idk what’s so hard to understand about this. A lot of the <ahem> chud element is blaming “immigrants” for housing prices and rent skyrocketing. Meanwhile massive investment firms are employing AI and algos to buy up and even over-bid on real estate properties and that is verified. Alongside that these VRBO trends have continued running full-speed in the background for coming up on two decades. If you can get 5k/mo from a VRBO for the same space that would only net you 900/mo as a long-term rental, why wouldn’t you as a property manager or owner take the risk? Even if the place stays empty for many days per month, you still make bank.
Extrapolate that into the digital e-comm realm where listings are added, managed, and parsed by many thousands of online companies and interested parties (end-users, platform organisers, marketers, shareholders). Why is it such a fucking blindspot that the hyper-digital result of VRBO thinking over the past 20+ years is one out of every 5 rental properties offered on a platform like AirBnB or its analog has created an environment where rent for everyday long-term workers has gone up exponentially? Even if only 1 in 20 VRBO succeeds in turning a profit, that’s still more money on average per month/quarter/year than renting long-term… meaning it’s still attractive for anyone who owns a secondary (or twenty-dary) property to try their luck on the short-term rental market to squeeze a quick buck out of what was traditionally considered a long-term, stable, investment in the past.
Short-term vacation rentals being dis/un regulated have led to duh duH DUHHHH… A gold-rush. Anyone who owns property that they don’t “need” have realized that putting it up at 10x the value even if they only get 3x the return on the risk is still profitable. Which is exactly what AirBnB and their ilk are counting on, as they (as a company) continue to rake in billions in VC funding and shareholder enthusiasm and while they keep showing up to tech conferences like Collision in Toronto (last week) and claim they’ve developed a “hot new algo” to weed out “the anomaly of bad hosts or guests” who are “partying too hard or creating stress for guests cleaning up after a stay”.
It costs more to stay in a sub-par AirBnB now than it does in an over-priced hotel in many regions. I remember when AirBnB started getting hip a couple of oft-traveled friends were raving to me that they could fly into a city anywhere on the planet and rent out an unused/docked sailboat right downtown for 30 bucks per night or roll into a populated town with full booking for an event and find a suburban stay-cation type arrangement for 60/night… etc. It was the wild west. It was “couchsurfing.com but better”. And, it was.
Until enshitification kicked in. Long ago.
/rant.
*speeling mistak