Having stayed in AirBnB-type listings when traveling with my family, it’s clear to me that there is a huge market need for short term home rentals, and we should figure out how to do this without stomping on neighbors or pricing out locals in the process.
There are a lot of positive externalities to families and larger groups coming to a city and spending their money.
When I need 3 adjoining bedrooms and a space that will take dogs, a hotel is going to cost an absolute fortune in comparison or be actually impossible to find.
Here’s to hoping there’s a happy medium to be found with the right combination of technology and regulation.
For example, what about a condo bylaws which granted the right to rent a unit but with a 20% per night fee which goes to reducing condo fees for the rest of the building. There’s a reasonable number which covers the externality.
As far as housing stock is concerned, that’s perhaps a trickier problem. I think it’s probably easier to quantify how many units are not available for a local rental and harder to quantify the economic positive value of the rental to locals, and so it’s an easy scapegoat for property prices which were probably overly high to begin with.
There are a lot of positive externalities to families and larger groups coming to a city and spending their money.
When I need 3 adjoining bedrooms and a space that will take dogs, a hotel is going to cost an absolute fortune in comparison or be actually impossible to find.
Here’s to hoping there’s a happy medium to be found with the right combination of technology and regulation.
For example, what about a condo bylaws which granted the right to rent a unit but with a 20% per night fee which goes to reducing condo fees for the rest of the building. There’s a reasonable number which covers the externality.
As far as housing stock is concerned, that’s perhaps a trickier problem. I think it’s probably easier to quantify how many units are not available for a local rental and harder to quantify the economic positive value of the rental to locals, and so it’s an easy scapegoat for property prices which were probably overly high to begin with.