Air Bnb has ruined my life

[itsafan]

There is literally no way out of this situation 😢 other than for us to give up our jobs and relocate in the hope that we can find new jobs and a place to live. There are literally no other rentals available in the area even if we could afford the rents. A mortgage is out of the question as we would need at least a hundred grand deposit.
There are at least 1000 properties listed on Airbnb within a 5 mile radius, many of them would be ideal but the rents on them are extortionate and aimed at tourists we are talking at least a grand a week.
We have lived here for years in a residential complex (well before Airbnb and booking even got popular) we have jobs here and friends here and a life here. It is on the whole fine for 9 months of the year mainly local people living around us who all respect that we are living and just trying to survive.
Then the Airbnb people turn up and every week it’s new people above us below us next to us. The noise is horrendous and probably the worst problem. Being woken at all hours with people rolling suitcases along floors, lifts going up and down, shouting in the corridors and doors banging. It just goes on and on like this for months.
My anxiety with it all is now so bad that I’m having to take medication. The noise just feels constant.
Do people even realise when they are booking Airbnb that these are people’s homes that they are disrupting? Why don’t people go to hotels anymore ?
So yeah there is a huge housing crisis due to the airbnb situation and I’m just a small person in a situation that I can’t change other than to leave somewhere I call home. I suppose my AIBU is am I being unreasonable to feel like a company has ruined my life ?

The problem in the UK with Airbnb is a government created one

To stop the rise of BTL landlords the government took away tax relief on mortgage interest for people with a BTL mortgage.
Which made letting a property more expensive. Contrary to popular belief this didn’t mean the landlords wouldn’t be picking up the bill and running at a loss or only breaking even, that was going to be the tenant. Landlords also started to look around at how to side step this legislation and getting rid of their tenants when the lease ended and turning their properties into holiday lets where not only do you get more than your monthly rental up front, No non paying tenants and if they wreck the place you can sue and the people are likely to have something to lose. You can change your non tax right off btl mortgage to a tax right off holiday let mortgage.

I think the government expected the landlords to put multiple properties up for sale and that would help FTB’. Unfortunately landlords came up with an alternative solution and since then every bit of legislation that has tried to manage private landlords has just made rental properties rarer and with supply failing and demand rising, rents are now at an almost unaffordable level.

er no. The hotels that are used for the ‘purposes’ she is talking about were themselves largely responsible for the downfall of hotels and service in this country, before hospitality went down hill for other reasons. Cheap, nasty people buying beautiful old buildings and turning them in run down piles of shit that they charge cheap rates for and let rot before they burn them down for the insurance. It was lucky for them that this ‘purpose’ came along as they could continue provide shit levels of care to their buildings and the people staying in them while still managing to be paid. These hotels are not the ones to feel sorry for. They’re not the victims. They’re run by awful people who want a quick east buck without having to do any of the things expected from a hotel.

the rest of the hotels (the legitimate businesses who tried and wouldn’t get a government contract for this ‘purpose’) have gone out of business because of a whole load of compounding reasons including air bnb, energy rates, changing habits, cost of living, Covid, etc. but no, the cockroaches who run those shitty hotels are the last ones standing who haven’t - and they weren’t competing with air bnbs they were going for cheap cheap cheap don’t complain if there’s a rat running around type holiday makers long before this new money making opportunity came up for them.

I haven't used AirBandB in years, since I became aware of how they are destroying the housing market in so many counties.

My friends are generally nice liberal types, who think that there should be some regulation, but they still use AirBandB. These are people who could afford to stay in hoteks, guesthouses, aparthotels etc, but they're so used to AirBandB.

We all need to boycott it, except for the rent out a spare room function, which is how it all started, with actual hosts rather than property management companies.

There's believr definately a place for holiday apartments, but purpose built aparthotels or university accommodation during the vacations could fill this need.

OP, are you based in a Spanish tourist resort? I’d have thought there are areas that are more residential and those that are kind of desirable for tourists (but not locals). I’m a Londoner so do feel your pain in terms of being pushed out by accident. Wherever you are in the world it’ll always be someone’s holiday. And you can bet they will be dragging a wheely suitcase 😂

What about those Airbnb’s that are people’s homes? Do you want restrictions put on them.

I cannot afford hotels and we went a few years ago to a villa in Southern Spain that had its own private swimming pool

We have only used a hotel once since then.

No hotel can give you your own private swimming pool. It’s also the cost of things like having a few drinks (for me who doesn’t drink alcohol that means lemonade, juice even a coffee etc) It all starts to add up. Our bill just for brunch, drinks snacks, fruit etc each day if we didn’t restrict our selves I would imagine could be the best part of £100 then we would eat out at night

But in an Airbnb, we will spend around £140 for the fortnight. We would still eat out at night but it’s the amount we would spend during the day that has to be taken into consideration and the fact there are others around.

For some of the posters who go to Airbnb because they have more rooms so you can all have a room. You can cater for special diets/needs etc. it’s cheaper it’s more convenient for you. What did you actually do before for a holiday ? Airbnb didn’t exist before and people still went on holiday. Yes hotels are more expensive now but so is everything else. To the poster who said about the 30-40% deposit and the fees thank you for that. I think the poster before was trying to insinuate that I was trying to buy a mansion. This deposit I’m talking about is for an apartment.
I am taking all the comments on board even the ones I don’t 100% agree with.
The situation at the moment is that we didn’t originally move into a 24/7 hotel we moved into a residential building home. It’s now turned into some kind of premier inn without the added bonus of someone making my bed and a nice breakfast 😂. It seems this has mainly happened (looking at the responses) so that other people don’t have to go to hotels.
Obviously Airbnb are just one company booking is another who have thousands of residential homes listed in the area and probably in many many areas.
it is good news about the government cracking down. Although from my area I haven’t noticed any sort of knock on yet as far as housing is concerned hopefully that will come in time. Unfortunately money makes the world go round and the only real way to solve it is in taxing people so much for owning these properties it makes them become undesirable to outside investment.
They are building thousands and thousands of new homes, but they are all very unaffordable a lot of them are not even marketed in Spanish, they are purely aimed at foreign investors.
Probably contrary to popular belief it’s not really the brits they are aiming at. The big money is coming from the Middle East and Scandinavia. A lot of them are Airbnb but there are thousands of them that are empty, visited for a fortnight and then locked up until next august too.
The one thing I’m not sure has been thought through (if any of this has actually been thought through) is that eventually you will go to your Airbnb like all the other hundreds of thousands of people who don’t fancy a hotel. And there will be no one in the local restaurant to serve you because they have left they have nowhere to live. Bear in mind that the average Spanish salary is €2000 so around £1800 and you can bet you aren’t being payed more than that as a waiter in a restaurant. No problem you might think we like to self cater anyway, what if there is no one to serve you in the supermarket? What if there is no supermarket because it’s not worth it being open for 9 months with no customers? What happens then ?
The other thing to mention is that when we came to live here we had neighbors. We don’t have that community anymore getting to know your neighbors having a friendly chat. Even saying hey you were loud last night can you keep the noise down a bit. You can’t develop that relationship which I do miss too.

It sucks. Airbnb should be banned. DH was always against it for the reasons you state, then we moved overseas and tried to use it sometimes to come home to see family because hotels were really difficult for long stays with toddlers as family not in a location aimed at tourists and hotel options weren't good. Had so many shit experiences we've realised we should have stuck to our guns, it never felt good going against our principles anyway. We just stay in the shitty hotels now. And don't see our family as much.

I think there's even less excuse in a lot of Europe anyway, Europe does hotels a lot better, in Britain they are often either terrible or far too expensive for what they are (often not the owners' fault, partly Airbnb's fault in fact, but I still can't afford them.)

Exactly. In my area of London, the hotels housing asylum seekers, I would never have touched with a barge pole anyway. Complete dives.

@itsafan before airbnb was a thing we used other website marketing holiday properties, cottages4u, holiday villas etc. I’ve been doing it since about 2007.

We had two rental properties that we were happily renting out for £750 a month and Tenant trashed them from top to bottom about £30,000 worth of damage in total once we actually got them to leave the property
And that’s why they are Airbnb’s now

I’m so very sorry OP

i have boycotted AirBnB for years now as it is unethical and damaging people’s lives as well as communities. But I can still afford to go on holiday and stay in hotels, campsites, rent a holiday cottage or holiday apartment from a tourism company.

It stinks that an American tech company is making so so so much money from this and cares not a jot about the impact they have in Europe or anywhere else. The AirBnB CEO is as bad as Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Uber and all the Silicon Valley broligarchy put together. Make lots of money with something bright and shiny, keep that money in the US, and to hell
with the consequences for the rest of the world.

And pay as little tax in these countries as possible. I’d feel slightly less sore if AirBnB was a European owned company! All this foreign money killing our communities…

We had two rental properties that we were happily renting out for £750 a month and Tenant trashed them from top to bottom about £30,000 worth of damage in total once we actually got them to leave the property
And that’s why they are Airbnb’s now

Sell them, let families live in them and build communities.

You are destroying people’s lives but at least you get paid.

To answer OPs previous question, holiday rentals existed prior to Airbnb and when we went for holidays with extended family or even just DS and needed extra space, that’s what we would use in preference to a hotel with no cooking facilities. However we never caused any issues with antisocial behaviour which is the real issue here.

Its not airbnb per se that has caused the issue, its the expansion of the tourist industry. We had an issue ourselves when we moved into a new build flat in the centre of Edinburgh. Although we were permanent owners, all the other flats were rented out seemingly to the absolute scum of the earth as the weekends would see cigarette butts and pizza boxes on the stairs and on our car roof. DH had to modify our buzzer to stop the idiots randomly buzzing every button to get in at all hours. So glad we left. That was 20 years ago, before the advent of Airbnb.

I disagree. It s the access to a kitchen for my and many.
if i am going away for a week or more I hate staying in hotels and having to have 3 meals, especially breakfast in a restaurant or worse buffet for more than 2-3 days.

i like my own space and i cant afford penthouse suites in 5 stars!

@ddfd21 I’m really sorry to hear about your properties 😢
Until I wrote this post I never realised so many people didn’t like Airbnb or actively boycotted them. You guys have done way more research on my “enemy” than me !
I have to agree that I wouldn’t see it as a break either with the cooking and cleaning. Do you really have to clean them yourselves? Maybe that’s why they make so much racket when they leave 😂😂
I suppose because I’ve relocated we end up spending any time off work staying with family (sometimes on a blow up bed 🙈 so that’s not a break either) so i haven’t been on an actual holiday for years. We did however book a hotel for a wedding we went to in Ireland a couple of years ago for the night and it was expensive.
I don’t know what the answer is on a general world scale with regards to airbnb but i have woken up a bit more positive in myself which is good !

We do camping or caravaning in order to be self catered with a kitchen.

Many amazing campsites across Europe and beyond. Works for families. Everyone gets a bedroom or tent. Works for the local tourism industry too.

I think tourism in Europe needs a big expectation reset.

I agree.

Why should I sell them? I bought them. They’re mine. Nobody gave them to me.
As for ruining peoples lives, No somebody ruined my property and now this is the consequences of other people‘s actions who tried to ruin my life. Do you think I had 30 grand lying around?

Agreed - we've stayed in holiday cottages (or gites in France) for breaks for well over 30 years Even before internet booking was available 😲. Quick phone call to the local tourist information centre and you'd get a list of properties to contact by phone, or sometimes by writing a letter to them!
I think the difference that AirBnB has made is to massively increase the numbers of rentals, now that everyone and their dog thinks this is a great way to make a fast buck because it is so easy to do now.
We went to Cornwall last year for the first time in decades. Loved it but don't think we'll return as so many of the attractive villages have been completely hollowed out by the lets. Much of the coastal area feels more like a Cornish theme park...

As an aside I've still never used AirBnB - if we are booking a cottage we do so via the holiday cottage websites.

But there’s a difference between a holiday let, and some council house in central london and the owner moves out for a night.

Also, once I tried booking a hotel in a city but no hotels seem to have connecting rooms. So if with kids its either all the family in one room or put your kids in a seperate room (not safe) or one parent in each room. not ideal. Hotels really need to be more family friendly

This perfectly sums up the hotel problem for us as a family.

I think if the OP can wait it out, change is coming. Lots of places in Spain seem to be looking at regulation. Massively reducing the number of licences for short term lets.

Very recently I read (not sure where) that places in the USA, I think New York and Santa Monica were mentioned, had all but banned the total property lets. You can rent out the place, but you need to be there too. So obviously you can't be in more than one place at a time.

With fewer Airbnb type short lets they won't disappear entirely but prices will go up.

I find hotels a bit claustrophobic, shut in just one room, can't make a coffee without waking DH etc.

We have used self catering for decades, holiday cottages and gites before increased availability on Airbnb and Booking, and will still do so. But will probably travel less, or buy a campervan.

I think when I wrote why don’t people go to hotels anymore it was a bit in anger tbh 🙈. On reflection I can see that hotels don’t suit everyone. Maybe when we have all left here it won’t be so bad as everyone will be on holiday and that’s more of a normal dynamic.
We have some decisions to make that’s for sure.

Just to reply to your question about what we did before airbnb. We used other self catering options, which we do still do as well. Including camping, caravan parks, lodges.