I agree, but would I want to live in a 20 storey apartment block without sprinklers etc? Millions do. They have no choice. Look at that fire in London.
Peter wrote:
You would have to make it illegal to own more than one property.
No. Obviously there are ways to make it illegal to rent out normal living property to short-stay visitors. The cities of Munich and Berlin are doing it. It is very difficult to enforce those laws of course without having access to airbnb’s database. Right now the only way is to question neighbors and to verify that the renters are registered under that address (which is mandatory here).
As long as companies like airbnb and uber do not violate the laws of the countries they operate in they can do what they want.
Exactly. That’s how i see it too. This can only mean that the illegal part of it is illegal/immoral.
However, for all the debating here, 1000 people are renting these “second homes” every day 
So? The number of people who do it does not make it right.
Peter wrote:
… 1000 people …
If it were only 1000 nobody would waste a second thought to it. In the end it’s up to us to decide in what kind of a society and in what kind of cities we want to live. Myself I couldn’t care less about what’s happening in Munich (my native town and where my ancestors lived for generations). I will not go back there ever, because that city has already surrendered to the maximization of income and greed. And if they continue like this there won’t be many real inhabitants left pretty soon. Maybe this will happen anyway, but airbnb and the likes of it accelerate the process.
I will not go back there ever, because that city has already surrendered to the maximization of income and greed.
There’s very little difference between Munich and Stuttgart here. In some parts of your new hometown it is even worse than here.
Alexis wrote:
There’s very little difference between Munich and Stuttgart here. In some parts of your new hometown it is even worse than here.
I am not living in Stuttgart either (but I lived there for almost 20 years). I live in the small university town of Tübingen, 30km south of Stuttgart. Which of course has the same gentrification problems and the same airbnb vs. student accomodation problems of every sought after location – some years ago Tübingen won the “city with the highest quality of life” title – it wouldn’t do any more now unfortunately, because densification and redensification (I hope that this is the correct translation for “Nachverdichtung”) are quickly ruining the appeal of the town. But some people got really rich over that. I hope they choke on their money.
what_next wrote:
If you book via airbnb in sought-after and touristically interesting places it must be clear to you that this is at the expense of normal people trying to live and work there.
Its clear to me that in such areas “normal people trying to live and work there” will eventually be doing that somewhere else, where land values match their income… unless they were smart enough to buy into the appreciating market before others bid beyond their ability to compete. If people refuse to accept the risk of investment in their own housing, and expect others to take that risk for them, they get to live with what the rental market provides on any given day. It’s their choice.
What I can sympathize with is the disturbance to invested property owners in a given area who now find themselves effectively living next door to a hotel, with no land use authorization processed.
You maybe don’t get the core of the problem. Many people simply don’t – and will never have – the possibility to buy an appartment or a house. and if we don’t want to live in a pool full of sharks as a society then we have to protect the poor from the extreme perversions of the “free market”. It is simply wrong to have hundreds (and in some cities thousands) of appartments empty for airbnb while many people have no chance to find affordable housing. A Munich policeman, nurse or shop asszstant can not afford to live IN Munich today, This is clearly wrong – and I am far from beeing a communist.
Same with Uber, by the way. Look what Uber and the like have done to New York City Taxi Drivers who have spent up to two million dollars to aquire a medallion – that is now only worth a small percentage of that price.
