and as far as we can tell, no such request has ever been denied.
Renters in San Francisco do not in almost any case I have ever heard of have the right to sublet our apartments, even to additional roommates, without the approval of our landlords, and with good reason.
If a person has lived in San Francisco for some time, and loses their ability to earn enough to pay their rent, it is abusive and narcissistic for that person to believe that simply by having the keys to a place that already does not belong to them, they can - with no consideration for their neighbors - turn their home into a business. A hotel business, no less, which kind of foists upon them the responsibilities of travel guides, as we read in an article this morning.
Now, as demand for housing in an area is shooting up, individual renters are leveraging that in a way that does not contribute to the cost of maintaining property, putting increased pressure on other tenants, and disallowing the landlord from actually satisfying that demand.
All that aside, AirBnb knows what the fuck they are doing. I know at least one successful AirBnb host who has had AirBnb approach them and encourage them to rent up nearby apartments and turn them into new units!
San Francisco housing activists have asked time and time again for AirBnb to open up data about how many hosts have multiple units, and who is renting when not in their unit, so that data may be used over time to guide regulation, but as is becoming a trend with YC companies, private executives and investors feel that they can do better city planning than people who have decades or perhaps their entire lives invested in doing so.
BTW, sama, by taking the position you have on behalf of AirBnb, in opposition to the interests of existing SF voters, you could be considered to be participated in a gerrymandering exercise and end up with the mayor in a future FBI investigation.
[ Clarification: I and other activists are exploring the notion that acting on behalf of future imagined voters and against the will of existing voters may be criminal gerrymandering, basically the sort of politics that keeps my home state of Texas uninhabitable. All current SF housing policy led by the mayor and supervisors like Mark Farrell, who holds stock in a YC company that derives income from AirBnb, does exactly this. ]
I strongly suggest staying the fuck out of San Francisco politics. Doing otherwise would be a great way to lose all of the money that you have amassed as an AirBnb shareholder.
Your comment yesterday broke the HN guidelines ("Put up or shut the fuck up") and I almost chided you for it then, but decided to err on the side of not defending the home team. This, though, is ridiculous. Nobody gets to use HN to threaten another user like this, no matter who they are.
The values of HN are civility and substantiveness. Everyone is welcome to present their views here within those bounds, and no one is welcome to break them.
You may be aware that there are people who specifically choose not to live in a high rent place such as San Francisco or Manhattan (as only two examples) because it is expensive and they can't afford it. And they know it and understand that is part of the "life is not fair" theme. Not everyone will make enough to rent or buy in those places and there is nothing new about this either. That it impacts startups is an entirely different issue. And startups are the reason the rent is so high obviously in San Francisco, right?
Where I am located it's impossible to get anywhere near the quality of labor that I might get if I was located in San Francisco, NYC or really any large metropolitan area. Obviously I have made a choice (for many reasons) to be where I am (as have many others). Everyone makes choices. If you move to San Francisco to take a job you have to factor in the cost of housing when you make your decision to work there. As far as the legacy people who live there and are impacted in a negative way that is truly an unfortunate situation.
Actually what I'm saying is that much more supply is the thing that will drive prices down.
(And also that the number of units that are effectively full-time rented on Airbnb is just about 1% of the entire off-rental-market supply--let's get that 99% back!)
"In the past year, only about 340 units in SF were rented on Airbnb more than 211 nights, which is what Airbnb has calculated as the break-even point compared to long-term rental."
This just didn't sound right; and doing the quick math with the average one bedroom going for 3500.. To reach that 211 day number would mean that rentals on air bnb are going for about 200.
But doing a search in SF for air bnb the average rental is 422.. Now some of these are multi room, and some are just a couch.. but I can't seem to find a single 1 bedroom non-share for under 260.
This makes that 211 figure feel like its off. Which makes me feel that the 340 units is off.
Can we see the calculations used? Also is there a big jump in those units at 210 days.. 200 or 182..
I mean as a land lord if you only have to work half the year and make only a little less revenue; plus the positive of less liabilities I could see my self wanting to air bnb over rent out my unit.
Also when you throw rent control into the math.. the calculation used is non-linear and way below 211; very very quickly; because of flat monthly revenue of rent control vs. monthly increase in revenue from an upward market.
I would suggest you revisit the math.. or ask to see the data of who did the math for you.
How much of San Francisco's rental stock is on the market at any one time? 1% could represent a very high percentage of it. I'd also be interested in knowing what the conversion rate is - in other words, if a rental unit becomes vacant, how often does it become an airbnb rental unit?
Here's an more detailed overview of this problem:
"While there are many larger underlying contributors to the housing shortage in San Francisco, it is possible that Airbnb adds stress on the margins."
Sam, your post doesnt at all address the problem policymakers are trying to solve, which is landlords evicting tenants and then converting those units to short term rentals. I agree that Prop F is a bad way to fix that bad behavior, but its also disingenuous to not talk about the problem. I don't think anybody can make a coherent argument that renting out a spare room is driving up prices. What does do that is landlords deciding they would rather be in the hotel business.
Airbnb could very well drive up "spare room" prices. For instance, think about a room in a house, or may be a small in-law, that used to be rented out to a student or other longer term tenant. With airbnb, it may be possible to make up that income on fewer days, or to greatly exceed it as a full time rental. That would result in a unit being taken off the market as a permanent rental, which could certainly reduce supply and drive up prices.
> In the past year, only about 340 units in SF were rented on Airbnb more than 211 nights ...
For the purposes of Prop F, statistics that seem more relevant are
- how many units are rented more than 90 nights (the current law) [1]
- how many units are rented more than 75 nights (as proposed by Prop F)
When I see AirBnB supporters focusing on a number that doesn't seems as relevant, it feels like spin to me.
> The median number of trips per unit was 5, and mean was 13.3.
Interesting shift here to talking about trips per unit, rather than nights per unit. Back in 2012, the average stay was 5.5 days [2]. So does that mean that the average number of days per unit is 71.5 (5.5 * 13)?
Also, according to the Chronicle [3], out of the 5,459 listings in 2015, "205 hosts have three or more listings. These super hosts account for 4.8 percent of all hosts, but control 993 properties — 18.2 percent of Airbnb’s local listings." I didn't see anything in Sam's post or the other anti-Prop F posts that discusses this.
The 211 number was given as what Airbnb has found to be what it takes to break even on the cost of a unit. Prop F, and others like it, are not trying to destroy Airbnb but stop people from purchasing housing and using it exclusively for short term rentals.
That statistic is meant to say that only 340 units were rented out enough to match what could have been made via a lease. So if people are snatching up property to use just for Airbnb, they either aren't doing it a lot or aren't actually making a sound economic decision in all but 340 cases.
I understand what the statistic is meant to say and it does that well.
However, the city's already limited units to 90 days, so the 211ers are already handled -- if the city (with AirBnB's cooperation) enforces the law, that is. So I don't this point isn't particularly relevant to Prop F. Your mileage may vary, of course!
Interesting shift here to talking about trips per unit, rather than nights per unit.
I think it's actually a useful metric. A big complaint from neighbors seems to be "frequency of new strangers coming and going", which is what this metric quantifies.
Agreed it's also a useful metric, I was just highlighting the shift. Intentionally or not, it gives the impression that AirBnB supporters don't want to talk about the average nights per unit.
> A big complaint from neighbors seems to be "frequency of new strangers coming and going", which is what this metric quantifies.
If my downstairs neighbor rents to a AirBnB guest I would still call them a "stranger" even after 5.5 days.
If my downstairs neighbor rents to a AirBnB guest I would still call them a "stranger" even after 5.5 days.
Oh, agreed. I don't think there's any reasonable value of "short term" where that wouldn't be the case.
Then again, I've lived in my current building for over a year, and I don't know anyone in the building. A few I recognize on sight, but we all tend to keep to ourselves. I'd consider them "strangers" too.
My friend Matt just summed up your cynical formulation: "let's let Airbnb capture tax revenue so that people now in their homes can stay there a little longer" as a hand sandwich: I will sell you two pieces of bread and convince you it will taste good if you shove your hand and start eating.
>In the past year, only about 340 units in SF were rented on Airbnb more than 211 nights, which is what Airbnb has calculated as the break-even point compared to long-term rental.
Ok, there are a small number of units that are let or sub-let for 2/3 of the nights per year. That doesn't tell us much. I'd guess it would be near a full time job to keep your house let out 66% of the time. You wouldn't even be living there most of the time...how can you even really claim it to be yours?
Any observation would show that the primary use is for AirBnB and their customers.
SF absolutely needs to build more housing. SF also needs to build taller (more skyscrapers).
I have trouble believing AirBnB helps SF. Anecdotally, I know a few people who rent their places on AirBnB. All live in rent controlled units and effectively re-rent at market rates. One actually reduced hours at his job because income from AirBnB was so lucrative.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadThe high price of housing in San Francisco is caused by one (and only one) thing: NIMBYism.
If supply is constrained and new high-rise developments are held back, there will always be higher prices and a distorted market.
In reality, Airbnb doesn't have any measurable effect on the price of housing. (Still, it may help alleviate the situation slightly for some people living in the city.)
I completely agree that the lack of new housing is a huge component of the high prices, but it is reductive to pretend that a particular pet issue is the only thing causing SF's housing shortage. It's a huge problem with myriad causes.
Residents in SF and the peninsula are pretty quick to try to put the housing-problem blame [1] on anything tech related, but traditionally haven't wanted to increase the supply (high density housing).
[1] http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/12/20/sf-and-oakland-activ...
Until now, the rise and of tech companies has been determined by the double-edged blad of innovation. Someone makes something new that works better, gets big, and then someone else makes something newer and displaces them. Repeat cycle over and over. It's why in tech, we specialize in the art and business of innovation.
What we don't know how to do is navigate murky political waters. We're really, really bad at it. Can you imagine another $10BN company even letting this kind of bill happen, that would kill their largest market if it passed?
Airbnb isn't alone. Uber hired Obama's campaign manager because they realized they're biggest existential threat is a political one too. But see their ongoing lawsuits and outright bans in other countries – they haven't figured how to solve the political question either.
Meanwhile, car companies with a lower market cap, like GM, could figure out how to get a bailout from the government – right after it bailed out another huge industry, banks.
Those guys are just better at it. They have been for a long time. They get things like "don't optimize to something that solves problems. Optimize optics." Or that real deals get done behind closed doors, because you can control what happens there. That by the time it becomes a public debate, you've already lost the game.
We in tech have a disgust for politics. Rightfully so. It's useless at best and harmful more often. It doesn't follow the clear, hard and fast rules that the rest of tech does. But if we don't hold our nose and figure out how to play the game, or better yet, reinvent it, we'll get outplayed on the biggest board of them all.
And yet these are the battles that "technology" companies like Uber and Airbnb had to know were coming. At best, they live in a legal gray area. You can't start a company skirting existing laws and expect politicians to look the other way.
And it's not just politicians that are responsible for this. As a condo owner, I specifically don't want Airbnb to be available in my association. There are reasons that there are laws against leasing and subleasing apartments, and it's not just to screw over startups.
Uber and Airbnb grew to huge valuations on the back of pushing externalities onto others. Airbnb is taking their cut and looking the other way on things like taxes, zoning regulations and such until they are forced to deal with it. Uber pushes similar things off onto their "contractors".
Now the political environment is catching up to them, and it's time to deal with the same legal environment that every other company has to deal with.
I for one do not have a blanket disgust for politics, I am mature and realistic enough to understand that it is a necessary part of having a functioning government.
And you don't see them complaining too much about those regulatory hurdles. Because those same hurdles also create a barrier to entry.
It's much easier to overcome a regulatory scheme if you're a $10BN company, than a $10M one.
If you run a $10 billion company that's in the business of housing, one of the most sensitive subjects not just politically but socially, and you don't anticipate pushback, then the problem isn't politics, it's a lack of social awareness. There's nothing murky or unknowable about it: people care deeply about the character of their communities and if that's your business then you've got to get ahead of their concerns before they blame you when changes happen that they don't like.
To ordinary people, disruption is a bad thing. The onus is on the people hoping to profit from disruption to explain to people why change will be for the better. You can't do that if you cultivate a disgust for the political process.
Speak for yourself. Uber and AirBnB's businesses are extracting profits by ignoring the costs of complying with regulation, or by pushing those costs onto others. In an apartment building, probably none of the other residents signed up for the additional wear and tear on the common parts of the building, the noise and the security risk of a hotel suddenly appearing in their building - but they quite literally pay for it, and the "landlord" pockets the difference.
Similarly Uber isn't a tech company, they are just unlicensed minicabs, something that most cities stamped out with good reason.
First, most (all?) HOAs and landlords forbid short term rentals, and for good reason (short term renting is generally disliked by neighbors).
Second, city zoning policies are implemented for a reason, again, a good one. Residential neighborhoods generally prefer little or no commercial activity as well as inhabitants who care about the neighborhood.
I have not seen AirBnB weigh in reasonably on these important issues. For that, it's possible it deserves Prop F.
Welcome to VC land. The game is: collect everybody else's money and resources for yourself at any cost. It's even easier when laws and regulations are either toothless or only get applied across 8 to 16 year time periods, so you can flaunt them with no repercussions.
So it's easier to not bother at all and catch flak than it is to do an "insufficient" amount of addressing concerns and get the same amount of flak from the same people.
with airbnb, if you can't afford your $3,000/month rent so you take in a share tenant, maybe now you can afford $5,000 month in rent. now housing prices know everybody can make $5k/month appear through tenant-izing, so all prices go up. now nobody can afford a place unless they take in co-habitating renters or are DINKs.
The two parts are: fast-flux roommate discovery versus entire apartments.
Fast-flux roommate discovery is generally okay. You may have a roommate anyway, but this just lets you cycle them out daily/weekly/monthly. Plus, if the person is bad/rude/evil, you have to deal with them as well as your neighbors. You've got skin in the game.
The fast-flux roommate thing gets shady when the owner says "i'll just sleep on the couch while you visit" or other variations of not really having enough room for a roommate, but making do. A lot of listings have that weird dynamic.
The second, and more damaging, part of the AiRbNb story is when people become management companies and rent a dozen or a hundred apartments in a city to be 100% aIrBnB units. That is where real problems start. Rent apartments for $2,000 per month on a yearly lease then turn around and market them as short-term rentals for $200 per night. It's so common there are multiple concierge startups focused around cleaning and key-providing for short term sharing economy rentals taken out of the local for-natives housing supply. It's so common there are routine 'airbnb lies' your bookings are supported to tell to all the neighbors or doorman or building security if they get asked who they are (oh, I'm Sally's cousin!!!)
(oh, and the third way, a middle ground between the first two, is when you rent out your apartment just while you're on vacation or whatnot. This is more of a traditional sublet scenario, just facilitated by an evil megacorp who charges too many fees. This falls into the "generally okay" bucket like fast-flux roommate discovery.)
But as the article said, less than 1 in 1000 units rent enough AirBnB nights to break even on rent in SF, which means that unless the agencies are subsidizing their income elsewhere, it's not a problem.
Which is already illegal in SF, so if this is happening (the article states that it is not), SF needs to actually enforce its laws. This isn't a problem or criticism of Airbnb.
Do you have anything to back that up?
I'm not sure how a better solution would be implemented -- allow people to choose which jurisdiction their vote applies to?
People who _want_ to live somewhere have no rights to it. They are by definition not yet part of the community. That's like allowing job applicants vote on company policy. I'm sure they would want to, but communities are defined by those in them.
It's kind of frustrating.
The problem is that it encourages and allows NIMBY attitudes to proliferate, and creates an environment of stagnation. I certainly think we should balance the wishes of current residents, but there has to be limits.
I do live in SF, and I'm pissed that other residents are allowed to slow down housing development. SF is turning into a less desirable place for me to live because of the housing crunch... and I'm not even talking about my rent costs. I don't want to live in a city where only high-income people (and entrenched incumbents with ridiculous rent control) can afford to live. The NIMBYs are the problem, here.
Very low property taxes should be relatively neutral between holding and trading compared to higher property taxes.
Prop. 13 encourages holding over trading because, while it does control property tax rate, it also constrains tax basis value increases to small annual increases while you hold property, but reassesses at full market value when you buy a new property. Which means, it increases the incentives to hold on to property once you've purchased it and decreases the incentives to purchase property, because the property is (net) higher value to the current owner than a new purchaser with otherwise similar profile, since the new purchaser would have to pay higher annual property taxes.
It looks like AirBnB meeds to do some serious PR work. I think thier rapid rise is helping create the illusion that they impact the local housing market more than they actually do.
Why else would he say the fix to the housing problem is to put more housing on airbnb?
A huge part of the problem is that people are renting places just to sub-lease them. Guess what that does? Yup. It increases pricing where you are paying the zero value-add middleman more.
But hey, that can't possibly be part of the problem. /s
I'll leave you with this:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
-- Upton Sinclair iirc
B) However, I also lived in the bay area at one time, in Solano County, and was pursuing education with an eye towards going into some kind of urban planning related career. In fact, I founded and moderated a subforum for a time on the most successful urban planning forum around at that time. So I have some familiarity with how crazy prices were back then, before AirBnB was a gleam in anyone's eye. And also I have some familiarity with the various factors that go into forcing housing prices up. Saying AirBnB contributes to the problem is not crazy talk. But acting like they are the single most important factor meriting the passage of a bill intended to kill them off -- I want a tad more data than "But look at the crazy high local housing prices, man!" Because that falls far short of proving they are having that big of an effect.
C) Yeah, I am very familiar with the saying. I am well aware of how hard it is to be both profitable and ethical. So far, I have managed to be pretty ethical. I am also dirt poor. So I am a little tired of hearing that anyone making money is clearly The Devil. The fact that this is part of a pro AirBnB PR campaign does not ipso facto make it inherently evil. The other side is also engaging in a PR campaign, and they also have vested interest that you can put a dollar amount on. Sometimes, people are actually doing work they actually fucking believe in. Those people still need to EAT and put a roof over their head. I am so goddamn sick of the idea that all the good people are dead martyrs and, if you still draw breathe, you need to feel guilty about every single fucking thing you do to try to keep body and soul together.
Moreover, I don't think anyone can actually prove or disprove something like that (there will always be a "but did you consider that?" argument to be made). Which makes sama's earlier comment asking for proof disingenuous.
Maybe it's hard to be ethical and profitable? idk. And, I don't mean to imply EVIL(!). You don't need to be evil to ignore a piece of info that might harm your livelihood: we are all equipped with brains that come standard with a range of cognitive biases we can subconsciously choose from :)
And, that is what I was trying to allude to.
Again, not EEEVIIIIIL. Just cognitive bias.
Look, the problem as I see it is that you can genuinely in your heart of hearts believe this is the Right answer and you can have come to that conclusion independently of making any money off it and the minute you make money, people will piss on the idea that you are suggesting something because you really and truly for realzy realz believe it is the right answer.
This is a thing I am very familiar with. I have a serious health problem. I have gotten myself dramatically healthier when doctors say it cannot be done. It precludes me having a normal job. I do freelance work online and I run a number of websites. I had a health site for years and it really did not make money and I was given absolute hell from all sides for having ads on it or a donate button or affiliate links. I was decried as the devil, endangering people's lives. blah blah blah blah blah and all kinds of other shit. The fact that I actually fucking have this serious condition and actually fucking got myself healthier with the things I was talking about made zero difference. I was (THEORETICALLY but not actually) "making money" for sharing the information, so, clearly, I was a snake oil salesman, trying to get rich off the suffering of other people.
The nanosecond you make a plug nickel off of anything, people will hang you high. I don't care how ethical you are. I don't care how much you really believe in it and have tested it yourself and are the real deal, people will riot in the streets about how the only possible reason you are saying that is to make a buck and not because you genuinely think it is true and thought it was true before there was any money involved.
So I am a tad burnt out on hearing how "If someone is making money on it, they are all liars and con artists and suffer cognitive bias and blah blah blah blah." Those accusations mean that NO ONE can promote anything unless they are martyrs who are getting absolutely nothing out of it at all ever under any circumstances.
I am well aware of cognitive bias and the mental models we don't even know we are operating under. I spent a lot of time in therapy and I still spend a lot of time examining myself and other people around me with an eye towards "actions speak louder than words" -- with an eye towards believing the patterns of behavior I see them engaging in, never mind what they are telling me. But I am the wrong person to have this argument with. I am so incredibly sick of hearing this from people.
Let's say Sam does what the founder of Habitat for Humanity did and gives away all his wealth and goes campaigning for housing solutions in San Francisco and at that point he concludes, based on years of study, that AirBnB is part of the solution and not part of the problem. At that point will you accept that he isn't just "suffering cognitive bias"? Is that what it takes for him to make an argument and not get accused of being specious?
I have news for you, I doubt it. I am HOMELESS. I still have to hear shit from people about being a snake oil salesman and a liar and a teller of tall tales and endless utter and complete shit.
So, sorry, you chose the wrong person to try to make this point to. I just am the wrong person to talk to about this.
Edit: For some reason, your follow up comment to me is dead, so I cannot reply to it directly.
You saying Sam is in a bubble of yes-men carries more weight with me than "Well, money!" But, in essence, attacking Sam and his reasons for saying what he is saying just pisses me off. Attack his argument -- come up with stats about how AirBnB is impacting the SF real estate market and argue whatever it is you think is the truth here. But please don't talk to me about the vested interest he has and how that causes cognitive bias. That is damn close to being a personal attack and it is basically an unfounded bullshit attack because both sides have vested interest or they wouldn't be arguing it. Duh. So what is the fucking point in poin...
I'm saying they are likely to kick into gear when your way of life depends on it.
I'm implying it's fishy that sam is asking for evidence when the bar is so high. In doing so, I'm being a bit of a jerk by not assuming good faith behavior. This is me playing devil's advocate to the YC circle-jerk. Yup. But the point is still valid.
I'm not sure what you mean. You are saying a lot, but what's your actual point? Is it just that people will interpret actions counter to how you mean them? Welcome to the internet.
Also note: liars+ con artists are not the same as people with cognitive biases so you shouldn't be putting them in the same sentence. Because what people mean to do matters. The former are lying to you. The latter to themselves. I don't, for a moment, think sam is the former. I trust pg's judgement too much for that. But, I do suspect that sam is smack in the middle of a insulated/yes-men/bubble culture which is why I'm bothering to say something. If I assumed that his post had malicious intent/was underhanded, why would I even waste time engaging?
The main thing I've kept my eye on is interest rates, but there are obviously other factors. I'm not convinced rising interest rates would even have that much impact--there will always be people with more money who want to live here for the weather/culture/food/location.
Then I would look at trying to find ways to incentivize making small spaces with housing basics more available.
I would also look at economic factors like the fact that you can live in SF without a car, so some people can afford the nosebleed rental prices because they are paying only for rent rather than rent plus a car. And I would consider creating a PR program around that angle. Walkable communities typically are more expensive, because humans value the high quality of life they afford, and they are mostly zoned out of existence. A lot of things that historically created walkable communities cannot be recreated under modern car-centric zoning laws.
Edit: To be clear, those are things I would start with, not everything I would do.
How much longer will the professional, middle class populous, put up with their savings being drained by over inflated housing costs? Sadly, it seems far too many people see SF as a professional vacation place, and not a home. When I moved there for work, I also moved there to live. I wanted to do so in a sustainable way, which means saving money every month for retirement, and possibly buying a home. That's a pipe dream in SF, even with a nationally competitive salary.
I cannot figure out whether there is blatant city corruption, or a complete lack-of-caring about the middle class. Or is it that there aren't enough developers trying to develop?
Prop F is another silly policy.
San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation (yes, the acronym is unfortunate): http://www.sfbarf.org/
San Francisco Housing Action Coalition: http://www.sfhac.org/
Both will notify you when there are city meetings coming up where you could show up and inject some sanity into the proceedings.
Thanks for the links.
"Making it harder to share your home in San Francisco may make it impossible for some of these hosts to afford to stay in their homes and in this city."
I really do want to discuss this reasonably, but to me, this is clearly a misuse of the word "share". There is a powerful emotion around "sharing", and to say that San Francisco is making it harder to "share" your home does have a different ring than saying it is making it harder to "rent out your home short term".
I will certainly agree that there can be some ambiguity around the word "share". For instance, if two people both pay equally for a large sandwich, they might say they "shared" it rather than "split it". But when you list your room on a website for a certain price, and someone pays you for it, I don't think we're anywhere close to that ambiguous grey area. This is clearly a quid-pro-quo commercial transaction. They can be friendly transactions, people can get to know each other through these transactions. I'm not even saying it's an undesirable transaction (more or less everyone I know things that airbnb has its place, though there is great disagreement over how these rentals should be regulated).
But I really don't think it's "sharing" by any reasonable definition of the term.
Yes, it's not "sharing" when a middleman takes a fixed percentage of all transactions and works for maximizing their revenue.
The way you get your astrotuf terms to be less astro-turfy is to use them as often and in as many non-hostile situations as possible while still engendering them with a sense of "this is all for the best."
http://mondato.com/blog/apptivism/ and http://www.fastcompany.com/3022974/tech-forecast/is-peers-th... and http://www.wired.com/2014/12/sharing-economy-pr-stunt-turned... and google is your friend.
I say all this having just returned from a wonderful weekend that was made much better by Airbnb. It was a great service, I enjoyed it immensely, and it's sad to see that something so good could be ruined by leadership that threatens their brand by describing what they do with such overt dishonesty.
The sharing economy is real, it is also cash free. That's by definition. If you were making money you are not "sharing" anything. You are conducting short term rentals, and that's a very different beast. If you insist on using language like "sharing" anyway, don't be surprised when people respond with a few choice words of their own. If those words sting, consider that proof that your own use—or misuse—of words really does matter.
Related: when facing a political backlash, don't make your own position worse by giving your enemies even more ammunition.
It's a difficult line to walk. On the one hand, sharing sounds nice. Even as capitalists we are suspicious of efforts to make a profit. And many of the "sharing economy" services are about using things that you personally own and selling use of them to the public.
On the other hand, when AirBnB/Uber/etc try to make an economic argument for their services, it is clearly not around sharing. We're exchanging value (my empty home, parked car, etc.) for value (your dollars, as a proxy for work you have done.)
I think the term "share" is strictly agnostic on who pays but also does have a gifting connotation that appeals to marketing. I have no problem with its use here but if there is a better word what is it?
By sharing access to economic goods and services that were previously unavailable, waste from market inefficiencies are being eliminated. Just because companies are profiting from this waste elimination doesn't negate the fact that shared economies can still be beneficial.
Even so, considering the size of these markets now, I don't think people are going to confuse "Sharing economy" with altruism.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Sharing...
http://olivierblanchard.net/stop-calling-it-the-sharing-econ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/technology/twisting-words-...
If you are cohabiting with the guest (for example, an actual bed and breakfast), then it would be correct to say that you share your home.
If you give exclusive access to the guest, it would be more correct to say that you are renting, leasing, or subleasing your home.
I am not saying you are outright wrong to feel the way you feel, but I am saying that for some people, AirBnB really is about sharing their home and their lives, not just subletting for money.
I didn't reach out to any of the sponsors or advocates for Prop F, such as the political figures and organizations listed at http://www.sharebettersf.com/endorsements-propf-prop-f-airbn..., of course. And while this post is full of stats that sound a lot like the kind of thing you'd get from Airbnb PR, nowhere in it am I going to inquire further and link to an opposing view, or really engage with opposing views in any material way. I'll just dismiss them by saying that the solution is for SF to allow more building, as if making that happen hasn't been the most contentious and complicated issue in the city literally for generations.
One could also argue that I myself have helped drive up the high cost of housing in SF, both by running a program that requires the people it admits to move to SF in order to participate, and more generally by being part of a hype ecosystem that aims to convince impressionable young people that the only way to be successful in tech is to somehow jam yourself into this already bursting-at-the-seams city. I'm not really going to engage with that line of thought either, though.
Otherwise known as the income that one would have previously obtained by renting a room to a permanent resident. The big difference with Airbnb is that the service is removing potential rooms and roommate situations from the market. I'm not going to say whether Airbnb is a good thing as honestly I'm leaning toward it being a net benefit. But to say it has not made finding a place to live permanently in places like SF and NYC more difficult for 1st time and early in life renters is difficult for me to agree with.
All progress has a price. And often that price is worth the benefit. But let's not pretend there are not people out there that will be worse off in the short term.
Not true. If I want to rent my place out for a week while I'm out of town, that would be income that could never be provided by a permanent resident. If I rent out a spare room to someone in town for the weekend, that's not a permanent resident. Maybe I don't want a permanent roommate, but just want some supplementary income here and there.
You're certainly welcome to argue that I shouldn't be allowed to do that, but I'd disagree with that point of view, and that has nothing to do with whether or not a permanent resident could be served by the space.
This is why Airbnb helps maintain untenable pricing levels. There's more money to go around and rates can keep going up with no bearing on vacancies.
A rental management company with 20% vacancies wouldn't be so quick to raise prices; but, as long as the tenants magically come up with ways of catching up with increased prices, the prices will continue going up.
If the stats you brought are correct, that means that there exist a considerable amount of tenants which couldn't afford their apartments if not for Airbnb. Ultimately, as rental markets balance their price against vacancies, market rates will go up.
Isn't it impossible for AirBnB not to either drive up price levels or drive down availability?
If you have a property, AirBnB immediately makes it more valuable, as it is now possible to generate a (reasonably) passive income from it - you can use it more efficiently than before. If you own a home or rent.
What economics are you using in which it doesn't immediately follow that this would eventually reflect in the rental/purchase price of housing units?
Ahh "rent control and regs" you say! Ok fine, then the market tries to reach its equilibrium on quantity and fewer units are available. AirBnB makes housing more valuable, and if there is any vestige of market forces in SF housing, its effect on price/supply is unambiguous.
This DOES NOT, however, mean that AirBnB is a bad thing. I firmly believe it is an incredibly beneficial thing for everyone and it boggles my mind how people can be so against a service whose only function is to allow us to use our resources more efficiently. If this energy were instead spent on analyzing all the distortions that our wonderful political system has introduced in the system, we'd be much better off.
Without AirBNB, people would have to find alternate ways to do so, and if they couldn't would likely not be able to continue to live in their selected housing. That reduces demand on apartments (as people can no longer make money).
Those who don't operate an AirBnB business in their homes will be economically priced out as a disadvantage to those who do. This means that residency in SF will ultimately require it ... and that entire neighborhoods will ultimately be transformed to be dominated by private hoteliers. Squeezing out the poor sap who doesn't optimize reselling each unused square foot of their home.
I will never understand why most Americans generally favor a tough-luck, fire-at-will attitude for employment, but are in favor of rent control and making eviction extremely difficult.
Coming from New Zealand, it's the other way around (it's extremely difficult to fire people, but there is no rent control and you can evict anyone with 90 days notice).
Not saying one or the other is necessarily better (I personally think somewhere in the middle for both approaches would be best), but strict eviction laws and rent control always seemed very un-American to me.
Several of the (smaller) companies I've worked for would not have survived if not for at-will employment. That's certainly helped me as an employee.
Fortunately I haven't yet fallen on the "wrong" side of that equation; I imagine I might feel differently if I had... but then that's kinda irrelevant.
The whole magic of the sharing economy is better asset utilization and thus lower prices for everyone. Home sharing makes better utilization out of a fixed asset, and by more optimally filling space it means the same number of people can use less supply.
"better utilization out of a fixed asset" is how we talk about factory machinery, not so much living space.
Housing has physical implications and psychological cost. If we wanted optimal space filling, we'd put 10,000 bunk beds in a warehouse and tell people to deal with it. The proles can have their bunk bed warehouse while the billionaires can have estates in San Francisco. et voilà, optimal filling of space allocated by level of monetary expenduture.
You know, if there were such arrangements, I'm sure that there would be people who would jump on them. I'm a little surprised Google hasn't built company dormitories, since they've got people living in vans in the parking lot rather than paying $3000 a month for a studio apartment.
Airbnb commissioned this economist[1]. That doesn't necessarily mean his conclusions aren't credible, but commissioned research that supports the agenda of the company that commissioned it should be subject to a higher level of scrutiny. Is there any independent research Altman can cite?
> Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage. 75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses. Making it harder to share your home in San Francisco may make it impossible for some of these hosts to afford to stay in their homes and in this city.
What about their neighbors? If I'm paying good money to rent an apartment or I shell out big bucks for a new condo, why should I be forced to live in a hotel-like environment because a neighbor decides to violate the lease or association CC&Rs/bylaws?
It doesn't matter how well-intentioned a host is. It's callous to have sympathy for hosts who are violating leases and condo association association CC&Rs/bylaws and no sympathy for the neighbors their selfish behavior negatively affects.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2015/03/30/airbnb-pushes-u...
There are other arguments to be made about the quality of service & safety. Read some of the comments from another recent HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10291070
My own individual and anecdotal story: as an individual whose neighbor was AirBnB-ing his apt next door to mine, seeing dozens of unfamiliar faces (and, without going into detail, the behavior and antics of some of these occupants) did not make me feel safe. If anything, they should severely restricted under this guise, not "affordable housing". (Though I do agree that more housing would generally improve the situation for all).
C'mon Sam, you can do better than this. Just about everyone's income helps them pay their rent or mortgage regardless of where it comes from. And let's not pretend (a) parkinson's law doesn't exist or (b) people allocate specific income sources to specific expenses. If you make more, you spend more. If you have to pay your rent on the 1st, you write a check from your bank account–you don't pull cash out of your "AirBnB income" envelope.
And, BTW, I've never rented an AirBnB in SF who wasn't (a) a young professional that could afford to live there or (b) someone 40+ who clearly had lived in SF a long time and bought prior to the spike in prices. These statistics and stance just don't compute for me.
Look, I love AirBnB and I think it's a great service. But it's just that–the best short-term/vacation rental service. Nothing more. I'm a little tired of them (and their apologists) acting like they're some kind of cultural juggernaut.
I always knew they'd have huge political forces to answer to (my friends and I would often wager who was more likely to succumb to governments: Uber or AirBnB). They're going to have enforce bed taxes. They're going to have to police municipal laws, HOA regulations, and more. And after it all shakes out, maybe this isn't as profitable of a business as people thought (for both AirBnB and hosts).
Of course, like Uber, they'll likely take the lobbyist route to fight this (maybe they already have). But this is a case where a little humility would go a long way IMO. Would it be so hard for AirBnB or Sam to say "yeah, there's a housing issue and we might even be part of the cause. so let's work together to find a solution or compromise."?
I think Airbnb is well aware of the housing issue and more than willing to work together on solutions.
Having said that, I think Airbnb is a fine way for people to earn some money making use of their existing spare housing. I may dislike the PR/marketing bullshit that is the term "sharing economy", but I'm pretty disappointed that this thread seems to be full of Airbnb bashing. While they may not be the ideal solution to SF's housing woes, it's pretty clear that they're not part of the problem... or if they are, it seems they're at least doing more good than bad.
I'm sorry, that's just not true, and Sam, I admire a lot of what you've said on a lot of issues, but I cannot believe that you are sincere in this article overall, unless you are just naive.
Any property owner in San Francisco has always been able to go to the Planning Commission and request a conditional use permit to turn their home into a bed and breakfast, and as far as we can tell, no such request has ever been denied.
Renters in San Francisco do not in almost any case I have ever heard of have the right to sublet our apartments, even to additional roommates, without the approval of our landlords, and with good reason.
If a person has lived in San Francisco for some time, and loses their ability to earn enough to pay their rent, it is abusive and narcissistic for that person to believe that simply by having the keys to a place that already does not belong to them, they can - with no consideration for their neighbors - turn their home into a business. A hotel business, no less, which kind of foists upon them the responsibilities of travel guides, as we read in an article this morning.
Now, as demand for housing in an area is shooting up, individual renters are leveraging that in a way that does not contribute to the cost of maintaining property, putting increased pressure on other tenants, and disallowing the landlord from actually satisfying that demand.
All that aside, AirBnb knows what the fuck they are doing. I know at least one successful AirBnb host who has had AirBnb approach them and encourage them to rent up nearby apartments and turn them into new units!
San Francisco housing activists have asked time and time again for AirBnb to open up data about how many hosts have multiple units, and who is renting when not in their unit, so that data may be used over time to guide regulation, but as is becoming a trend with YC companies, private executives and investors feel that they can do better city planning than people who have decades or perhaps their entire lives invested in doing so.
Put up or shut the fuck up, sir.
-- Upton Sinclair iirc
Rather than just point out specific issues with the merits of the argument, you implied he is either insincere, or naive.
What exactly about the current state of SF makes you think the people doing city planning here are in any way competent?
[ Clarification: I and other activists are exploring the notion that acting on behalf of future imagined voters and against the will of existing voters may be criminal gerrymandering, basically the sort of politics that keeps my home state of Texas uninhabitable. All current SF housing policy led by the mayor and supervisors like Mark Farrell, who holds stock in a YC company that derives income from AirBnb, does exactly this. ]
I strongly suggest staying the fuck out of San Francisco politics. Doing otherwise would be a great way to lose all of the money that you have amassed as an AirBnb shareholder.
The values of HN are civility and substantiveness. Everyone is welcome to present their views here within those bounds, and no one is welcome to break them.
You may be aware that there are people who specifically choose not to live in a high rent place such as San Francisco or Manhattan (as only two examples) because it is expensive and they can't afford it. And they know it and understand that is part of the "life is not fair" theme. Not everyone will make enough to rent or buy in those places and there is nothing new about this either. That it impacts startups is an entirely different issue. And startups are the reason the rent is so high obviously in San Francisco, right?
Where I am located it's impossible to get anywhere near the quality of labor that I might get if I was located in San Francisco, NYC or really any large metropolitan area. Obviously I have made a choice (for many reasons) to be where I am (as have many others). Everyone makes choices. If you move to San Francisco to take a job you have to factor in the cost of housing when you make your decision to work there. As far as the legacy people who live there and are impacted in a negative way that is truly an unfortunate situation.
for some, income is just a means to an end.
airbnb isn't providing this extra income for free. it expects hosts to provide a service, which requires work, which requires time and energy.
if that extra income is just offsetting the rise in housing costs, then quality of life is decreasing ...
my head is spinning..
(And also that the number of units that are effectively full-time rented on Airbnb is just about 1% of the entire off-rental-market supply--let's get that 99% back!)
"In the past year, only about 340 units in SF were rented on Airbnb more than 211 nights, which is what Airbnb has calculated as the break-even point compared to long-term rental."
This just didn't sound right; and doing the quick math with the average one bedroom going for 3500.. To reach that 211 day number would mean that rentals on air bnb are going for about 200.
But doing a search in SF for air bnb the average rental is 422.. Now some of these are multi room, and some are just a couch.. but I can't seem to find a single 1 bedroom non-share for under 260.
This makes that 211 figure feel like its off. Which makes me feel that the 340 units is off.
Can we see the calculations used? Also is there a big jump in those units at 210 days.. 200 or 182..
I mean as a land lord if you only have to work half the year and make only a little less revenue; plus the positive of less liabilities I could see my self wanting to air bnb over rent out my unit.
"While there are many larger underlying contributors to the housing shortage in San Francisco, it is possible that Airbnb adds stress on the margins."
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/11/airbnb-and-the-problem-of-d...
For the purposes of Prop F, statistics that seem more relevant are
- how many units are rented more than 90 nights (the current law) [1]
- how many units are rented more than 75 nights (as proposed by Prop F)
When I see AirBnB supporters focusing on a number that doesn't seems as relevant, it feels like spin to me.
> The median number of trips per unit was 5, and mean was 13.3.
Interesting shift here to talking about trips per unit, rather than nights per unit. Back in 2012, the average stay was 5.5 days [2]. So does that mean that the average number of days per unit is 71.5 (5.5 * 13)?
Also, according to the Chronicle [3], out of the 5,459 listings in 2015, "205 hosts have three or more listings. These super hosts account for 4.8 percent of all hosts, but control 993 properties — 18.2 percent of Airbnb’s local listings." I didn't see anything in Sam's post or the other anti-Prop F posts that discusses this.
[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/san-francisco-board-of-supervisors-...
[2] http://blog.airbnb.com/economic-impact-airbnb/
[3] http://www.sfchronicle.com/airbnb-impact-san-francisco-2015/...
That statistic is meant to say that only 340 units were rented out enough to match what could have been made via a lease. So if people are snatching up property to use just for Airbnb, they either aren't doing it a lot or aren't actually making a sound economic decision in all but 340 cases.
However, the city's already limited units to 90 days, so the 211ers are already handled -- if the city (with AirBnB's cooperation) enforces the law, that is. So I don't this point isn't particularly relevant to Prop F. Your mileage may vary, of course!
I think it's actually a useful metric. A big complaint from neighbors seems to be "frequency of new strangers coming and going", which is what this metric quantifies.
> A big complaint from neighbors seems to be "frequency of new strangers coming and going", which is what this metric quantifies.
If my downstairs neighbor rents to a AirBnB guest I would still call them a "stranger" even after 5.5 days.
Oh, agreed. I don't think there's any reasonable value of "short term" where that wouldn't be the case.
Then again, I've lived in my current building for over a year, and I don't know anyone in the building. A few I recognize on sight, but we all tend to keep to ourselves. I'd consider them "strangers" too.
Ok, there are a small number of units that are let or sub-let for 2/3 of the nights per year. That doesn't tell us much. I'd guess it would be near a full time job to keep your house let out 66% of the time. You wouldn't even be living there most of the time...how can you even really claim it to be yours?
Any observation would show that the primary use is for AirBnB and their customers.
I have trouble believing AirBnB helps SF. Anecdotally, I know a few people who rent their places on AirBnB. All live in rent controlled units and effectively re-rent at market rates. One actually reduced hours at his job because income from AirBnB was so lucrative.