mmack

Well, if the owner's not there shut it down. Make it a requirement that the owner be in residence.

Perche

There was just another article in the paper about this today.

http://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/v...o-2101074.html

To paraphrase and sum it up, the headline is, "If You Turn Your Apartment Into an AirBnb, you'll make 40,000 euros a year." This is less than the 89,000 I had previous read in an article, but was the result of a more scientific study. It goes on:

"November in Venice was usually empty, but is now visited by thousands of Italians, French, Germans, Northerners, Koreans, and Americans? Who is benefiting? Hotels, on a limited scale, but mostly apartment owners where requests are in high demand."

"This isn't about a sole apartment owner who inherited an apartment, and every now and then wants to rent it out, but about people who own and manage tens of apartments rented out on AirBnb for the whole year as entrepreneurs, taking advantage of the fact that there is a gap in the laws that were written when this phenomena didn't exist, that no one had it in mind, and people are taking advantage of that gap."

"Their gains are in the stratosphere: $155,000,000, equal to 146,000,000 euros per year, based on average apartment rents of 3,300 euros per month: This is like having a great salary, that according to accountants you would pay only a low 21% income tax on, if the renter fills out a contract to make it legal."

"This is according to the blog called Reset Venice, which is trying to return Venice back to being a true, functional city. They relied on data from AirDna, a company that provides AirBnb renters who subscribe to it with analytics to maximize their profits. It provides them with real time data on occupancy rates per week, month, season of the year, holidays, how much they should charge for their apartment, data that only used to be available to large hotels, but that now a lot of AirBnb owners renting out their house in Venice use to to maximize their profits."

"The annual profit from renting an apartment out full-time on AirBnb in Venice is estimated at $42,000 a year, or 39,600 euros for a two bedroom apartment. In November 2015 it would have brought in $1,929 dollars, but that now rented at $4,000 in September 2016."

"The total of 3,700 rentals in Venice yields a stratospheric income of $155,000,000 per year for its AirBnb market. That is just AirBnb, and does not include all of the other tourist apartment rental websites."

"Officials at Reset Venice explained, 'We are not trying to blame the person who rents out their apartment or their room once in a while to help deal with the high cost of living in Venice.' What has emerged is an unregulated industry that we can no longer ignore because it is having a major impact on the city, that would normally be monitored and regulated to ensure that tourism isn't a gold mine that just benefits a few wealthy apartment owners while condemning everybody else."

Perche

That's hard to do because AirBnb refuses to give the cities it operates in the addresses of the properties listed on its website, in order to make it impossible for them to collect taxes or inspect them.

If you go on the AirBnb website you see an apartment, and get a general location of where it is, but you don't get the actual address until you book it. Many cities have requested a list of their apartments but AirBnb always files a lawsuit to stop it.

Hopefully, Venice will get this under control in the next few years. Prime Minister Renzi was in Venice the past few day, and just signed a, "Pact with Venice," giving it 457 million over 4 years to re-establish the city for the younger generation by improving the port, improving infrastructure, addressing environmental concerns, creating new jobs in the city, and to rein in the forces making housing unaffordable, mainly short term rentals, so that artisans, cultural life, and social life can be restored to the neighborhoods.

Hopefully, the mafia won't siphon the money off, and it will happen. http://www.ilgazzettino.it/uploads/c...3_26142426.pdf

Then, there's an interesting article in the NY Times today that is related, "Owner of a Brooklyn Brownstone Sees Herself Caught in Airbnb Crossfire."

NYC has very strict AirBnb regulations to prevent them from worsening the housing shortage, and causing rents to go even higher. My understanding is that you can only rent out your apartment to someone if they stay in it for at least 30 days in a row, making it a sub-let not a STR. A women converted her brownstone into a Bed & Breakfast, and never had any connection with AirBnb. As a legitimate business, she developed a website with her address on it. She lives in the building. This is unlike AirBnb, which keeps their locations secret from authorities so that they cannot be easily regulated or taxed. Since her location was published on the internet, she got inspected.

She has a large, multi-level brownstone that was used in a Spike Lee movie. She renovated it, and turned it into a registered B&B, and rents out its rooms. Naturally, people renting a room want to have a strong lock on their door for when they are out, or are sleeping. Apparently, such locks are illegal because it would hamper firemen who need to come in, so she faces a 6 figure fine.

And excerpt from the story,
"The owner, Liz Mandarano, sees herself as a casualty in a battle over Airbnb, the online rental service, even though she does not list her $195-a-night-and-up accommodations on the website. Ms. Mandarano maintains that after Airbnb refused to divulge to investigators the addresses of properties listed on its site, the city began to target bed-and-breakfasts, which have their own websites. She called them “low-hanging fruit” — easy, she said, for city enforcement agents to identify.

“We are not Airbnb,” she said, “we are classic B & Bs, but we were targeted to show that O.S.E.” — the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement — “was doing what it was supposed to do.”

It's amazing that AirBnb, because it is such a colossal company, can get away with things that the average person can't, and it can defy cities that try to maintain their integrity by using its deep pockets to file endless lawsuits. It's great that some cities like NYC, SF, Berlin, Barcelona, Zurich, have had some success in regulating them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/ny...e=sectionfront

jaymar01

NPR did a story this morning about the damage that excess tourism has done to Venice.

"In 2014, UNESCO gave Italy two years to manage Venice's rampant tourism or the city would be placed on another list — World Heritage In Danger, joining such sites as Aleppo and Palmyra, destroyed by the war in Syria."

What is remarkable is what spineless cowards UNESCO has become in completely failing to follow-up on their convictions due to political pressure.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallel...ndangered-list

Perche

It's curious that some think it's wrong for Venice to be planning on how to sharply limit AirBnb and other STR's.

There's an interesting news story here.

AirBnb has been illegal in NYC since 2010, unless the owner rents out the apartment for more than 30 consecutive days to the same person. NYC recently passed another law that also fines the "host" $7,500 if they rent their apartment for a shorter period than 30 days. The story below describes what can happen if you attempt to violate that rule in NYC. AirBnb demonstrates that in NYC and elsewhere it doesn't feel obligated to follow regulations. I just did an inquiry on their website for a one week stay in NYC, and it offered availability of over 350 apartments, even though such a rental is against the law. Venice needs to take a similar hard stance against them to slow down the depopulation of the city until the new 457 million euro rebuilding measures that were signed this week have a chance to have an impact.

This is what happened to a couple that tried to rent an AirBnb in NYC for ten days over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/27/airbnb-...enting-in-nyc/

Alex71

Why not investigate AirBnb for tax fraud and hold it liable for unpaid taxes? Surely, they are aiding the tax evaders through their conduct.

Perche

Good idea. Something will eventually happen.

Notice in the NYC newspaper article, when the couple got thrown out of an apartment for trying to stay in an AirBnd for less than the legally required 30 day minimum, AirBnb's response was to offer them another AirBnb in NYC for the remaining 9 days of their stay, encouraging them to further break the law.

A company that operates as if the law doesn't apply to them eventually gets taken down. It has happened in NYC, Barcelona, Berlin, and Venice is now also starting to take aim.

damon88

Airbnb does not care about anything but profit- they have no real concern for either hosts or guests.. They make zero effort to confirm if the person listing a rental has the legal right to do so.In San Diego I know of several instances when tenants with strict "no sublet-no
assignment clauses" in their leases tried to capitalize and rent their units on Airbnb.
When suspicions neighbors reported the guests, they were forced to leave, like the
couple in the NYC story. Airbnb ignored all correspondence. I hope this eventually
catches up with them. What they are doing to Venice is very sad.

PWMTrav

Not necessarily. Look at Uber. Most jurisdictions are compromising and changing laws in the process, as the service fills a gap and people want it. Same with Airbnb, except that people probably want it, just not in their neighborhood.

Slapping an outright ban or even too severe a restriction isn't going to stop it. People clearly want short term rentals on vacation. Regulation without the intent to completely shut down Airbnb is really what's needed.

mkjr

why would authorities not book places, incur the cost for one night, get the information to prosecute a charge and then make sure the fine is well above the cost they expend to get the information to prosecute a charge?

rickg523

+1

Alex71

I don't see why jurisdictions should change laws on behalf of Uber and Airbnb. Most cities had well-working taxis services in the pre-Uber days, including taxi apps that could be used to call a cab. Uber wanted to obtain an unfair competitive advantage by ignoring licensing requirements, not providing mandatory benefits to its drivers and by evading VAT. It is rightfully banned in many cities.

Vacation rentals were also always available. Airbnb created a nicer, more user-friendly platform, so they deserve credit for that and there's a case for having them, but Airbnb needs to be audited to ensure it complies with local regulations, pays tourist taxes and VAT, and only lists properties for which the host has the right to rent them out.

I can also see why cities like Venice need to limit the number of vacation rentals to make sure that enough housing is available to residents.

rickg523

Short term rentals need regulation, but trying to squelch the business entirely can tread into some really totalitarian places. Not to say it will, but it could. Will I need a city permit if I invite my friend to housesit for 3 weeks? Is that level of intrusion civic officials will demand for control? Is that sustainable? Maybe. People voluntarily live in HOA communities, so....

Venice presents an unusual case because there are so many unoccupied properties in a city built for 3 times the current population, and yet landlords are evicting people to put their apartments on the STR market.
That's immoral on the face of it and should be strenuously restricted.
And they are converting entire buildings effectively into hotels. Allowed to continue unabated, exactly why would anyone want to go to Venice? The ridiculous crowding caused by cruise ships has me cutting half off my stay next year, spending that time at the Lakes. I can deal with the ferries.
But as Santa Monica demonstrated, over time, no desired service or product can ever be eliminated in a free market society. That is the truth of free markets, whether socially endorsed or underground.

Alex71

There's obviously a difference between inviting a friend to house sit and advertising a property on a commercial platform. Since the platform collects the payments, the burden of proof that the rental is non-commercial should be on the platform as well.

PWMTrav

All rentals are commercial. And burden of proof only matters in court. Well drafted regulation avoids court in the long term, as enforcement costs money.

STRs need a limit in zoning. Not on the number of STRs in a given geographic area, but the proportion of the year that a property may be a STR. That changes the ROI, and fewer people get evicted to convert the property to a STR if, for instance, it cannot be a STR for 3/6/9 months out of the year. Then, tax it, and place the burden of collecting and remitting the tax on the booking platform.

You'll have less enforcement to handle, and you have a path to legitimacy. It will still be possible to invest in real estate as a full time STR opportunity - you'll just need more properties to do it, since they must rotate, and also deal with seasonal rentals for the portion of the year that they cannot be STR.

Of course, this solution is harder because it needs to be dealt with much more locally and involves zoning and all of that good stuff. Taking a hammer to Airbnb is much easier and makes for a better sound byte, so that's what you hear today.