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- cross-posted to:
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Under the new restrictions, short-term renters will need to register with the city and must be present in the home for the duration of the rental
Home-sharing company Airbnb said it had to stop accepting some reservations in New York City after new regulations on short-term rentals went into effect.
The new rules are intended to effectively end a free-for-all in which landlords and residents have been renting out their apartments by the week or the night to tourists or others in the city for short stays. Advocates say the practice has driven a rise in demand for housing in already scarce neighbourhoods in the city.
Under the new system, rentals shorter than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city. Hosts must also commit to being physically present in the home for the duration of the rental, sharing living quarters with their guest. More than two guests at a time are not allowed, either, meaning families are effectively barred.
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the early days of airbnb was basically this concept.
they didn’t start out as a marketplace for unregulated hotels that destroy housing markets. that didn’t happen until after they started cashing checks
venturevulture capitalists.So many people forget this origin. Air mattress in your spare room (in SF), iirc.
As much as I, personally, prefer a house when away - either with the family or as a couple - this is one of the drivers behind the crunch in housing. People can’t possibly afford to by a place to live when the competition is a wanna-be property “entrepreneur” who is going to get 2-4x market rent by doing short term rentals.
Originally my mum moved my brother and I into the same room and rented out the empty room for $40 a night. The cleaning fee was $20 and we still cleared $2,000 in one summer.
My brother and I each got a 5% cut and we bought ice creams from Safeway every day for a week until we got wicked stomach aches
I believe it since that’s how actual BNBs work.
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I took a trip out to the Rockies earlier this year, and booked an AirBnB. The listing was for the basement of a house where a lovely old retired couple lived. The basement was decorated and furnished beautifully, and we got to chat with the couple every now and then. They gave us recommendations to a farmer’s market which was pretty cool.
It was the first time I’ve ever booked an Airbnb that was true to its original mission. This is what AirBnb should be - renting out spare rooms - and not a turn-an-apartment-unit-into-a-hotel thing.
That basement should be someone’s house.
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It’s so fucking obnoxious the way people try to make outlier situations as if it invalidates the argument. You know god damn well the situations you’re describing are an extremely tiny percentage of airbnb usage (honestly if any at all). Don’t be daft.
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I like the part where you called me a troll because I didn’t want to DM with you.
Real classy buds.
If they are using Airbnb then they are already a landlord.
Hotels are for short term, houses are for living.
Ah stop, I get the intention but b&b’s are a thing and always have been. Wanting to sporadically have a visitor in your retirement shouldn’t require becoming a permanent landlord.
People should not be running hotels in residential areas.
If the owners are living in it at the same time, and you’re renting out a room, that’s hardly a hotel.
The original comment was a basement that they were renting out short term.
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If you look at the comment I replied to, it said they have a full furnished basement that they airbnb out.
I said it should be a house for someone to live in.
I’m not exactly sure where you’re getting “should they be compelled to sell part of their lifelong home outright” or “I don’t think any reasonable person would call me a landlord for renting out my apartment for a week while I take a trip” in my comments, it seems you’re either inventing something to get mad at or you have a guilty conscience.
Because that’s the standard of living? A basement?
Fully furnished? I own a home, my guest room is fully furnished in that it has a bed, desk, side tables, and a TV.
Listen to yourself. Fully furnished doesn’t mean the same as configured with separate utilities, a separate entrance, a separate kitchen, or separate bathing facilities.
I’m glad you’re housing secure with a guest room, it must be nice.
Some people would kill for a full furnished basement and instead of being rented out short term it could be housing someone instead and leave the short term to hotels.
I really don’t understand why this is such a controversial view.
in a case of a house shortage, maybe… but The issue is not that there is a house shortage. It is that the houses are not being used as houses. There are more than enough houses in almost every city to home everyone and several times over to house the homeless. But that isn’t what the houses are being used for. If they were then yeah, they’d have the space likely to rent out like an Airbnb. But there should be no homeless anywhere if there’s enough rooms to pull off Airbnb. But no one is looking at the homeless as an issue before starting an Airbnb.
Airbnb is unchecked capitalism that got way out of hand. It’s very fucked up to call this a society anymore. This is hell.
*some neckbeards house
NY is killing it. More of this, please.
Airbnb has fought the rules in court, arguing they were essentially a ban, and that they would hurt visitors looking for affordable accommodation.
They’re called hotels. A ban is appropriate. Fuck you.
Not to mention legitimate bed and breakfasts are still legal and well regulated businesses.
Too bad it’s only the city doing this and not the whole state :(
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Because the rest of NY state has a housing shortage?
The entire fucking country currently has a housing shortage.
Do you have a source? I’ve seen a lot of vacancies upstate.
The problem is there are more instances of people who own places just to rent. Ban those. But permit people to rent places they actually have established residency in.
As an example… Boyfriends and girlfriends with their own places but spending the night swapping between are also super inefficient usage of resources. I’m obviously not suggesting that couples must live together… But they’re perfect for occasional Airbnb rentals. Rent it for the week and spend that week at your partners. Same with people who travel for work.
Airbnb has fought the rules in court, arguing they were essentially a ban, and that they would hurt visitors looking for affordable accommodation.
They’re called hotels.
I don’t know about prices in NYC but I can assure you that the cost of an airbnb in asia is nothing compared to the cost of a hotel (for the same standard)
When we don’t have a housing crisis, this argument will be much more appealing. There’s massive homelessness where I live (Bay Area), so how much someone has to pay for a room is a lot lower on my list.
Why can’t people live in hotel vacant rooms them?
Airbnb prices are comparable to similar hotels, maybe even more expensive in the US and Europe. Same thing will happen in Asia once they gain the market share they’re looking for, then they’ll raise prices.
Absolutely incorrect in central/eastern Europe. Hotels are usually $100+ a night for a suite, Airbnbs depending on the city can be as low as $50 a night for the whole apartment.
Hotels in NY and other cities need competition, smaller scale land owners renting their condos while on vacation, or their parents home that they wouldn’t sell anyways is perfectly fine. Hotels take up a lot of land and often have many vacancies so that is just as much of a problem, and yes tenants can longer term live in hotels- I lived in a hotel for around 7 months because it was cheaper than an apartment(not paying the market price but just talked to the manager) during COVID, many(maybe most) nights I was the only person in the building. Prices are a supply issue which existed long before Airbnb but it’s just easy to blame.
Hotels are not an end all be all solution. They are significantly more expensive when dealing with large family’s or groups of travelers. Most do not allow pets.
That doesn’t outweigh the problems being created. A bnb isn’t supposed to be the same as renting a cabin for the week.
Airbnb didn’t created supply shortages.
So companies like VRBO are better than airbnb? How do you think cabins are getting rented?
That’s a whole different sentence that I never said.
Your last sentence says airbnbs are not supposed to be the same as renting a cabin for the weekend. I pointed out there are different companies effectively doing the same thing. Its not a far stretch. Let’s add in families like going to cities on trips and not just camping in the woods.
And you conveniently missed things like population density. Put some thought into the why instead of looking for the first strawman that jumps out at you.
Damn this seems like a hot take given the comments but I think these rules are dumb. If I go on a two week vacation somewhere else I should be able to rent out my place for those two weeks. The issue isn’t AirBnB as a whole, it’s people buying up places for the express intention of only using it for AirBnB,
There should be some cap on often a place can be used for short term rentals like 4 weeks out of the year, enough that people who vacation somewhere else can use AirBnb and low enough that it makes more financial sense for people to rent it out long term instead of short.
The issue is how to enforce granular rules like that. You’ll end up with people buying time shares of airbnbs or some other wacky workaround. The issue ultimately is, if you leave any wiggle room, grifters will ruin it for the people using that wiggle room as intended. You can’t put in a law and expect everyone to adhere to the spirit of said law. I think with the litany of other property value issues that NY has, this hard line in the sand makes sense. It sucks that the grifters ruined it for people like you and I but the fact of the matter is that they did.
There should be a cap to how many buildings a person or a company can own. Why a person can have more than 3 homes? In the current world, this does not make any sense.
100% agree and while at it I don’t think any single family homes or rowhouse/townhouses should be owned by corporations. Apartments and such I can understand the building owned by a management company that only does long term rentals but otherwise homes should be owned by people.
So then the person creates an LLC and now the LLC owns the properties. Do you then think corporations shouldn’t be able to own more than 3 properties, too?
Just limit the number of residential buildings a company can own then
And then should we limit how many corporations a person can operate?
Sure, anti monopoly laws exist for a reason
I don’t think you know what a monopoly is
A single person or entity having control over specific commercial commodity or service or a vertical monopoly in which a group or entity own the means of production, distribution and other levels of the commercial activity,
All of which can be done by increasing the amount of companies that a group or entity runs or acquires.
People seem to forget we used to tell companies “no” about encroaching on other companies or buying them out to have a larger market share literally as anti-monopoly policies.
Anti-monopoly? Unless a person owned every corporation that owned every rental property, anti monopoly laws wouldn’t apply.
Limiting the number of companies someone can spin off and operate is reasonable to stop monopolies as well. An unlimited regulation would in fact just cause people to spinoff new companies whenever they hit a limit and just pretend it’s a different company and person doing anything. Limits to corporations is absolutely anti monopoly
Great idea!
People would just create a different LLC for each property so limiting ownership for companies wouldn’t work either.
Exactly correct
Trouble is, any legitimate effort to stop that sort of property prospecting would affect other real estate development, which is a huge industry (and political contributor) in New York.
Honestly, I don’t understand what everyone has against short term rentals. It may be an unpopular opinion, but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space? For a city like New York that gets visitors and transient workers from all over the world, maybe it would be better for it to have lots of short term rentals. Ultimately the market would find an equilibrium between short term rentals, long term rentals, and owner occupied properties.
I do think there needs to be more regulation for the rentals though, probably similar to hotels. Any property being rented out should be subject to the same safety inspections and regulations.
The market isn’t deciding the best use for the space; it’s deciding the most profitable. These are two very different things.
I love this way of looking at it. The market optimizes for profit not general good for the public
Definitely agree that the free market can come up with some undesirable solutions which is where I think regulation comes in to “guide” the more desirable outcomes that can be found organically. Personally, I think maximum occupancy and increased supply should be the goal where there is limited supply like NYC. Things like a vacancy tax and better zoning could help a lot.
Also, I’m not sure that I trust the government to find the best use of space either, especially in the face of corporate lobbying. The current road/highway system being built to the detriment of public transportation is a good example where a government prescribed solution can have a negative impact decades later.
I live in an area with AirBnB rentals.
All of the neighbor problems I and my neighbors have had, without exception, have been from short-term renters. That includes noise that continues all night, off leash, aggressive dogs, unsupervised kids, and threatening, overtly hostile renters.
The “market” can’t deal with this kind of thing, it requires regulations and enforcement.
They increase the overall cost of both buying and renting a property within that market, and are a nuisance for existing residents.
Historically – in the UK, at least – the market equilibrium has been that the rich own all the property and the poor pay rent until they die, aware that they can be served an eviction notice at any time.
This has not proven to be a popular policy. In 1918 all British men, regardless of whether they owned property or not, got the vote, and since then politicians have found it useful to not have the majority of voters perpetually furious about it.
but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space?
When it comes to something necessary for survival, like shelter, “letting the market decide” is a terrible idea.
For example: if corporations purchased all of the water so that people couldn’t access it, and you had to buy all your water from corporations, you couldn’t “let the market decide” what a fair price of water is. They have created this scarcity so they can profit off it, and the amount people are “willing to pay” to live turns out to be about “all the money they have.”
And Nestle actively wants the dystopia you describe. Very good example.
Definitely not advocating for full blown free market capitalism. My comment was more along the lines of letting the market organically find the best solutions. The government should set broad goals, like “maximize the amount of occupied housing units and minimize homelessness” and then provide the appropriate incentives to guide the market in that direction.
I agree that for inelastic goods like healthcare, food, water, shelter the situation is even more tricky. NYC just seems to be limited in that sense with already high density and low supply. Having any form of vacant units should be taxed heavily. Maybe even extend this to progressively tax larger units that reduce density. Billionaires row where the ultra wealthy have an entire floor for an apartment that they never use makes no sense to me.
The government should set broad goals, like “maximize the amount of occupied housing units and minimize homelessness” and then provide the appropriate incentives to guide the market in that direction.
So that’s not “letting the market decide the best use of space.” That is the Government deciding the best use of space and passing laws to encourage that, which is exactly what is happening here.
the issue is that there aren’t enough available apartments in nyc. there’s high competition to actually get an apartment. it’s normal to look at apartments with all your papers ready and apply on the spot… and still not get the fucking place even though you have a very high credit score, have been working at your job for years, have high savings etc. so you end up having to keep applying to a bunch of places until your application gets accepted. it’s a nightmare.
I wanna draw a compromise like you. I think the rental system does suck ass and shorter terms could be better negotiated into the system.
The problem is that this current disruption in the market is making people homeless. So that some wealthy people can stay for the weekend.
The ‘market’ isn’t gonna solve this, these social conventions have always been written by lawyers. This market just keeps trying to squeeze people out to reduce housing supply for all but the filthy rich. But playing into that market is also zoning laws, approval processes etc. It would be nice to fill in these gaps! Hostels, taverns, larger hotel rooms for big groups, short term rentals for 1 - 3 months without ‘year long lease’ and all that crazy approval bullshit.
Agree that regulation and zoning laws can be way better but I’m not sure how much more could be done about supply in NYC. The place is already one of the densest on the planet. Having an vacancy tax makes total sense too. Make sure that maximum available supply is actually being used.
The issue seems to be short term vs long term rentals and I’m not sure if I favor one over another for a place like NYC where a large part of the population has always been transient.
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I don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand: I dislike the trend of commercial companies buying up living space to turn around and rent it out to disruptive short-term tenants.
On the other hand: I don’t want to have anyone else present in my rental with me because that’s creepy.
That’s the point.
If you and I stay in hotels, people who work there will be able to afford to live near there.
They want you back in a hotel
They are trying to address housing shortages. The hotels might benefit, but so does everyone else because it effectively bars commercial operation of AirBnB. No landlords with 50 units etc.
Really to drop housing prices you have to address the secondary mortgage market. More supply is a band aid.
This will not actually help with the housing shortage. It will even result in further evictions as some people lose the potential income of renting out excess space to get over the hump.
That is still allowed though. The host can rent out a spare room with up to 2 guests at a time. The host just has to live there.
Under the new system, rentals shorter than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city.
So they register? There isn’t anything to indicate that hosts who plan to rent out a spare room and follow the rules won’t be approved.
When you register, you must comply with hotel-level standards.
Oh my god, you have to register with the city, like every other landlord? Crazy.
Yes and this requires additional restrictions on the property that many people flat-out cannot afford.
From what I can tell this is to help make sure they follow the new rules
If those hypothetical people lose their investment houses then other people can buy them.
To live in.
People who aren’t living in their home will lose the home to eviction? Listen to my violin.
I want them back in a hotel too.
Yes, where they should be.
If you’re travelling somewhere then stay in a hotel, it’s what they’re for.
No thanks. Apartment rentals have existed for decades.
Just not nearly so many, and with so little regulation.
Regulation isn’t my job though. Just like those not paying tax isn’t my responsibility, but it should be sorted properly.
And why is that a bad thing?
It’s the same as ride-sharing … which, when it started, was advertised as a cheaper alternative to taxis/cabs but that’s no longer the case.
I use taxis instead od ride-share because taxis are regulated and they have to buy licenses. Does this make them better? Not really, but they are contributing to the local economy through the tax base … and that alone does make them better.
It is still cheaper.
I’ve stayed in plenty of Airbnb’s that the owners were on-site the whole time. It’s not bad at all. I even used Airbnb to rent out a spare room for a couple years and it wasn’t weird at all (except for the people who were much more comfortable with nudity than I was).
The time I visited NYC, the Airbnb I rented was a small apartment divided up into three rooms with other renters staying there. Same as if the owner was there, wasn’t a problem or creepy.
So basically they decided to ban Airbnb. I wouldn’t be surprised if hotels lobbied for this
I wouldn’t be surprised if people living next to Airbnb’s pushed for this as well.
It’s horrible having holidaymakers show up to an otherwise residential building/area.
NIMBYism is the reason the housing market is fucked.
While you’re not wrong about that sentiment, it’s misplaced in this context. Partyers and holidayers make for awful neighbours.
So fuck people trying to pay rent because you don’t like people on vacation.
How exactly is that defensible?
If you have a property permanently on Airbnb, you’re not ‘trying to pay rent’, what is that nonsense?
This doesn’t just effect permanent airbnbs
If you’re renting a place, and subletting your guest room on Airbnb… This doesn’t stop you, they specifically made this the default case. If for some reason you’ve got a 5 bedroom place or something, maybe consider finding some long term housemates, then. It’s not like there’s a shortage of renters.
Nah man, fuck people driving up my rent for hosting vacationers. I reported an AirBnB to the city last year and now we have actual tenants.
Zoning laws exist for a reason.
Yes and that reason was originally safety, and now is “protecting my investments” at the cost of not having enough housing.
How is a law ending the stealth conversion of residentially zoned areas into commercial a net negative for housing?
Apartments are not commercially zoned, and neither are AirBnBs.
Both should be added to mixed zoning. That would be dope. Stores on the bottom, or alternating floors, with very dense buildings above current height restrictions, is basically the ideal solution.
Apartments are residentially zoned. Hotels are commercially zoned (for good reason).
Turning residential homes into unregulated mini-hotels at scale depletes housing stock, and is a nuisance to residents.
This law effectively blocks residential homes from continuing to be used as hotel businesses operating out of residentially zoned areas, allowing residential units to once again be used as housing, and removing the nuisance to residents.
Please explain why you see this as a NIMBY net negative for housing.
I’d say NIMBYism is second to investment buyers and rent seekers.
Scooby doo mask reveal. They are the same thing!
How so?
Not disagreeing, just having a hard time working out your point.
Comes from another comment I posted here:
New York City’s housing stock has only increased 4% since 2010, not nearly enough to keep up with its 22% increase in jobs. And from 2017 to 2021, New York City permitted 13 homes for every 1,000 residents in 2017
This is because of zoning restrictions preventing building. This occurs everywhere you see housing spiking, which distorts even the areas where building is occurring.
People don’t want “those people” in their neighborhoods or don’t want to lose their “neighborhood character,” or simply want to “protect their home values,” and so a persistent lack of supply is strangling the market.
Denying current renters an income stream, tightening the grip of the hotel market monopoly, and not actually freeing enough homes to impact the increase in demand, is not the solution.
That’s fair, but I think it’s not particularly relevant here.
Tourists should not be holidaying in people’s “back yards”.
It’s not about keeping out certain “types of people”, it’s about not wanting any people who have specifically come to holiday and treat the area like their playground.
And every Airbnb I know is run by someone who has multiple properties, and certainly isn’t letting holidaymakers live in their actual home.
Tourists should not be holidaying in people’s “back yards
Literally just NIMBYism.
Okay, ignore the rest of what I said and focus on your little buzzword 🤷♂️
I don’t want someone to knock down the house next door and start fracking the land, is that NiMbYiSm?
New York isn’t like other places - it is quite literally out of available land to build residential structures. NIMBYism may have an affect, but the overwhelming restriction in preventing new construction is that you’d have to raze structures to do so.
Yes and that’s not doable with current zoning restrictions.
Someone who owns a piece of land should be freely allowed to construct any residential structure they want, so long as the building is safe.
A bold opinion that seems to have been quite conclusively rejected in cities across the world.
Renters by and large don’t benefit from Airbnb, landlords do
Renters absolutely benefit from AirBnB if they were using the money to help bridge costs, which nearly every single article on this subject mentions.
And Landlords benefit a lot more from tighter housing restrictions.
This is less accurate as most recent residences built in NYC are “luxury” and not affordable.
That’s irrelevant because net increases to supply still move toward closing the supply/demand gap, and people further down the chain just move into vacated homes as people move into the new ones.
Yeah, that’s not happening. Those prices also go up. That’s because the invisible hand isn’t invisible. It’s greedy landlords jacking up rents.
Your theory is cute but it doesn’t match reality.
airbnb has a lot of hate from a lot of directions in NYC. Hotels, yes, but also from renters and homeowners.
Airbnb units remove long term rentals from the market, in a city which is desparately short on affordable, middle, and even luxury housing units.
Airbnb units in condos and coops (which usually violata the bylaws) create noise and safety conditions.
Probably held a bidding auction between hotels and air bnb. The hotels must have had deeper pockets to buy up a piece of legislation in a democratic system. How good is freedom
Leave your dog in the house, call the stay a ‘dog sitting job’ instead of AirBnB.
Gotta pay min wage for that
i don’t think so? under the table and not enough to be taxed
I think these aren’t thought out.
One way to improve them might be to make them only apply to hosts with more than one property. Like if I own a home I should be able to rent it out.
the issue is that it’s not individuals renting out their homes, it’s corporations that rent or purchase many apartments and then put them on air bnb. additionally, landlords leave apartments vacant for many months. both of these factors make renting harder and more expensive in nyc.
NYC is full of these apartment blocks where reasonable apartments got split into 3 or 4 tiny units designed specifically to be put on Airbnb. If they each get 3-4 bookings a month, that’s way more money than would be made renting the whole apartments, which crushes the rental market and drives prices sky high. These measures Should have been implemented 10 years ago. Second best time is now.
Hasn’t Hawaii (at least on Oahu) had this for some time now? I know when you look up AirBNB and VRBO there are mentions of it, and to contact the owner directly, etc.
It’s had it for a while, but enforcement was pretty spotty. I believe they’ve recently gotten buy-in from AirBNB to not list properties that weren’t permitted.
The only way to resolve the housing market issue is to increase the supply of houses on the market, both in new developments as well as discourage vacancy.
So, with this new law, there’s no more vacant residentials being used as unlicensed hotels, which hopefully will lead to housing prices dropping. (Vacancy property taxes is also needed in my opinion)
Also, I’m against AirBnB in general, not going to be paying to clean somebody else’s house when I’m on vacation.
It was such a cool idea to start with. Going away for the week? Make some spare cash. In town and need a place that offers more than a hotel? Here’s an awesome rate.
As soon as it became about landlords making profit it was ruined. It was supposed to be about spare cash, not squeeze people for all they’re worth
I’m jealous
- from Europe
I just sold my grandmother’s house in Feb.
I lucked out as that’s what we were doing and what the dude who got it was doing
That said, they will just move to Craigslist or a backpage-like site until they uncoordinated fix the law
This is big government overreach unfairly discriminated against landlords
If Justin Trudeau had any balls he’d implement a mandatory landlord tip for all renters
See now this I can get behind! Unfortunately communism runs in his genes so he will never stick up for the little guy landlords.
Have you considered that landlords should be discriminated against?
No, that would be discrimination against a minority which is pretty bad don’t you think?
Nah, I also discriminate against Nazi’s and they are also a minority
Have you considered that discriminating against Nazis makes you the real Nazi all along?
I’m fulfilling my role in the Paradox of Tolerance. Intolerance cannot be tolerated
This does nothing to address NYCs actual housing shortage, and will hurt the market more than it helps.
New York City’s housing stock has only increased 4% since 2010, not nearly enough to keep up with its 22% increase in jobs. And from 2017 to 2021, New York City permitted 13 homes for every 1,000 residents in 2017
Housing stock isn’t just total number of housing units, it’s available housing on the market. This will absolutely free up property that’s been hoarded off for AirBNB rentals
I would be interested to see stats on the impact of this a year down the line. From what I’ve seen, Airbnb has a very tiny percentage of actual housing stock, but (deservedly) disproportionate impact on public perception.
I do actually think it’s a small percentage, but it’s been reported that a lot of realtors/landlords have been running AirBNB’s in empty units fraudulently in order to skirt laws and regulations. Not sure if it’s still happening (I saw this reported maybe 3 years ago now?).
Institutional landlords make up a large chunk of the housing stock though, we need to combat that as well.
The Airbnb figures come direct from Airbnb, so there’s only so much inaccuracy possible.
“Units being sold for permanent living than being bought to rent out days at a time will cause a housing shortage.” lol
