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Has Achieved Nirvana |
https://www.vox.com/money/2394...-new-york-regulation
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
That article is a hot mess. It would be interesting to learn who commissioned it. There’s too much to cover posting on the phone but when I get home I’ll try to remember to address it.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
That would be great. I wondered how accurate/inaccurate the article is and hoped you would comment.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Do you have any evidence that Vox stories are commissioned by third parties? | |||
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
Steve, me too.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
None whatsoever. I never read Vox. Are all of the articles written like this?
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
What characteristic(s) are you referring to when you say "written like this"? (serious question, no snark) Voxsplaining was coined some years ago. A lot of their articles start with: (Fill in the subject), Explained Author background, gives clue as to perspective:
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Vox was started by Ezra Klein. It is generally informative, thorough, even-handed, and to the point. Vox articles tend to be far lengthier with more analysis (and sometimes some viewpoint) than the NYT, WaPo, BBC, etc. As wtg said, their articles are "explainers". It should be high on anyone's media reading list. | |||
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
I had no idea. I hardly ever (ok, probably never) go to the Vox home page and just look around. Like I do with NYT, for example. I should probably add Vox to my repertoire of regularly visited sites.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Or not. Let’s have a look at the opening paragraph:
What we have here is a dog’s breakfast of complaints about AirBnB that wouldn’t pass muster with any of my high school English teachers. Perhaps the writers and instructors among us will comment - is this what passes for a properly constructed opening paragraph these days? Now let’s take it apart. Are people complaining about cost? You bet, until they compare the cost of a traditional chain hotel. Right now we’re 6 people staying in a nice 3 BR condo just outside of NYC at a cost of $350/night. To house this crew in a hotel would cost 3X that (3 rooms) and we’d get no kitchen, laundry or communal space. Using that sentence as the opener tells me that the author is setting me up for a severely slanted defense of traditional hotels. It reminds me of the BS distributed by taxi operators when Uber hit the scene. The second point offered is that some properties are no better than crappy hotels - which is also true. My properties aren’t like that and those properties that are don’t last long on the market. The rating system is ruthless and substandard properties don’t get rentals. We’ve stayed at AirBnB properties exclusively for years and have yet to encounter a really bad one. We do that by reading reviews. Others do too. To the last point, then - cities don’t like them. That’s likely true - transient rental permits are considerably cheaper than bed taxes and individual property owners don’t have nearly the influence on local politicians that hotel chains do. Is this a problem? Maybe for NYC - we’re staying in New Jersey because we couldn’t get a similar accommodation in NYC for less than $1500/night. My New Jersey landlord is delighted that we’re staying here and has gone out of his way to make sure we like the place. Up next - paragraph 2.
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity  |
That is a fine first paragraph for an opinion piece. It lays out a situation and suggests to the reader a roadmap for how the rest of the article will go -- explaining these points (with good argument and evidence) and packaging them toward a regulatory conclusion. A good opinion piece would also be proleptic. In other words it would recognize all the points you just mentioned and counter them with argument and evidence to show that the author wasn't building a straw man. I haven't read the article yet, so I have no clue if the author went beyond bashing a straw man. I'm just commenting on the construction of the introduction. As an "explainer," however, I think the intro ... sucks.  It sucks because it's alarmist and "strewn" with aggressive assertions. | |||
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
By the way, we rent out our Santa Fe home when we're not there. We do NOT use Air B&B. We're a long term rental (30 days and up). We use a rental company to manage the property and "be there" to deal with issues when we're not. Does our house look exactly like in the pictures? NO. Most of the interior photos were taken by Sotheby's to sell the house and we just put 'em up (with Sotheby's permission, of course). The differences are minimal (wall decoration), but our non-AirB&B house fails that first paragraph. Our rental company has a disclaimer that interior photos are representative, not exact, if that helps. And we too have cameras. They're on the outside, not the inside. Our house's website clearly states that there are exterior cameras! For a couple, our house is pretty much as expensive as a hotel, but then again you're getting 4,300 square feet to rattle around in with a pro kitchen and a 1/3 acres enclosed garden. So sorry for the price tag, but, you know, consenting adults. We too make extreme demands. After being burned (peed on, actually) we tell people to keep their damned dogs off of our property! Haven't canceled any reservations yet. Guests DO have to pay high expenses for cleaning the house. Suck it up, buttercup! Santa Fe has thoroughly regulated short term rentals, which includes Bookings.com and AirB&B, to the delight of area hotels. You have to have one of the rationed and coveted "short term rental permits." They haven't touched long term rentals, probably because fancy neighborhood HOAs permit them and the local movie industry would blow a fuse! | |||
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
This article isn't the usual Vox explainer. For one, the word "Explained" isn't in the title. And it's definitely a clickbait headline, which is sadly the norm these days.As for the point raised about cost...I didn't think the author was referring to the cost relative to hotels, but rather the "platform's growing costliness". It seems to include both hosts and renters. So when something was cheaper and now costs more, it's not surprising that people might grouse. I hadn't watched the article's linked video under "tens of thousands of complaints" until just now. It's a video interview with the Airbnb CEO, who acknowledges the higher host costs but talks about the short term rental market vis a vis hotels and how Airbnb hosts can adjust their pricing downward a bit to get better occupancy rates and to possibly increase profits. I didn't follow all of the links in the article, but it appears that a lot of information supporting the author's arguments can be found there.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Not to muddy the waters, but I found a different piece to consider on the subject of the impact of Airbnb, one that's a bit more academic. I probably should have looked for it or something else like it and posted it instead of the original Vox...but it's a long read and I'm not sure how many would have bothered to plow through it. Always a balancing act. And it's pre-pandemic, so it doesn't talk about how the housing and commercial markets have changed in the last few years. eta: And it doesn't talk about how Airbnb's fees and platform are evolving in response to changes in the short term rental market. So it's not a one-for-one swap with the original Vox, by any means... https://www.epi.org/publicatio...ulatory-obligations/
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
AirBnB has a great product, the website and accounting system work very well. People like using and are willing to pay for it again and again. How is this a problem?
Maybe not rich, but certainly a nice ROI. There’s an article somewhere that talks about seniors using part their house as an Airbnb to allow them to keep their homes despite rising property taxes and utilities. Expenses (interest, maintenance, utilities) become partly deductible and for many the companionship is welcome.
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