Me neither. If you own a property, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. The argument, that it's bringing up prices is false - AirBnB, same as Uber, exist because the prices were already high. If the prices were normal (especially here in Australia), these types of services would not profit. Think about a scenario when young couple with kids is paying so much for mortgage/rent so if they need to go overseas for a few months, they don't really have any other choice than list it on AirBnB to cover portion of the cost.
> If you own a property, you should be able to do whatever you want with it
That just isn't true though. You can't even alter a property without first getting a permit in many cases. The things you do to stuff that you own can impact the greater community, so the needs of the community need to be considered.
On a local scale, the problem is the constant in/out of short term renters. They don't care about the neighborhood, they don't care about the neighbors, they don't care about making too much noise. They'll be somewhere else in a week anyway.
Meanwhile, the actual residents have to put up with constantly changing "neighbors", noise and more often than not common fixtures getting trashed and mistreated.
On a larger scale, it drives up prices, because landlords would rather extract the much higher rates from short-term renters than the more reasonable rates a long-term renters would pay. This drives up rent, and forces people out of the housing market. You end up with Airbnb ghettos, in effect turning previously nice neighborhoods into de facto hotel businesses. Thus robbing residential areas of their cohesion and community.
Here, a few law changes were put in place to mitigate the problem, while still slowing people to short-term rent out their dwellings while on vacation. The provider (Airbnb) has to report taxable income, and there is a limit of 70 days/year.
> You end up with Airbnb ghettos, in effect turning previously nice neighborhoods into de facto hotel businesses
Except without any of the regulations that protect hotel/hostel guests.
> The provider (Airbnb) has to report taxable income, and there is a limit of 70 days/year.
I've experienced issues with this in Ireland, and this would help solve some of the problem. Particularly that of undergraduate students trying to find places to live during the school year, since most of those leases are 9 months anyway. The owner could then AirBnB their house over the summer.
It'd still be difficult for those who are looking for somewhere to live long-term, as owners can often make more money over just the summer than leasing out for the whole year to those people; so the properties would just stay empty the rest of the time, even if people wanted to rent them. Though who would rent knowing they'd be kicked out come summer? People want some stability; I'd hate to have to start looking for a rental again every summer, especially if I was working full time in a city, all because AirBnB.