r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 7h ago

Society New Airbnb rules ban hosts from making guests wash dishes, do laundry & other checkout chores

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/new-airbnb-rules-ban-hosts-from-making-guests-wash-dishes-do-laundry-other-checkout-chores-3420832/
26k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

246

u/el_diego 7h ago

But I love paying a cleaning fee AND being forced to clean the place myself.

Yeah, nah. Hotels are 1000x better than Airbnb. Even with these new rules in place, I'd rather deal with professional hospitality workers not some Karen who leaves a passive aggressive note about using the shower squeegee so her glass doesn't get spots.

70

u/Ok-Mycologist-3829 7h ago

Landlords should be renting these out as actual homes, not for hotel stays. So many reasons to hate Airbnb.

103

u/Lexi_Banner 6h ago

No, no. These are homes that should be on the market for people to buy and live in. A healthy rental market is fine, but these people are taking great, single-family homes out of the market for first time buyers, and fucking up the entire market.

24

u/Ok-Mycologist-3829 6h ago

Ohhhh I am totally on board with that. More homeownership please.

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 3h ago

It's part of the K-shaped economy. Some people absolutely can and do buy a house, live in it, then upgrade to another house. But keep the first one and rent it out. Sometimes they'll buy more.

1

u/WackyHumanSlop 4h ago

Single family homes should not be allowed to exist.

Communal habitation pods are the future

6

u/Lexi_Banner 4h ago

You do you, boo, but not everyone wants that.

1

u/Somanylyingliars 1h ago

We had those back in my days of 50s-70ish. Cities slowly eliminated them. See Barbizon Hotel in NYC as an example. YMCA and YWCA we're another example. Those need to make come backs.

-7

u/justheretocomment333 6h ago

How many airbnbs do you suspect are in areas where first-time home buyers are looking? I suspect very few. The vast majority are in vacation areas. Pick a random Boston suburb and see how many listings there are. Guessing maybe a few dozen which just doesn't matter to the overall housing market.

15

u/Lexi_Banner 5h ago

The point is that the more single family housing that gets snapped up for rentals and AirBnB purposes means that the remaining housing on the market gets pushed up in price (artificially), and often pushes young families and first-time buyers out.

-1

u/justheretocomment333 5h ago

Point is, it's a drop in the bucket outside of tourist zones which already had a ton of houses used as short-term rentals.

4

u/Lexi_Banner 4h ago

Since you seem to have missed half the context of my post, you might as well read the post I just made to someone else who missed half the context:

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1xbt833/new_airbnb_rules_ban_hosts_from_making_guests/19rg8qnxip9qb/

-3

u/Chataboutgames 4h ago

This feels like such a weird place to focus. You want a more housing supply? Build more houses. Outlawing Air BnB isn't going to do shit.

4

u/Lexi_Banner 4h ago

Have you not followed this conversation? Let's review, shall we?

Landlords should be renting these out as actual homes

This is the post I replied to. Emphasis mine. Please note that I did not directly object to AirBnB use (though I do also object to that use as well). I said:

These are homes that should be on the market for people to buy and live in.

I objected to the LANDLORDS and RENTING portion. Because the vast majority of these landlords are not Jim and Judy the Friendly Family who have a single second home to rent out. They are mega corps (like Blackstone), and they snap up as many single family dwellings in a marketplace as they can, then rent them at crazy rates. Specifically homes that appeal to young and/or first time buyers - 2bdrm starter homes.

This PLUS the AirBnB assholes means that a not-insignificant amount of people are unable to buy their first house because they are either priced out, or there just isn't any appropriate inventory for them to buy.

It's not just about AirBnB, it's about all of the assholes ruining the market for young and/or first time buyers. Yes, we need a healthy rental market, but we are currently at a point where the market is trapping people in rentals and not allowing more families to buy. Corporations should be restricted from single home purchases entirely (including condos and townhomes!), and AirBnB assholes should be restricted to how many properties they can purchase as well (including condos and townhomes as well!). That would correct this massive imbalance of renters vs. owners and allow a lot more people to get a foot on the ladder.

Does this make my objections clearer? Are you able to follow the whole conversation now?

8

u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 5h ago

You realize people live in the cities that other people go on vacation to right? All those people working in restaurants and hotels at your vacation destination live there, and are getting priced out of where they are from because Airbnb in many locations. That is the case where I am from, even though they are illegal there.

-6

u/justheretocomment333 5h ago

Yeah, but those jobs dont exist without people coming and staying in their towns.

7

u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 5h ago

So they can stay in the hotel and leave us houses to rent for affordable prices....

-1

u/justheretocomment333 5h ago

There is more demand than the hotels can handle. Hence the market for short-term rentals in these places.

2

u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 4h ago

Not the case where I am from, there are lots of small motels, and short term rentals are illegal, so are air bnb, if people don't think the motels we have are good enough they should go elsewhere. The motels are sometimes empty when illegal airbnbs are still existing.

0

u/MoonBatsRule 5h ago

It's funny how people seem to believe that prior to AirBnB, there was no such thing as a "vacation rental" in a vacation area, and that if AirBnB didn't exist, they would be able to buy a house cheap in a desirable vacation area near the beach or the ski slopes. At which point they would either leave it unoccupied most of the time, or would move there full-time and then bitch about how there are no good jobs.

8

u/el_diego 5h ago

Can you not see how services like Airbnb massively accelerated that into something unsustainable?

Instead of rich people leaving some places unattended, due to ease of access, we now have people buying up homes for the specific purpose of treating them as short stay.

0

u/MoonBatsRule 1h ago

People have owned short-stay properties for many, many, many decades. Probably started 100 years ago when the automobile got popular.

My family has vacationed in a vacation area for 60 years. At first, they started in a motel. Then they rented a place they heard of from the friend of a friend. Then a friend of theirs bought a place and they rented from them for a long time. When I got old enough, I started by staying with them. Then I drove around there and got phone numbers from lawn and window "vacation for rent" signs. Then I used realtor websites - but the trick is that you had to know the realtor. Then about 30 years ago (!) a website started that allowed people to list their properties for weekly rentals.

AirBnB simply allowed broke weekly rentals into pieces - you could rent for a weekend (pay more) and someone else could rent for the rest of the week (cheaper).

At the same time it became easier to manage those properties. 60 years ago you had to hire a property manager to visit the property in the offseason to check on it, so that meant higher rents. But then alarm companies came along, and then cameras and real-time sensor monitoring. It is also easier to find people to service your property - instead of going to the local library to find a phone book from that area, you can look for landscaping companies on the internet.

3

u/justheretocomment333 5h ago

Yeah, Summit Count, Colorado real estate has been fucked since like the early 90s.

7

u/Zebidee 5h ago

Airbnb has destroyed the housing market everywhere it's gone.

People love to blame immigrants, but short term rental vacuuming up supply is the reason you can't afford to buy in your own city.

1

u/DiabolicallyRandom 2h ago

I think there are exceptions but those are not new. There are obvious vacation homes in places that people wouldn't live year round anyways. Those sorts of rentals existed long before airbnb and would continue to exist if airbnb disappeared tonight.

The problem with airbnb is that it enabled any. Random asshole to start renting shit. It was cool at first when it was literally just someone renting their house out on the cheap while not home.

But then the professional companies started getting involved and it turned to shit completely.

I prefer hotels, but some destinations simply do not have them. I will typically opt for other platforms like VRBO, as renters there tend to be less vulture and more like the old school "find a rental via a travel agent".

Anyways, this crackdown is good, period. If hosts quit hosting, they should never have been renting their house to begin with.

9

u/Chapeaux 5h ago

Hotels are the way to go since Airbnbs are always a struggle and are also a problem for the locals trying to buy homes.

2

u/forgot_my_useragain 4h ago

Due to a house fire in July I've been living in a 3-star extended stay hotel for the last 3 months. It's pretty nice tbh. The room is like a little studio apartment, there's all the typical hotel stuff like a spa and workout room, plus free laundry machines and free breakfast and dinners. Plus all the staff is super nice and helpful. One if them even helped me jump my car battery with the courtesy shuttle lol. Ain't no AirBnB host doing that.

I looked for a long term AirBnB after first getting into the hotel thinking it'd be cheaper (for my insurance) and a bit more private. People in my city are out of their minds with the prices and requirements, and the few of them that I emailed back never responded. Honestly, I'm glad they didn't. With the exception of 2 or 3 loud ass people staying in the room next to me, being here has been a very positive experience, as much as being displaced from your home for 3 months can be.

1

u/Lexi_Banner 3h ago

My garage was burned down a decade ago (arson), and it was a nightmare to get replaced with insurance. I hope your home replacement is going much smoother, because what a nightmare!

1

u/Fafoah 5h ago

Airbnb definitely has value when you’re trying to fit 20 people in a house to get shit-faced and cook your own food before like, a music festival or for a bachelor party

Problem is greedy Airbnb owners aren’t holding up their end of the bargain by doing all the extra stuff.

Ive had plenty of good experiences where im basically dealing with a robot and as long as we dont do any property damage or get any noise complaints then everythings chill. All the horror stories definitely had me reconsider for a few recent trips though. Also how they can basically cancel on you for no reason with zero consequences

1

u/Chataboutgames 4h ago

I don't think anyone should stay in an Air BnB because it's categorically better than a hote, you stay in an Air BnB because it has a better location or better fits what you're trying to do (like renting a big house for a 14 person family trip.)

-8

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

4

u/el_diego 6h ago

I got to stay in a lovely private home on a beach and didn’t have to hear people clomping around and kids screaming at 6am

That's nice for you. We thought the same based on the pictures and house description, but turns out it was a shared home with a neighbour upstairs that had clompy children at 6am. And the place wasn't very clean and had heaps of broken things. Didn't stop the owner from sending heaps of passive aggressive pre entry messages

1

u/swarmofbeees 5h ago

I mean that sucks but that’s what the reviews are for? I only stay in places with clear feedback.