The Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme

Re:The Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme by matchbok on Saturday February 23, 2019 @04:26PM (#19235571)

Eliminating all listings without a host present would solve 99% of these problems. That's what the site sells itself as, anyway. Problem is there isn't much money to be made there.

Or just do a tiny bit of host/property verification. Again, too much money to be made from illegal/unzoned hotels.

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Re:The Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme by smallgovt on Saturday February 23, 2019 @04:54PM (#19235699)

I see. So, the legality of short-term rentals in NYC hinge on the presence of the host during the rental. And, that's not easily detectable by just scraping Airbnb.

I still think it'd be straight forward to scrape reviews off Airbnb that have telltale signs of the host not being present e.g. lockbox mentions. Filing complaints/lawsuits against even a small minority should create a chilling effect for everyone else who's running illegal hotels.

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Re:The Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme by xkcd-sucks on Saturday February 23, 2019 @06:49PM (#19236170)

Or, in a high density environment like NYC, prediction from scraped listings plus an actual person who verifies the host's absence and records it. Work on contract for... "The hotel industry consortium", idk how that works. It sounds fun if the market is big enough

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