I've often thought of, instead of buying my first home, to wait, save, and buy one of those homes that's been split up into two nice apartments? Then live in one, while renting out the other. I don't think I'd want to do Air BnB though... Rather just find a nice tenant that won't eff the place up, be the landlord I always wanted (free rent for December plus they get all the extra sweets I bake).

I was actually surprised, all the places I've rented, none gave discount during December. I figured it would be a thing people did, like Christmas bonuses at work.

Homes are for living in.

This is the same thing Xi Jinping said when he intentionally crashed the housing market.

Is that what you COMMUNISTS want, to destroy the wealth of hard working housing speculators?

Tenish years ago I would use air bnb because it was a good bit cheaper than a mid level hotel and you'd get a whole house with a kitchen. Means I'd save money and could cook. But that's changed and it's usually more expensive for air bnb now

I haven't even considered an Airbnb in close to 8 years. Pay a cleaning fee and have to strip the bed linens, take out all trash, and tidy everything...on top of a moldy af bathroom, having to check all potential locations for the hidden cameras, and getting texts every 30 minutes telling (not asking, TELLING) me to leave a 5 start review. Fuck you

We've used airbnb twice because it was for a whole house and I have a severely disabled daughter who can get loud and physically disruptive. Those were the only family vacations that we've ever been able to take because hotels generally can't accommodate us. This isn't a common requirement, and if not for that special use case, I'd pick a hotel every time.

Hotels don't rent out houses in the middle of nowhere for my friends and me to get trashed at for the weekend. They're really nice if you want to get out of the city and relax in someone else's house for a couple days.

I paid $80 for a room in the middle of LA

sometimes it might be useful for a large group visiting that needed a whole house rather than trying to get hotel/motel for each person a room, im guessing its convenience and simplicity for groups. not useful if you are 1-3 people.

When it first started it was good for traveling on a budget. But yeah then greedy assholes ruined it by trying to gouge every dollar they could out of it.

I think the hidden fees have been abandoned now. They were never a thing in Australia - the price is the price.

For groups of more than two people apartments and houses are usually significantly cheaper on AirBnB, and being fully self contained with a kitchen and laundry changes the calculation too.

I don’t even understand why people use Airbnb.

So, in the long long ago, in the before time, Airbnb was a way to rent out your apartment or home for a week, while you were on vacation, or to rent out a spare room with minimal headaches. In fact, after Craigslist more or less died, it was THE way to do it.

Over time, this changed.

It was so much cheaper back in the day. Me and my wife would rent out either a guest suite or a room for a couple nights in new cities. I’m talking like $40/night with fees or a little more but with advantages of a kitchen and a couch vs a hotel suite.

Also we rented one twice to host big parties because neither us nor any of our friends in the city have a house big enough to host and comfortably sleep 15 people. Luckily that’s changing soon as my wife and I finally purchased a place in the city, and look forward to hosting our friends for years to come.

I guess it depends on the region. Used Airbnb a lot in spring when I did an Interrail tour through central/eastern Europe. Often it was just the cheapest option. Sometimes hostels with 10+ beds in a room are cheaper (also used these quit often in my first Interrail tour trough other parts of the continent a couple of years back) but not always.

Then also the thing with having a kitchen which can safe you some more money. Especially for breakfast, it's crazy how hotels are pricing them.

Not trying to say that Airbnb is cheap(or isn't destroying the housing market), it's just that hotels are expensive. At least in the areas I travel.

The thing is that this hurts the few hosts who still use airbnb in the original somewhat harmless way, by inviting people to stay in their homes while they're on holiday or to use an extra room.

That's what cleaning fees are for. These assholes pretend to charge a cleaning fee and then make guests clean after them. Cleaning fees exist for this sole reason, so the guest pays for the mess they do. And if the mess is too big, airbnb will protect the host anyway.

They are complaining because they can't keep being a hotel but treating guests as tennants.

How? They can charge a cleaning fee still, they just actually have to do the cleaning.

Plus I'm sure airbnb will keep things reasonable if not in favor of the host. If you stay for a full week and use every dish and pot in a place without cleaning any I'm sure airbnb would allow an extra fee. If you make breakfast before you leave and put dishes in the sink now the host has to deal with it.

Pretty reasonable

Naw more like "parasite"

It's like landlord small man complex.

Oh don’t you worry, billionaire hedge funds will snap those up first for rentals

I mean, I suppose they could create their own website, with black jack and dish washing fees.

But good luck convincing users to go to the actively user hostile (even more hostile) version of Airbnb.

Worse - many use the ability to require cleaning up after yourself with the threat of fines if not done at all to always charge guests exorbitant fees even when they clean, claiming impossible standards weren’t met - all to grift and stuff pockets in order to have guests pay their mortgages on homes they otherwise couldn’t afford to play speculative investment games on, and to end up with massive profits to pay themselves for work they largely didn’t do themselves. They’re scamming, they saw how corporate Americans and the ultra wealthy scam workers and wanted their own version of it. They’re pissed they have to become workers themselves.

Yes, in the same way that Uber pretended that their service was a way to find people to carpool with and not a taxi service

yeah, at first. Now they're just hotels that don't want to declare themselves as hotels so they don't have duties.

Originally it was just for people visiting conventions to have a place to put their air mattress, which is where the Air in Airbnb comes from.