airbnb, C or D?

yeah it is pretty shitty for them not to include the fees on the map

are you taking your family to mummers parade, Hurting?

That was the plan (I have friends in the parade) but I think it's not going to happen. Too logistically complicated/too few reasonable stay options, and the couple we were going to go with may also be backing out. I think next year I wanna do it, book early and find a place really close to the parade route.

A Private room in public space.

https://a2.muscache.com/im/pictures/092b533b-414e-414c-92d1-2e7bd1cc6471.jpg

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/11429217

tempted? not as sylvan as your usual haunts but

Sylvan is a great word, and this place definitely isn't it. The advantages of being in the open air here would surely be destroyed by being able to hear a) cars, b) music that is in cars, its enough to send you to the bottom of the canal.

so has anybody hosted? considering it right now as a way of making money from the basement apartment without have to deal with Ontario's brutal landlord/tenant board.

I haven't but a friend who lives in the same building as my wife and I does. she has a studio apartment and when she's out of town or cat-sitting at a friend's place when theyre out of town she airbnb's her place and makes $100 a night. works out p well for her.

I have a friend in Nashville who's moving to the country and turning his home into a dedicated airbnb. I assume he expects to cover the mortgage and then some.

if you do it, i will price it next time i come to TO, TT! :)

(TT already rethinking this)

ha! you stay for free at Casa Dysa, my friend!

right now – we're 99% doing this, but we're having trouble figuring out insurance. since air bnb covers the unit and we'd need our own home insurance for the rest of the house. we're not sure how it would work if, for example, Morbs started a fire in the basement and burned the entire house down.

"no hot takes allowed to be posted by guests"

I stayed in an airbnb in Sharrow the other day in a family house and I went into the kitchen on the second day and the guy that was in there I recognized but I couldn't tell where from and its still bugging me

it might just have been that he had been on the bus earlier the same day

We're using Airbnb for accommodation every trip now. We've had great experiences in Barcelona, London and Co. Donegal, Ireland so far, with Fife and North Yorkshire coming up before the end of the year. Our experience thus far is that it's so much cheaper than hotels and can offer better conditions than hostels in the big cities if you take a bit of time to search and check listing/reviews/photos carefully and is much cheaper than standard b&b offerings in rural areas, which are often pretty expensive. Classic.

Use it in NYC, Madrid, Seville and next month Lisbon. Classic.

I have yet to use it. It never works out better economically than a hotel room for my family with two small kids since there's always an extra charge for more people, even a baby. Granted I'm usually comparing whole apartments to hotels so there could be a certain comfort factor. Sooner or later we will probably try one.

Also a lot of them have terrible cancellation policies, another problem when you have small kids.

I feel like it's had its day, but maybe that's premature. It used to actually be people's houses or apartments, now in big cities it just seems to be some type of scalper. It's also not as cheap as it was. For NYC it seems totally dead now, and really iffy. I've reverted to just getting a hotel - there's a privacy and formality about hotels that staying in someone's apartment doesn't have.

It can be great if you stay in the apartment while the host is there - I travelled around Europe and used it a lot, and in Marseille I stayed with a couple and we all got on great, went out late each night, met all their friends etc. Afterwards they said I could come and stay for free in future. I hadn't considered the potential benefits of sharing a place versus being on your own - I guess there are still some actual homes on it but I definitely stopped using it sometime in the last year or so because every apartment seemed like essentially a rented apartment run by a professional, which I could just book via booking.com and a much easier interface, better user reviews, etc.

Been travelling through Central and South America for a few months and airbnb has been amazing, both for meeting people and for the massive advantage of paying in full online with no crazy exchange rates or 20% taxes on top of the room rates (eg in Chile). Saved us loads of money

I feel like it's had its day, but maybe that's premature. It used to actually be people's houses or apartments, now in big cities it just seems to be some type of scalper.

This has not been my experience recently at all, though I have noticed lots more traditional BnBs and hotels are using it as a marketing tool now.

Renting your flat on airbnb while on holiday is pretty classic, I went to Ireland a couple of weeks back and it paid for the entire trip, flights included.

it's been a little while since i've used it, but i've had a number of great experiences 2011-2014 (vrbo too, though i remember vrbo having a shittier UI than airbnb) throughout the US. i rented old, beautiful houses for same cost or and often way less than a hotel. i've used it w/ and w/o my kids along.

my new place of work won't let me use it for conference travel though, which is a bummer.

the best airbnbs imo are people who are renting out their own homes or maybe a second home that they still often use themselves. i had a good experience in the really cool hyde park neighborhood in austin in 2013 renting from this cool older hippie lady who had an awesome little arts & crafts house but it took a while to find it, like 5-6 other houses in that neighborhood were all owned by the same dude who never lived in these places and just airbnb'd them out and they were all decorated in this shitty generic contemporary style with no character. probably more and mroe places are gonna be that way

I actually can't rent out my own apt because it's a co-op and against the rules, although I suspect people of doing it on account of occasionally seeing an unfamiliar looking young couple with a slightly bewildered expression and bags, never to be seen again.

xp I read that some huge percentage of airbnbs, like the vast majority of them, are rented out by professional landlords who own a bunch of properties. This is sort of the lie of the "sharing economy." It's the same with companies like Uber, at least in NYC -- they're always professional drivers and it's never some friendly guy picking up a little extra money in between his studies or whatever.

but i think there are still deals to be found, maybe not in like downtown NYC or something but in other cities and neighborhoods with less tourist traffic. even in the heart of downtown charleston SC though i found an amazing private guest room with its own dedicated entrance and second floor porch -- part of huge southern colonial house with like 15-ft ceilings on the porch -- for like $110/night. hotels a block away were all $250-$400

rented out by professional landlords who own a bunch of properties.

yea, and ime these are the people w/ the shittiest strict cancellation policies and extra fees, too. that dude in austin required this full lease agreement too. the regular people just renting out their places have been way more relaxed and flexible ime

Brooklyn seems like kind of the nexus of the branded Airbnb experience - I've looked a bit at listings when we were considering an in-city getaway from the kids and it's like there's standardized Airbnb apartment charm in the same way there are now standardized blackboard espresso shops. And pricey - getting a hotel is cheaper. However I did find a rooftop geodesic dome I am tempted to stay in at some point.

Maybe things are still a bit better here in the UK? We stayed in London last November and the choice on Airbnb was basically overwhelming. Plenty of varying degrees of bland 'professional' listings for sure, but balanced alongside what appear at least to be genuine real-life people renting out a room or flat etc.

Someone I am friends with on Facebook has bought specifically to let on airbnb.

There's something kind of inherently gross and ultimately self-defeating about the commodification of the couchsurfing experience.

should be an "also" in there, obviously talking about the situations that are not just "key's under the mat, apartment is yours for the week"

I live next door to one, it's definitely owned by property-investing landlords and not normal people temporarily opening up their flat, and being in the centre of Brighton it is fucking stag & hen dos screaming and yelping every single weekend. I honestly don't give a shit about my neighbours being noisy, I am usually the noisy neighbour in fact, but *we live here*, so these stupid happy yelling tourists can FUCK RIGHT OFF.

stayed in bay area recently and did not use airbnb because SF is insane, we stayed at a motor lodge in one of the little surrounding towns for much cheaper

have had a fantastic experience using airbnb in china fwiw

ya I stayed in a very cheap and very stinky hostel in sf cause airbnb was off the charts

I had a great airbnb in London in June this year which was clearly someone's home which they were letting out from time to time (the general stuff lying about was definitely that of an inhabited home), and it worked out perfectly for us, but it was hard going to find it amongst all the professional buy-to-let properties. We're back down again in a few weeks, and it's proving harder now to find something which would work out cheaper than a hotel and isn't just part of a scalper's portfolio (the last one was four of us sharing, this time it's just for two).

I'm also in the process of trying to rent a flat in a touristy bit of Spain for a long weekend and it's clearly taken over from the regular holiday letting sites for people with holidays homes in the area.

Ffs

There's nothing 'gross' (stop using this word) about airbnb not being puppy money for some moon-eyed fartknockers

There's nothing wrong with it being 'just' an alternative to hotels

There's nothing wrong with them being airbnb-styled airbnbs

Maaaannnn I remember it used to really mean something mannnnnnnnnnnn ye tarts

That's kinda just yknow aimed everywhere. Must dash! X

airbnb is probably the best thing ever. have had great experiences in SF, SD, taipei in the past year

puppy money for some moon-eyed fartknockers

ilx posts with striking imagery

ya I stayed in a very cheap and very stinky hostel in sf cause airbnb was off the charts

― flopson, Monday, September 12, 2016 12:06 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark

if u have a car i recommend staying in the marin headlands hostel, amazzziing

Ffs

There's nothing 'gross' (stop using this word) about airbnb not being puppy money for some moon-eyed fartknockers

There's nothing wrong with it being 'just' an alternative to hotels

There's nothing wrong with them being airbnb-styled airbnbs

Maaaannnn I remember it used to really mean something mannnnnnnnnnnn ye tarts

― poor fiddy-less albion (darraghmac), Monday, September 12, 2016 10:02 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

living in a city with a housing crisis and really low vacancy rate and observing the very real effect of air bnb raising property and rental prices while taking large numbers of homes off of the rental market makes me think it's perhaps not exclusively classic

a pox on airbnb-dedicated apartments in residential blocks or houses on residential streets and on anyone who rents them

my airbnb experience in SF wasn't bad at all, we stayed in pac heights which is a pretty nice neighborhood and it was only $150 a night -- with fees came to about $800 for 4 nights but i doubt you can approach that value with hotels, especially for the middle of the summer

xp to dayo/floppy

it's been the talk here in Toronto, about what it may or may not be doing to the rental market here. tho I've not seen anything concrete about the effects. but apparently the city isn't planning on doing anything about it right now.
which is a relief, because we're planning on putting up our basement apartment on ABnB. our last full time tenant fucked us over pretty badly, and it's amazing how easy the landlord tenant act mades it for nightmare tenants here in Ontario. from my perspective, Air BnB makes our lives so much easier (or we're hoping it will – we'll see how it goes).

xpost to jim

airbnb has been both great and horrible, I'm running about a 50% success rate with them.

Our latest experience was our host canceling our reservation THE NIGHT BEFORE (<14 hours) we were scheduled to arrive. airbnb immediately offered us +15% credit to find another listing but as you can imagine there was nothing available within reason near the city center, only the remote suburbs. We ended up getting a deal booking a hotel downtown at the last minute that ended up being about the same price as the airbnb, luckily enough. Upon check-in the desk clerk at our hotel asked us how we found them I briefly told him the airbnb experience and he upgraded us to a suite. So in some ways, airbnb can be a blessing.

I ended up giving airbnb some feedback and they gave me another $100 credit (my 2nd this year due to problems like these), but $100 credits can only buy you so much goodwill.

xp. i have neighbours who airbnb their apartments when theyre cat-sitting for other friends, or who go and stay with their parents for a few weeks in the summer and airbnb their place, basically to make ends meet, i know it's not all bad.

i don't think any tenancy act can make it hard for nightmare tenants really (and airbnb nightmare guests are not unheard of), in B.C. i feel completely unprotected as a renter and have had horrendous landlords, nevertheless if i decided to fuck my apartment up and stop paying rent it would probably take my landlord months to get rid of me.

i've used airbnb with a lot of success

the situation in vancouver is that you're turning a residential/condo building into a hotel, and there are strata regulations against that. homeowners are also being taxed differently due to not reporting that they will be using their property for short-term rentals. there's also the tearing of a community by installing what is essentially a hotel in a residential zone

having said all that, the problem, specifically in vancouver, lies in the fact that airbnb rentals are a lot cheaper than hotels or other short-term rental solutions

>if i decided to fuck my apartment up and stop paying rent it would probably take my landlord months to get rid of me.

yes. this. took half a year and even then she only left because we weren't letting her walk all over us, we never actually succeeded with an actual eviction after two tries. she also (in addition to not-paying rent) had pets she was just letting destroy the place and a bf that moved in (couldn't legally say anything about that!) who'd she get into constant screaming matches with followed by door slamming/frame destroying tantrums that would terrify our child. and again, the LTB could not give a fuck about her terrifying our kid and inviting her deadbeat boyfriend into our house without our consent. we cannot charge deposit here either so we will likely have to eat the cost of the damage her and her fucking cats (can't say no to pets) and boyfriend caused as well. plus all the fees it costs at the board and now (ongoing) small claims.
so now it's either Air BnB or nothing. we'd rather have trouble making ends meet than ever be at the mercy of the LTA again.

lol at my reddit formatting. whoops!