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I was poking around in the Airbnb map of Manly (a beach suburb in Sydney where there are lots of STRs) to see if the pricing for my own Manly apartment was market competitive in December (it’s nearing the summer holidays in Sydney so things tend to get pricey), and check out what I found!
Just, wow. It’s really something. I used to think photography mattered, and I put so much work into taking beautiful photos of my own place… but maybe I didn’t need to bother?
It’s not showing a preview so let me try to sketch out a word picture for those of you who don’t want to click on a link. Imagine:
Most of the pictures are taken with a fish-eye lens so it looks like you’re going to be staying in a spaceship;
No lighting adjustment so everything looks dingy and yellow;
The photo of the kitchen has a pile of dishes (can’t tell if they’re dirty or clean) covering the sink, and a random extension cord draped across the floor that looks like a real trip hazard;
Bedrooms have random crap on the floor and the bed looks like someone just slept in it and then hastily pulled up the bedspread to take a photo;
One bedroom shot has, inexplicably, a painting or some sort of wall art lying on the bed;
Pretty sure I can see mould spots in a corner of the bathroom shower but it’s hard to tell for sure because the picture is so bizarrely awful;
There are only three photos that aren’t taken with the fisheye lens, and two of those have a thumb covering the corner of the picture.
It’s honestly hilarious. Worth having a giggle at.
I guess the STR market in Manly is pretty tight when a new Airbnb apartment (photographed like this!) costs $800 (Australian dollars, equivalent to USD 525) for a weekend stay. (And it has 4 x 5-star reviews!)
As a photographer I found this hilarious.
He’s charging $250/night + $100 cleaning fee! and yet look at the pics, the place is a mess!
The first photo looks like some kind of mental institution. … the pic is doing him no favours.
and no mention of parking, that spot is a nightmare if you have a vehicle.
Photography matters, he’ll be scraping through the dregs, although with summer coming there’s more demand than supply. That’s the joy of Sydney in general, sadly you don’t have to be exceptional to succeed. I’ve always said this about global markets, Australia is a tough place to make a business work, compared to … anywhere else, but Sydney has it the easiest in the whole country cos demand is big.
Right? So when I first listed my place, I had a lady managing it for me, and she wanted us to get a professional photographer. My husband told her, “I don’t think Lisa’s going to go for that; she used to work as a photographer and she really likes taking pictures and she’s going to want to do it herself.” And the manager acceded to letting me take photos, but you could see it was killing her to do it and she was really straining to be polite. In the end, I think she was satisfied with what I produced. (She’d better be; it’s better photography than half her other listings that were done by professionals!) But when I saw this listing, all of a sudden I knew why she was scared when we told her we were going to take our own photos. This is what she was afraid of.
I’m dissing the poor guy and now I feel bad – trying to look past the bad photography, the place looks like it’s probably not bad, and he has air conditioning which is more than I have. And talk about managing expectations! If you decide to stay there based on those pictures, then just about anything you find will be nicer than you expected.
I think my favorite part is the aborted tile job on the bathroom floor.
And did you read the description? He really put a lot of effort into that, too. Of course, with a photo gallery like that, you don’t really need much of a description, do you? Those click bait photos tell you pretty much everything you’d want to know.
Don’t. It’s absurd for someone to put up a listing like this. Reminds me of the private message a guest once sent me along with his review- “That was the best Airbnb stay I’ve had. You wouldn’t believe the crap some people list and actually want money for.”
Good observation about the deciduous trees. A friend’s home has a waterway view after the trees on someone else’s property drop their leaves. In this case, none of the trees pictured lose their leaves. So 8’6” with x-Ray vision needed!
Remember a few years ago when Brian Chesky made a public announcement that Airbnb was going to “verify” the accuracy of all their millions of listings?
Aside from the fact that was laughably impossible, and we all knew it wouldn’t happen, I did read a couple of posts sometime soon after from hosts who did actually get asked to do this. It consisted of a video call where the host had to do things like open the kitchen utensil drawer to show the rep that yes indeedy, there were kitchen utensils in there.
And the hosts who were contacted to do this were long-time 5* Superhosts with hundreds of great reviews, not low star accuracy hosts or newbies, which is who it would, of course, make sense to start with.
Airbnb AI strikes again.
I stayed in one “lake view” apartment in FL this year – the view was of a parking lot full of construction dumpsters.
The listing was a few blocks from the beach and included a photo of the ocean.
@gillian@lisanddavid I’m also a photographer. But I still had to do some reading to properly shoot interiors well. (I’m more into landscapes, abstract close-ups, and, well astrophotography.) But I’ve found I need to use my manual 14mm lens on my Nikon to get nice wide shots that don’t “barrel” too much. My autofocus 20mm-70mm is “too long.”
@muddy Not to argue, but I pulled up that photo in another window and saw it full-res, then I enhanced it a tad and cropped to show you a detail here. I agreed initially that it appears to be what you suggest. But I now suggest that due to the different color of the border tiles and what appears to be a floated blue-green-epoxy floor that runs right to the level of that wet-floor drain and tiles, I think it’s a design decision. Again, better photography might illuminate that fact, but I see some nice fixtures above a nice bowl sink mounted to, wait for it, a surfboard. I do believe that floor represents the ocean lapping onto the beach (a few steps away)! I even see some slightly varied greenish tones that get progressively darker as one moves away from the “beach” into deeper water.
I think this guy is a new, inexperienced host who will learn and grow just as we all were doing when we were all chuffed that after 4 stays had an inconceivable 5-star average.
I considered that, but if it is a design decision, it sure looks to me like the tiles are not level with the rest of the floor, but on top of it. Meaning the edges of those tiles would be sharp and a safety hazard and toe stubber. And if they are higher than the rest of the floor, any tiler who knows what they’re doing would have put a border of grout that smoothly angles to the rest of the floor.
@muddy I agree that the “tiler” should have actually done the tedious job of cutting each edge tile to give it a smooth line, which would of course better create that “it’s the coastline!” effect.
Yes, but even if he curved it, if those tiles are higher than the rest of the floor, they would still be a safety hazard. It’s also hard to nip those little pool tiles accurately- they are made of glass and can’t be nipped cleanly. I speak from experience- I tiled my shower floors, one of which has a curved shape, with pool tiles. It didn’t matter that the edges were ragged on my shower floor, as the edges were covered in grout where they meet the tile walls.
Also, those tiles are going to get broken, as they are only about 1/8 of an inch thick, and being made of glass, aren’t meant to be walked on with shoes, which some guests will of course do.
oh yeah, I suck at interiors. When I was studying i thought I was going to specialise in architecture but somehow, despite being into real estate and renovations, I sucked at it, and turned out I was better with food, people and lifestyle.
That guy is treating ABB like it’s FB marketplace.
no, those mosaic tiles would be ceramic. they really date the room though, I’d guess that’s a 90s reno.
The backsplash in my main home is glass tiles that I installed. I agree that nipping doesn’t work. I used a glass grinder (the one for stained glass) whenever I needed a clean cut
We have been so lucky in the photography of our listing. I have to remember not to take ANY as I am an F at photography. Our Gf/ str photographer is the person who takes aerial and ground photos of the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX … for the developer of it.
We got some from Air and from Glamping hub too! Sometimes guests do close to the best also!
I do think it is rather rude to pick on this fellow with the fish eye lens and strange tiling. Maybe he is trying to make something out of nothing and really needs to be a host. He could be the most caring host of all, you never know, or on here lurking and just dying about being publicly torn apart.
