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I’m still deciding how I feel about this article. I think there are several valid points & some I think are too extreme.
In my beach area, rents & home prices have skyrocketed. STRs have increased dramatically. Investment groups are driving me crazy with cash offers to buy my condos.
Anyway-something to read
I’m sorry, but I gave up after:
I write to you today in the hope that you will radically re-structure your company before it starts a class war in which you will almost certainly lose the lion’s share of your wealth, your moral conscience, your place in history as innovators instead of oppressors, and you and your family’s physical safety.
FFS fella, it’s an online STR platform, not a satanic cult. Oh hang on a sec…
JF
I agree. His extremism diminishes the elements of his editorial that have value. In the crazy world we live in where drama & shouting is considered “presenting the news” sadly only extreme opinions get attention
While I agree with his basic premise, many of his suggestions don’t make any sense. He seems to think that Airbnbs are either owner-occupied or investment properties. He apparently doesn’t know that many home-owners have a rental unit on the property that they live on, that they created for the purpose of str, and that it wouldn’t be available for long-term housing anyway- the hosts haven’t taken anything off the market in terms of available homes to buy or rent for locals.
And the 14 days a year suggestion is absurd and clueless. I’m not going to ever rent out my guest room long-term, I’d rather it sit empty, available to friends and family who visit, and I don’t want a roommate. So even if I hosted guests 365 days a year, it has zero effect on a housing crisis.
I’m pretty left wing but I also found his rhetoric off putting. I’m still waiting for the evidence to come in that Airbnb is the problem. Absentee landlords, skyrocketing home prices, housing shortage, unaffordable housing, gentrification…those are all problems that Airbnb didn’t cause and I don’t think we know yet how much they make the problem worse.
And c’mon man, if we didn’t get out the pitchforks in 2008 we aren’t going to be getting them out.
I think ultimately Airbnb has helped people stay in homes. Layoffs over the past 10 years have put many families in financial jeopardy. Room/home rentals have helped many.
But there has always been a difficult landlord/tenant dynamic.
Even on a quick skim, this is nothing more than insipid ramblings.
.
He is not even a homeowner or a host. How very entitled, to be renting from others and having worthless opinions as to what others “should do with their property”.
He does seem to get that there are places like yours and mine, @muddy : “To be clear, renting out spare rooms, attics, basements, and backyards in owner-occupied properties isn’t the problem.”
But I wouldn’t want him as a tenant. Or anyone really, because once upon a time I was a reluctant landlord. So there’s that colouring my response.
I do own several pitchforks I should hang onto and rent out if it comes to that…
But he doesn’t exclude those in his proposal for limiting rentals to 14 days per year. In fact, he specifies “all owner-occupied properties” in that. If he thinks those aren’t an issue, why does he think they should be limited to 14 days?
Where I live in Australia, my state of New South Wales has put in place a registration requirement by November first.
Every local council was asked to take part in the construction of the new rules.
In my area there will be 3 sets of limits regarding availability to rent, for entire homes. In host share homes are fine.
I am fine - 365 days.
Twenty minutes away in the coastal villages - 180 days, unless you are a tourist approved development.
In Byron Bay they are facing a 90 day limit.
The main purpose of this was to limit tourists being housed in residential areas. These new rules have been flagged for the last 3 years….
The ITS NOT FAIR has started
He’s very inconsistent and clearly not much for editing, he was all over the place. I mean, should it only be not investors or only be owner occupied or only be 14 days or only be-just-not-the-house he’s renting?
That would also be considered owner-occupied.
Something I noticed that he must not be aware of is that second homes do cost more, both for the mortgage and for the insurance, etc. Not 500% more but he obviously has a flair for the dramatic. However, in the past, second homes were generally in the vacation-home category. And vacation homes are not generally housing stock because of the locations and also probably being built for people to specifically buy as vacation homes. They are not typically housing stock that the locals would buy or rent. But he’s mostly (he’s inconsistent) talking about homes in regular neighborhoods (without lakes or beaches) that have provided housing for the people who live and work in the area.
He comes off like a whiny brat and I suspect that he did not receive all of the strikeouts and big "WC"s (word choice) in red pen on his papers in school that he obviously deserved. Or the continuity edits.
It’s like a Twitter storm rather than a well-thought out opinion piece.
That being said, I think it would be best if Airbnb listings had to be owner-occupied or legitimate vacation homes in vacation locations which the host actually uses sometimes.
Me too. We have a 3-family and though I like having a traveling nurse for 3 months sometimes, I don’t want tenants. I went against my never-again and took tenants last summer for a year and it was a nightmare and I think we lost money on the deal.
If we couldn’t do STR, I think we would just have more room to ourselves 
He should have just confined his point to not allowing purely str investment properties, which is what takes housing for locals off the market.
And that would be owner-occupied or vacation properties. Even if it’s an individual and not a big company that buys a house in a neighborhood just to rent it out as STR, that’s still an investment property.
…something. 
??? My home isn’t an investment property. I bought the lot and built the house as my home, not with intention of using it for strs. That I decided to list my guest room somewhere along the way doesn’t make it an investment property.
Of course your home is not an investment property (home being the operative word). It’s owner-occupied. My point was that anything that is not owner-occupied (or not a traditional vacation home) is an investment property. I can’t figure out why there’s a misunderstanding, but I didn’t even mention your home.
I totally misunderstood you, sorry.
I’m of 2 minds about the vacation homes. If it’s a vacation home that the owner uses a good deal of the time themselves, it isn’t really owner-occupied, their primary residence is elsewhere but it’s not just an investment property.
But if they are really only interested in making money off renting it out as an str, and only stay there themselves if they have a vacant slot, that’s an investment property to me.
It’s obvious he’s disturbed because he can’t find decent and affordable housing where he lives. This happens in resort/vacation areas and in larger cities.
The answer is not to outlaw STRs. The reason why there is little affordable rental housing in much of the US is that building costs are now so high that builders have to build for the high end of the market in order to make a profit.
There is very little affordable rental housing in urban or suburban US communities unless it’s subsidized in some way, and Republicans have been trying to cut back on public housing subsidies for years. Of course the real answer is to require that employers pay a living wage so taxpayers aren’t subsidizing housing for their employees. I’m tired of paying Section 8 from my taxes because McD and MalWart pay so little.
My property is an investment property, yet oddly owner occupied as my business office is part of the property. I built a second unit on the property solely to rent out STR.
If I was regulated out of doing STR’s the cabins would sit vacant. I am not going to have tenants especially so close to me.
I just want to retire someday.
RR
There’s a variation of that is common in USA retirement areas.
I’m doing a version of this with short term rentals. My ultimate goal is to live there. It’s kind of a temporary investment property. Like @RiverRock I hope to retire someday
My area is full of investment buyer / rentals. This has a different flavor because eventually the owner will live there.