[lotsofpulp]

> People with enough money to buy homes to rent out as Airbnbs can buy or build small hotels with a little extra effort.

I don’t see how this can be true. A half decent hotel in even cheaper parts of the US is going to cost $100k per key, and in any popular city, multiples more. Plus, if you want to buy a franchise from Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt, they are going to ask one of the owners to already have another hotel as a credit check.

Buying a house or condo, on the other hand, only requires a few hundred thousand, outside of the most expensive areas.

And building a hotel is a completely different ballgame than buying an existing property. Cities long ago stopped approving small motels to be built, and clearing the permits/buying the land/getting a construction loan/ensuring your GC does the job on time is a whole lot of risk.

[Amezarak]

> Cities long ago stopped approving small motels to be built,

I wish they had, but that's not true anywhere I've lived.

[lotsofpulp]

I’m in the US, I have not seen a single new hotel in the last few decades that was not minimum 3 stories and indoor. The numbers do not pencil out for anything less than 60 to 80 rooms, and cities do not want the cheap local motels that end up catering to drug users/prostitutes/etc. A motel 6 would be the lowest quality tier I think.

[Amezarak]

I'm in the US and I've see plenty of them built recently, which have exactly all the problems you mention, which is why I'd rather them not.