[miguelazo]

Gee, how about having a parade of random people showing up at all hours of the day/night just to start? The erosion of community. Further commodification of housing so that only the rich and upper middle class can buy a house in any city?

[thefounder]

I think the ownership is not encouraged anymore.

Instead we have social mobility so that we can move anytime when better opportunities arise. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on which side you are.

[rootusrootus]

Moving every time a better opportunity comes up is a privilege enjoyed by a small section of the population. The vast majority of people move rarely, and when they do move it's usually within the same locality.

[ghaff]

Even for people who can, family (spouse, kids in school, nearby relatives, etc.), friends, and so forth tend to make moving cities a pretty significant decision at some point.

[thefounder]

It's a cultural issue. Give it 1-2 generations and people won't care that much about nearby relatives, friends etc.

[ghaff]

Th trend line has been toward significantly less mobility relative to past decades--though you'd probably want to correct the numbers for demographics given that 20 somethings move the most (as one would expect).

[miguelazo]

Exactly-- the number of young people still living at home has surged in the last decade. This is not surprising given that "starter homes" are one of the main targets of housing speculators. People who would buy their first house rent longer, driving up rental rates and putting the transition from family to independence further out of reach for many.

[tekknik]

Without home ownership you are throwing away a large portion of the money you may make in your life. Even if you move frequently it still makes sense to buy so long as you’re not hitting the tip of the market.

[zbrozek]

That last point - that housing is too expensive - is not something that airbnb causes or can fix. That's a supply side problem and the solution is housing construction. It may marginally exacerbate the symptom by providing liquidity.

[jerjerjer]

It removes liquidity from housing market, by repurposing flats/houses into hotels.

[zbrozek]

It's creating liquidity, just not the kind you value. It's liquidity of short term housing rather than long term housing.

[miguelazo]

Liquidity for short term housing is valuable to who? Do you think most people here or otherwise care about speculators? We don't.

[tekknik]

Ok, then more accurately it’s moving liquidity. The next question is which is more valuable to society?

[zbrozek]

The United States is short O(10M) housing units[0], primarily due to anti-construction policies. Airbnb has O(100k) listings[1] in the US. Banning short-term rentals is a 1% solution. That's a policy distraction, not a useful lever to pull.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing...

[1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/

[miguelazo]

There are plenty of empty luxury condos in every major city. They mostly serve as bank accounts for foreign investors. There's plenty of construction, just the wrong type.