Re:I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb
by hammerzeit on Friday November 01, 2013 @05:58PM
(#6656761)
Easily. I know at least two people clearing $100k/year by being 'airbnb slumlords.' Real estate agents are keeping apartments off the market and renting them out as hotels.
Airbnb is clearly forcing a convergence between hotel prices and rents. This doesn't just mean forcing hotel prices down, it also means forcing rents up.
I wish the tech community could stop reflexively defending airbnb and engage with the question of what the costs it is imposing are or might be.
Re:I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb
by jseliger on Friday November 01, 2013 @07:35PM
(#6657289)
Airbnb is clearly forcing a convergence between hotel prices and rents. This doesn't just mean forcing hotel prices down, it also means forcing rents up.
I responded to this issue here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6657242 , but the short answer is to build more units.
Building the Second Ave Subway, extending express bus service, and doing similar things would also be helpful.
Re:I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb
by riggins on Saturday November 02, 2013 @12:20PM
(#6659665)
I agree that the way to deal with increasing rents is to build new buildings. In fact, I think that is probably Bloomberg's greatest accomplishment. He made it much easier to develop new buildings which led to a boom in development.
In NYC there's an enormous arbitrage. The cheapest hotel room in the city is $300/night. Meanwhile, you can rent a 1BR apt for $2,500 / month.
So you rent an apt for $2,500 / month and book it out on AirBnB for $200 / night ... and you're looking at a monthly arbitrage of $3,500.
The guy I know heard about it from a friend who's already doing this with 6 apartments ... so he was making something like $18K / month (less the cleaning expenses).