Barcelona is banning Airbnbs. Other European cities have cracked down already — with some success.(www.businessinsider.com)

posted 4 months ago

lemme in@lemm.ee

europe@feddit.org

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AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works

45 points

4 months ago

Munich is handling it really well in my opinion. They have rules for homeowners, which are that an apartment cannot be empty for more than 3 months, cannot be used (fully) as an office (of course you can have an office in your apartment) and that the apartment can be used as vacation home for a maximum of 8 weeks per year. I just checked Airbnb again and the offers are sparse.

If Airbnb would be used by renters to offer their home in times where they aren’t there themselves, then it’s a great concept. However capitalism fucked everything over and now it’s just used to generate income by rich people who can afford to buy accommodation.

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poVoq@slrpnk.netM

6 points

4 months ago

The original idea of the Airbnb precursors was to allow people to stay in your guest-room when you are actually there yourself. The very idea of letting strangers stay in your house when you are not there, seems odd to me at least, unless it isn’t actually your home and you only see it as temporary accommodation when you can’t rent it out.

But 8 weeks? I think an apartment in a good location can be more profitable in 8 weeks of Airbnb rental during summer, which the occasional cheap offer every 3 months to work around that rule. But sure, it would be less profitable than running an Airbnb rental without these restrictions.

My guess to why there are so few Airbnb rentals in Munich is rather that the housing market there has been overheated for so long already, that there are simply few offers available that would be cheap enough to buy and turn into an AirBnB rental. In addition, people are desperately clinging to their slightly cheaper old rental contracts, so there are simply very few suitable apartments available in general.

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daddy32@lemmy.world

4 points

4 months ago

So in effect you cannot have a second home in Munich? And what are the repercussions for violating these rules?

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AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works

6 points

4 months ago

Why would you want to have two homes in the same city? It’s hard enough finding one apartment, if people go around having multiple accommodations, it’s just unfair for everyone else.

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daddy32@lemmy.world

3 points

4 months ago

Maybe two homes in two cities? For any combination of personal/family and work related reasons? I’m just dreaming here :)

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jqubed@lemmy.world

5 points

4 months ago

I would see people owning multiple homes in a vacation scenario. It used to be fairly common where I live for people to have a vacation home at the beach or in the mountains. These were relatively inexpensive and people would go down perhaps for a week or two in the summer and often spend long holiday weekends there also. The homes could also be rented out to other vacationers when the owners weren’t using them. Usually there would be multiple local agencies that would handle the scheduling, and in the pre-internet days they would publish booklets with a picture or two of the houses and the weekly rates that varied with peak rental season. This worked pretty well and there were usually still plenty of houses for local residents who lived there year-round and even temporary workers who just came for the peak tourism season.

This has changed in more recent years, though, especially since the pandemic. At the beach many of the cheap, small old houses have been torn down and much larger, more expensive houses have been built. Sometimes investors have even been approved to build one house on a lot, then go ahead and build duplex or even triplex homes and the towns don’t make them tear it down or give any other significant penalty. At the Outer Banks the vacation season shifted from summer to year round and investors have turned almost all available properties into short-term vacation rentals. Given the distance from the mainland this has made it difficult for seasonal workers to find housing, to the extent that some shops and restaurants have started offering housing to employees as a way to attract workers.

Of course, a vacation scenario is even less tenable at scale in an ordinary city than someplace built primarily for tourists.

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4 points

4 months ago

If you ever tried to live in Munich, you don’t need a second house that’s vacant. Rent is among the highest in Europe and people in the middle class pay up to 80% of their salary for rent, it gets worse in lower income brackets. The city cannot afford to have premises vacant.

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