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A comment on Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new home-share law. Parent comment

Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by Thriptic on Friday June 08, 2018 @12:15PM (#17266871)
I can't speak to this problem in tourist destinations or Europe generally as I don't have enough data to have an opinion, but I frequently see Airbnb blamed for high housing costs in some American cities and it strikes me as being a bunch of bullshit. Sure Airbnb doesn't help the rental problem and it is a contributor to rising rents, but the primary problem isn't Airbnb, it's lack of supply of high density apartment living options. Many US cities are composed primarily of 2-3 story houses which have been converted into dingy expensive apartments. This is utterly unacceptable from an efficiency standpoint. Many of these units need to be bulldozed and replaced with high rise apartments if cities are to become affordable again.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by StavrosK on Friday June 08, 2018 @12:27PM (#17267018)
The situation in Greece is very different, as everything is a highrise (sadly, because we tore down a lot of beautiful centuries-old antique villas to do that). The situation used to be much better, but the start of the problem coincides suspiciously with the rise of AirBnB, and you'd expect housing prices to drop in a recession, not rise.

That's why I think it's fair to blame AirBnB for that. We'll see what happens in Tokyo, Madrid and other cities where they're severely restricting usage.

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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by SOLAR_FIELDS on Friday June 08, 2018 @05:42PM (#17269954)
They all but banned it in Berlin (only allowed to rent guest rooms where the owner resides in the place) years ago and last time I was there (last week) it was still well awash with tourists like myself.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by madisfun on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:54AM (#17347804)
Just checked, there are hundreds of apartments for rent in Berlin at the moment. Doesn't look to be banned.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by distances on Friday June 08, 2018 @01:43PM (#17267875)
But apartments in Athens are very affordable still, aren't they?
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by ferongr on Friday June 08, 2018 @02:44PM (#17268519)
Yes, as well as rents. A 1BR apartment can be as low as 150€/mo or even a bit lower. It's only a few "hip" neighborhoods that are affected. Still, Athens is relatively compact and mass transit is excellent so you can easily find cheap places to live that are require less than 30 minutes of commute each way to work.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by StavrosK on Friday June 08, 2018 @04:28PM (#17269409)
I'm not sure, I'm not in Athens, but I've been trying to find a new apartment for three years in my city and the pickings have been extremely slim.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by undersuit on Friday June 08, 2018 @04:04PM (#17269238)
> it's lack of supply of high density apartment living options.

Devil's Advocate: I'd agree that AirBnB isn't entirely to blame, but a large company helping your town's citizen rezone their long-term residential units into short-term residential units and not telling the town isn't going to help the zoning board make correct decisions.

Japan has made a good decision to at least butt themselves into the process.

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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by Thriptic on Friday June 08, 2018 @06:08PM (#17270129)
I totally agree, but it's not like this data is hidden. It would be relatively straight forward to monitor how many Airbnb units operate at any given time just by looking at the site repeatedly, and you could approximate how many rentals exist using tax data and corporate data.
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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by llcoolv on Saturday June 09, 2018 @08:38AM (#17272731)
Exactly. You could see how many air-bnb flats are in total in a given city on their website and a lot of citiies produce statistics on that. For example in Vienna, the municipality claimed that 3000 air b'n'b bedrooms in a city with millions of bedrooms -roughly 1 ‰ had caused the rents to increase with tens of percent.

Sorry, but people who believe that 1 promile decrease in supply could cause tens of percent increase in prices are just dumb beyond salvation.

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Re:Nearly 80% of Japan’s Airbnbs removed in response to new ... by jaytong on Friday June 08, 2018 @12:20PM (#17266926)
and to top it all off, the zoning laws in some cities...
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