House prices

Amazing how owners of $10k mountain bikes can drive the price of real estate up in even the most obscure places like Derby.

Is it though? If I had 10k to splash on a bike I'd reckon I'd also be able to afford that. Get the impression he's been there a bunch before...and it's an insanely good business opportunity once borders open.

Jeez just sent a shiver up my spine, thought you were talking Derby WA

Add another coupler grand for a good tinnie and you’d eat and surf well.
Fairly rugged coast down there though blowin.
It’d suit you I reckon.

I had a great time in that part of the world.

if my memory serves, closing time at the Pub on a Fri night was not for the faint-hearted.

I bumped into a few lads from Denmark whilst in Mexico. When Puerto was a heaving 10ft plus and not for the faint of heart they didn't hesitate to paddle out and get stuck in whilst many of us sat on the shore beer in hand bemoaning the old back injury that has just flaired up again. Good lads they were.

https://survivingtomorrow.org/an-open-letter-to-airbnb-8b1b58b4ad33?fbcl...

Good read Patrick.

"Like it or not, your company is now the tip of the spear in a movement that is rapidly commodifying global residential real estate. You’re leading the charge in turning a human necessity into a tradeable commodity. Access to affordable shelter is a universal human right, and you’re devastating real people."

It's a good read Patrick and a lot of it's on the money, but there's always a but.
I have an airbnb property. It was falling down, and not fit for human habitation. We were the only bidders and the property has difficult access making full time residential living extremely difficult. A lot of hard work and money have turned the place into a thriving rental property which brings $$$ into town, stimulating employment.
I also travel a lot for work and often stay in airbnb's. A lot of these properties are owned by single mums trying to get by by renting out a room or bungalow out the back. Airbnb is literally putting food on the table or kids in school shoes.
Yes there are massive problems with short term holiday rentals in regional areas, increasing rents, pushing up housing prices, and driving out long term locals. We could get rid of Airbnb tomorrow, but that wouldn't solve the problems because there's still stays, booking.com, Vrbo etc etc.
Perhaps the solution involves reforming the tax system that allows cashed up city folk to buy a regional holiday house and write off the loss against their already high incomes.
Oh and blowin, don't bother banging on about your immigrant bashing Ponzi scheme. That shit is getting very tiresome.

A naive puff piece at best. Once Ainbnb became a publicly listed company any past good intentions went out the door…never to be thought of again.

https://myfinancialtimes.com/airbnb-black-box-safety-team-secrets/

I would never stay at an Airbnb…the amount of perverts with cams and sneaky fuckers creeping around your bags when you are out for the day would be staggering to most people.

VicGloater trying to polish his turd , as usual.

Fail hard.

"Stimulating employment"

More like tearing at the fabric of the community. Every stand alone airbnb is one less family in that community.

A family that would also "stimulate employment" among a plethora of other positive impacts.

Did you read my original post The Fire?
We were the only people interested in buying the house with rotten bearers, no insulation, asbestos, terrible access, etc etc. It was un-rentable, and knocking it down and rebuilding was not an option given building restrictions.
The seller moved into a retirement home.
But tell me again how we denied a family in the community a home by taking an uninhabitable shitbox that nobody wanted, fixing it wth local labor and materials, and turning it into a rental.

C'mon Vic, be honest for what it really was- you saw an opportunity, took it and realised a benefit. Benevolence doesn't really enter into the conversation. And, as an Airbnb you'd get a better ROI with arguably greater protections than you would leasing it out to a full-time tenant. You can spin it anyway you like but it pretty much boils down to that.

No real judgement here, but Vic Local is showing his capitalist side, Airbnb investment property...wow.

I always pictured him as this new aged socialist/communist type guy.

I thought if he had a rental property he would at least rent it out at below market rent value to some struggling single mother of colour or something.

Zen, Full time tenants are not really an option, unless they want to hike up a significant hill every time they leave the house.
And yes, I did see an opportunity and took it. Worked bloody hard to put some sweat equity into the place. It's profitable so we aren't negatively gearing the place either. So no burden on the tax payer.
It's not like we bought a house that was being rented to a family, turfed them out, turned it into a loss making short term rental, and then writing that off to reduce our tax bill. That's a shit way to invest.

"C'mon Vic, be honest for what it really was- you saw an opportunity, took it and realised a benefit. Benevolence doesn't really enter into the conversation. And, as an Airbnb you'd get a better ROI with arguably greater protections than you would leasing it out to a full-time tenant. You can spin it anyway you like but it pretty much boils down to that."

oh c'mon zen

florence (karen) nightingale saved the lost soul of a defelict house no one wanted...

empowered her community (and a jesus like carpenter...), and provided shelter for pilgrims...

and your trying to say it's was all self interest...

you have no heart

Not judging you Vic. I'd do the same. Just saying is all.

That's fine zen.
I can see the massive social problems with short term rentals but that's not how they all work.
I've lived in a town where the billionaires were pushing out the millionaires and there was a chronic housing shortage. The local council went all "commie" and spent a shit load of cash on employee housing. They also introduced a county-wide sales tax to pay for a first class mass transit system in the entire valley. This allowed workers to live out of the main tourist zones and get to work cheaply and easily. It also took thousands upon thousands of cars off the roads that were choking the town.
Australia probably needs to start having these discussions.

Gunman.

Your missing the point completely.

Im not knocking you for acquiring it and fixing it up.

Im saying long term rental arrangements are better for the community in the long run.

Kids need stability. Families need stability.

You still get your money either way.

Dont you have a heart?

The Fire,
You simply don't know the situation here. The place simply isn't suitable for long term accommodation due to accessibility issues. It's one of the main reasons why the previous owner sold it.
There is also plenty of low cost community housing (church sponsored) in the immediate area with much easier access.
but hey, keep painting me as the bad guy from a position of ignorance if it makes you feel better.

I'll just chime in that if it's accessible enough for someone to use on a holiday then it is probably accessible enough for someone to rent out. It's always a difficult thing to discuss because there is so much skin in the game for some people (and easy for others - like me - to hurl rocks, because what have we got to lose? Many of us are effectively excluded from the moment we're born), but at some point you might just have to admit that you're acting primarily in your best financial interests. I see it as a small price to pay for owning a bit of a stolen land for your own financial benefit, and getting on our high-horse is one of the few joys those of us who are left to the mercy of the landlord class have.

I also question the economic stimulus argument. People use that all the time in the rapidly changing East Coast of Tas, as if buying up multiple homes and turning them into hotels is some kind of benevolent charitable act. Sure their cashed-up guests might buy a toasted sandwich at one of two cafes in town or some hot chips across the road, but in the long scheme of life (remembering here that the notion of individual private property rights on this continent only came into being 200 years ago), I reckon having affordable homes available to the community is much more important than tourism investor profits.

Vic Local wrote:

The Fire,
You simply don't know the situation here. The place simply isn't suitable for long term accommodation due to accessibility issues. It's one of the main reasons why the previous owner sold it.
There is also plenty of low cost community housing (church sponsored) in the immediate area with much easier access.
but hey, keep painting me as the bad guy from a position of ignorance if it makes you feel better.

Tenants can't access it but Air BnB tourists can?

It's desirable enough for an Air BnB stay but not for a long term tenant?

From the outside looking in, that very much does not pass the Pub test.

Great, another tosser speaking from a position of ignorance. Unless you have a 4WD its a 70m walk in up or down steep slopes and steps to my place. Guests are happy to put up with it for a few days but nobody else put a bid on the property. Do you think there might be a reason for that?
Freeride76. Best keep the mouth shut and be considered an idiot rather than opening it and removing all doubt.

Vic Local wrote:

Great, another tosser speaking from a position of ignorance. Unless you have a 4WD its a 70m walk in up or down steep slopes and steps to my place. Guests are happy to put up with it for a few days but nobody else put a bid on the property. Do you think there might be a reason for that?
Freeride76. Best keep the mouth shut and be considered an idiot rather than opening it and removing all doubt.

Fair enough.

That wouldn't be considered an impediment to renting a place out in this neck of the woods.

plenty of places with steep driveways and tricky access.

anyhow, it's your call.

I can guarantee there would be tons of demand for a rental like that in this area, such is the lack of housing.

And AirBnB has played a major role in taking housing stock out of the long term rental market in this area.

You would be surprised at what some people would forego to have a stable roof over their heads in the current housing climate.

Oh no its got steps!

You mean we have to use our legs?

Cmon kids back in the (2wd) bus.

" I reckon having affordable homes available to the community is much more important than tourism investor profits"

Couldn't agree more dan.

So we end up with just another small town where for a large chunk of the time, a lot of houses sit empty and the community is the worse for it.

Vic Local wrote:

Great, another tosser speaking from a position of ignorance. Unless you have a 4WD its a 70m walk in up or down steep slopes and steps to my place. Guests are happy to put up with it for a few days but nobody else put a bid on the property. Do you think there might be a reason for that?
Freeride76. Best keep the mouth shut and be considered an idiot rather than opening it and removing all doubt.

Give us the address VL and we’ll get it up on google earth and do a pub test on it.
Bet ya 10 bucks you don’t.

Can't work out why you'd prefer the constant hassle and turnover of Air BnB as opposed to a solid long-term tenant forking out every single week, a good solid member of the local community.

I mean, there's gotta be a reason somewhere.

because of christmas easter and school hols

on that piece of coast you can extort the melbournites

the rates would be ridiculous

it was a well known trick in margaret river area when I was there well over 20 years ago pre airbnb, crew would move out of their own homes over holiday periods and rent them out to rich perthies the returns were so good

There is negatives to Air BnB but there is also positives, lots of employment for small local business, cleaners, garden maintenance, handymen, they also tend to keep maintenance of things pretty high as presentation is important so things like painting or do renovations etc

While long term rentals tend to not get much love or attention unless it really has to be done.

So it's not all negative.

thank you Indo Dreaming for your more nuanced view.
There's shitloads of Airbnb's down this way that are only rented at Christmas / NY and Easter. They are basically private homes with full time residents who rent their places out for top dollar, and bugger off to some remote beach and camp / caravan for a few weeks.
There's not much wrong with that. Kicking out families and renting places out on the short term rental market is shit, but it's not always like that. it's not black and white folks.

Vic Local wrote:

There's shitloads of Airbnb's down this way that are only rented at Christmas / NY and Easter. They are basically private homes with full time residents who rent their places out for top dollar, and bugger off to some remote beach and camp / caravan for a few weeks.
There's not much wrong with that

Vic Local im going to call bullshit on that statement. Let me know what area you live in and I'll go on AirBnb and publish all the properties on this forum that are only available over Easter and Christmas in your area. Or maybe you can do that for us just so you can't call bullshit.
AirBnb will go down in history as one of the more unsavoury social experiments.

North Qld coastal town my old man grew up in.
He tells me today a family friend recently on a disability pension has had to move himself and his three kids into tents at the local caravan park because he couldn’t find a rental.
He was just retelling what he’d heard, didn’t realise it was happening up and down the east coast and that it was being driven by the capitalist short term rental market.
In the end, it’s greed and nothing else. But society on the whole is caught up in it, because people are sheep and fomo.

Not sure how you'd do that garyg1412. Christmas bookings are already really tight on the Surf Coast so the number of properties that appear after searching for Christmas / NY is low.
Locals can get $5000 + a week for a typical 3 bedroom house at peak times, so there's a pretty big incentive to rent out your home and get out of dodge. (Especially when town is absolutely packed and even going grocery shopping is a pain).
Last year a shitload of people rented out their homes and planned to head to NSW for peak season. When they closed the border due to covid, people were scrambling for accommodation because they'd rented out their place.
Just read you comment Roystein and that's definitely the ugly side of short term rentals.

Vic Local wrote:

Not sure how you'd do that garyg1412. Christmas bookings are already really tight on the Surf Coast so the number of properties that appear after searching for Christmas / NY is low.

I'm actually talking about searching either side of Christmas/NY. Any place completely void of any vacancies for months either side of Christmas will be the places you are referring to. Let me know how you go.

Airbnb

Knew someone with big surfcoast house they rented out Xmas and Easter only @ $3500 Pw.

Heard the story of an Apollo bay real estate agent who did a subdivision and sold the 2nd house. New owner Airbnbed it meaning the real estate had sell up because she had parties next door every weekend. Karma.

Likewise we didn’t proceed with a house purchase on the surf coast for permanent living because there was an Airbnb next door and two others within earshot of a boozy night.

The MP apparently had (2020) 5200 Airbnb’s. 2nd largest concentration of all AU LGAs. Created so many problems for neighbours the council has passed very strict conditions and fines.

In tourist destinations like Venice throughout Europe families are being evicted from their houses they have rented for generations because there is more money to be made with Airbnb.

Central banks and low interest rates are the real problem and not all disruption like Airbnb is good ....

A huge reason people Airbnb their holiday houses out instead of long term rental, is they can still use their house when they like to get away for weekends or holidays etc

Obviously when lease long term rentals they cant, so the other option is to just leave it empty, some do (like my neighbour) because is actually a real pain to AirbNB your place out, risk damages, organise cleaners, more work involved than you expect, i know people who have done it, but dont bother anymore.

The whole thing is not really new, people have always been doing this, before the internet, it was through word of mouth, newspapers or mostly real estate agents, then the internet hit and websites and business started listing holiday houses i remember ones targeted at our area (probably still exist), Airbnb is just the bigger version of this like google, facebook, youtube, E-bay, Amazon etc are the big name sites for their area of business.

Get rid of Airbnb and another player would just become the next big name/player.

BTW just looking on the site, there is about four house in my street listed on AirBnB, but there is also at least four empty houses and at least four long term rentals in my street.

You can safely assume that when people say AirBnB they are referring to the practice or turning residential homes into hotels, not the particular platform. And when most of us are discussing problems, we’re referring the practice of people turning their non-primary residence into a tourist rental. Im of the opinion that there needs to be a tax on vacant properties, regulation against non-primary residences being used for AirBNB, and disincentives for people to use housing and land as a means of financial investment through removing negative gearing and CGT discounts, increasing renters rights, and heavily taxing speculative property investment profits. It might mean a few less people are making bank from owning more houses than they need, but I reckon we can take that one on the chin.

"I'm actually talking about searching either side of Christmas/NY. Any place completely void of any vacancies for months either side of Christmas will be the places you are referring to. Let me know how you go."
Gary1214, Home owners can (and do) block out 50 of the 52 weeks of the year. Their homes simply don't appear in searches except at high peak times.
I know so many people who rent out their homes over new year for big bucks and use the money to go skiing in Japan, rent a house in Bali, go camping / pay off mortgage etc.
I even visited a mate who lives in a tiny hamlet on the NSW South Coast in early Jan a few years ago. He was camping with a large number of his neighbours in a nearby national park. There was about 10 families in the group. It happens.

dandandan wrote:

You can safely assume that when people say AirBnB they are referring to the practice or turning residential homes into hotels, not the particular platform. And when most of us are discussing problems, we’re referring the practice of people turning their non-primary residence into a tourist rental. Im of the opinion that there needs to be a tax on vacant properties, regulation against non-primary residences being used for AirBNB, and disincentives for people to use housing and land as a means of financial investment through removing negative gearing and CGT discounts, increasing renters rights, and heavily taxing speculative property investment profits. It might mean a few less people are making bank from owning more houses than they need, but I reckon we can take that one on the chin.

Hear Hear.

dandandan wrote:

You can safely assume that when people say AirBnB they are referring to the practice or turning residential homes into hotels, not the particular platform. And when most of us are discussing problems, we’re referring the practice of people turning their non-primary residence into a tourist rental. Im of the opinion that there needs to be a tax on vacant properties, regulation against non-primary residences being used for AirBNB, and disincentives for people to use housing and land as a means of financial investment through removing negative gearing and CGT discounts, increasing renters rights, and heavily taxing speculative property investment profits. It might mean a few less people are making bank from owning more houses than they need, but I reckon we can take that one on the chin.

Okay on the AirBnB thing fair enough.

Really what is needed is tax incentives to discourage people from leasing their houses for holiday rentals and incentives to encourage them to lease out houses for long term rentals.

That said the whole phenomena of AirnBnB i think is more complicated than that and isn't going anywhere, im pretty sure its not a thing limited to Australia, things in the world just always change and evolve, you can try to fight these things or just go with them, for those not in the property market, you can be bitter and think its unfair, or you can find other avenues to get into the market like buying somewhere affordable, and there still is affordable places near good waves.

From a building permit point of view Airbnb doesn’t apply ie an owner can turn an existing residential house in a residential street zoned (for planning purposes) “residential housing only” into effectively a short stay hotel without any planning and/or regulatory problems. It’s just done. Yet try to put a hotel in the same street and council would say a definite NO. Herein is the problem with Airbnb, it operates outside proper planning /regulatory controls and can and does fuck up existing otherwise quiet “residential” streets/neighbourhoods.

AirBnb's problems in Australia will start the day a dodgy regulatory item like a smoke detector fails and a whole family dies in a house fire. We're all for knee jerk regulatory requirements after a disaster that is the result of lackadaisical laws.

indo-dreaming][quote=dandandan wrote:

That said the whole phenomena of AirnBnB i think is more complicated than that and isn't going anywhere, im pretty sure its not a thing limited to Australia, things in the world just always change and evolve, you can try to fight these things or just go with them, for those not in the property market, you can be bitter and think its unfair, or you can find other avenues to get into the market like buying somewhere affordable, and there still is affordable places near good waves.

No shade intended here at all ID, but I absolutely refute this. Markets aren't natural things that simply "exist" or "evolve". They are created by legislation - propped up by concession, subsidized, or regulated into existence by deliberate government interference. In Tasmania, the whole holiday letting system was only deregulated about 5 years ago. In some pockets, such as Battery Point, recently introduced regulation has prohibited any further entire homes being converted to short-term letting. In other parts of the world, various governments but more often at the council level are introducing legislation and regulation to pull the rug out from underneath it.

On a bigger level, I don't believe in solving problems by finding ways to participate in them. Sure, it might feel better to simply give up and find a way to "get into the market". But my reality is that I can't financially or, wanky as this may sound, morally afford to (referring to the "just go with it" bit here). If you're born into a poor family, with no existing wealth to fall back on, the odds are completely stacked against you - it's not the 70s/80s/90/s/00s any more. The economy is fundamentally different. Buying a home even if I could afford to doesn't change the system, it just means it doesn't affect me anymore. The system remains unfair - deliberately rigged to prop up our unequal economy and shore up existing wealth, with the heartache of those on the edges of society (my entire family, and millions of wonderful deserving people) a critical component of keeping the system alive so it can best serve those in power. Housing shouldn't be commodified, governments ought to regulate against the rich converting residential homes into hotels, and our national economy shouldn't be built upon real estate speculation - and those things are entirely achievable, but requires people to be bitter enough to do something about it.

Each to their own.

But personally if we revisit this thread in five years or so id rather be reading about how you were glad you did buy a cheap block out in some desert region within reach of waves back in 2021, thinking at least i have something build a shack for holidays or retire etc, than in five years time still be trying to fight the system thinking you can change it.

Which even if AirBNB was banned all across Oz, lets be real property prices would barely change, you only have to read back through this thread to see how complex the whole issue is, end of the day it comes down to supply and demand, and supply wont increase much but demand always will.