[showsover]

> On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place.

Yes, if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays. Having an airbnb in your building is terrible as you don't know the people and they don't care about getting to know you.

> Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels.

The great thing about hotels is that they can be planned for and zoned correctly for. Even so, I've had a hotel go up 100m from my apartment and had to invest in blackout blinds since they chose for a modern design with glass all over (and the lights are bright at night).

The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

[subpixel]

> The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

This problem exists regardless of who does the buying. Where I live the locals got into the market first. Still, it's a zero-sum game, every short-term rental is a house a family cannot live in and probably cannot afford to buy.

On my street 30% of the houses are short-term rentals. Some rent out for $10k/week just 8 weeks a year and are closed up the rest of the time. My daughter is currently the only kid on the street, which has over 100 houses.

Not only are all the houses now priced as income-producing investments, they are killing the community that used to exist here.

[showsover]

Banning corporate ownership of housing wouldn't solve all problems but it would be a good start. Locals in general are not able to buy up as much of the housing, but it would still be something to look at.

If I were a dictator I'd say taxes increase by 100% for every house after the first (or second), aiming for a nice balance between allowing people to have another home and limiting the crazyness of owning multiple homes.

[taproottap]

It is maybe a bit cannibalistic to NIMBY politics though.. I have to wonder if we won't actually get the massive housing development we need as owners consolidate and have fewer votes and little social or political clout. Hotels and smaller community landlords had their arguments to sway many around them.

[thayne]

> if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays

I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

I certainly don't do that when I stay in Airbnbs.

> The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

Sure, the problem is balancing that with the desire of tourists that want something better than a hotel.

[toomuchtodo]

Tourists don't vote, residents do, and even if short term rentals were outlawed, Barcelona and Madrid would remain tourist hotspots (as they were before short term rentals).

Certainly, there is a tug of war between tourist dollars vs negative tourist impact, but this math is a function of how impactful tourist decline (if any) would occur by pushing out short term rentals. Hotels always remain an option. Real estate and politics are local, as the sayings go. AirBnB pushed negative externalities on local jurisdictions to achieve their valuation and economic success ("socialize the losses, privatize the gains"), and these efforts are just pushing them back in some form. Tourists should remember that they are guests in the places that host them, and it is a privilege to be hosted.

[lm28469]

> I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

If you live next to one the "minority" is at least once a week, usually on a workday because they're in vacation while you're not.

You get extra trash everywhere, puke in the staircase, empty bottles in front of the building, condoms thrown out of windows, &c. it's a never ending nightmare

[tclancy]

>I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

If you share a wall or ceiling or are next door to one, how small would the minority have to be to keep you from being annoyed?