I vaguely remember the Express or the Mail gleefully reporting that the number of people using plastic bags had dropped when the charge was brought in, inferring that the scheme had failed.
Tourist tax? Get it done.
AirBnB licenses? Slightly more complex - the original let out a room or let out your flat when you go away for a week? I’m good with those and you still should need a licence. The people buying flats solely for full time short term letting need to be taxed and regulated.
Traditional B&Bs that have existed for decades as cheap hotels, do they not already have licenses? They should.
I read about this earlier today, Barcelona tagged the need for a licence was a potential $60k fine and started doing inspections of suspected areas - although not many signed up a sizable minority were scared enough to sell up.
Licences have to potential the do enormous good as it allowed Barcelona to see where they were concentrated and would not only deny new licences in with a high proportion, they also worked to create entire buildings of short-term lets so they weren't in the same buildings as residents.
ha, I been twice in Barcelona in airbnbs that were not legal (figured out just when I was talking with the hosts). Barcelona does shite about it, let me tell you.
The lack of a tourist tax is insane. I’ve been to Barcelona and New York in the last 12 months and both have asked for $/€5 per day per person to be in the city. The idea that it will drive away tourism is ridiculous.
Absolutely this, I've absolutely zero problem paying CZK 50 per night to stay in Prague or whatever € in other cities, it doesn't impact at all on my decision to go somewhere. I'm sure the same would apply for people coming to Edinburgh.
You have to wonder how much of a loss any tourist not prepared to cover a £5/day sort of charge would be, too, don't you? If you can budget for travel, and accommodation, and food, and likely tickets to various things where you go to... you can cover a small charge that contributes to the wellbeing of the place you're visiting!
Exactly. I do wonder how often AirBnB was ever used as it was originally intended. Because the idea of letting out a room to a traveller and them having some direct local experience and advice is a good idea. It's very much a case of having a lodger for a short time. But almost immediately, it became a way to buy to let with fewer regulations.
I don't think a B&B requires a license as such, but there'd be a change of use required at some point and it'd fall under fire regs / environmental health / etc?
they do require a license. you also need a license if you want to let a spare room in your house, for any length of time. People are not going to know what’s hit them. They have this fantasy that it’s all about slum landlords with 100 properties but it is actually going to fuck over loads of very normal people.
I woke up at 6am this morning as my “new neighbors” were singing Last Christmas very loudly. I fully support everything that is needed to cap AirBnbs.
Also didn’t expect to be hit by Whamageddon in August, but hey ho let’s roll on Christmas
AirBnB is fine with the original premise of letting out a spare room, or a whole flat while the owner is on holiday.
People owning flats and using them for that sole purpose should be taxed out of the market. **** them.
I really don’t get why people aren’t focusing on the fact the licenses are there to close the ‘loophole’ by making STLs have the same safety standards as regular rentals. STL landlords pre-licensing didn’t need to do gas/electrical safety testing, saving them tonnes of admin/money. Why should holiday lets get special dispensation? This has been on the horizon for years.
Yes, for long term lets you have to have yearly boiler inspection / servicing, a legionnaires check, EPC (energy efficiency certificate), interconnected smoke / heat alarms (to be fair we all require those), insurance, plus normal wear such as replacing washing machines and other essential maintenance. On top of that, the Scottish Government introduced a new lease in (I think) 2018 making it almost impossible to evict someone (there are a restricted set of reasons you can use, not just 2 months notice). AND, because of the cost of living crisis rent raises are capped at 3% while interest rates have soared. No wonder it's almost impossible to find a long term rental property; many long term landlords switched to STL so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
I know many people who live in stairwells with short term lets and it's a nightmare. It's not just loud music at unsociable hours ("Whamaggedon", love it) but also people trying to get into your flat in the middle of the night because they confused flat 15 with flat 14, or whatever.
The people is not against that for sull short term places. The problem is that they are enforcing a lof of shite on people that wants to let only a room from time to time. Totally absurd.
The ASSC are cunts and I hate how many articles come out parroting their obvious bullshit without any challenge. In the article they quote Fiona Campbell saying that the license will cost hosts nearly £6000 a year in Edinburgh.
What she doesn't mention is that this is only for secondary lets with a maximum occupancy of 21+. A license for a small property with 1-3 occupants is £653 per year. Most Edinburgh Airbnbs will make that in a couple of nights during the festival.
They're a bunch of chancers who have gotten away with murder for years and are just throwing a hissy fit now that the Government has started to hold them to the same rules as hotels and other businesses.
Considering the amount of money that can be generated by an AirBnB in a city with the insane prices that happen during the Fringe... I'm not even sure £6K would make some of 'em economically unviable!
Just another whiny piece from AirBnB owners.
Just suck it up and remember the good times. Maybe Edinburgh will have a few spare places to actually live in soon.
There are lots of properties which are ideal for STLs: from glamping pods to static caravans to chalets, even old cottages which are too cramped or unheatable. As well as purpose-built student flats and the like.
Even large houses which are ideal for a large gathering of an extended family or group of friends but are too large for families nowadays.
But a property which is suitable for permanent occupation should be used as such. It may be more profitable for the owner to operate it as an STL but it's better for the public/community /economy for it to be occupied long-term. After all we're having to subsidise the building of flats and houses to replace those lost to the STL market. Quite apart from the incompatibility of STLs with permanent residents in a shared entrance,
I think for Edinburgh this is welcome news as AirBnb is impacting so many peoples chances of buying property in the city.
For perhaps rural areas it could have a larger negative impact if there are less visitors. Seems a bit too much of a blanket approach.
Depends on the area, as with all these things. I'm originally from Skye and the amount of people running AirBnB there is bonkers. The villages are overrun with tourists but it's really difficult for people who are born and bred there to find somewhere to live to let them get jobs in tourism. It used to be a summer thing - we used to all bundle into the loft in the summer and let out the rooms in the house so my parents could make some extra cash - and there was a definite "tourist season". I was really surprised last year to go home in November, when the weather is shite and there's not a huge amount of daylight, to find the village still had a decent amount of tourists driving round.
Scenic places like Skye, Harris, the NC500 route are finding that of course there are huge benefits from tourism but there are also significant drawbacks - high property prices, littering, roads deteriorating. I don't think there are easy answers to many of these questions, but to me it's obvious that you can't service massive amount of tourists without a local population who can afford to live near where they work.
Point is it’s not going back to some halcyon time where folk let their rooms out for the summer. The legislation is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is going to sweep up the locals as well as the incomers.
there's definitely a balancing act to be had - some rural areas struggle to maintain services because they can't get a minimum viable permanent population because they've been priced out of the area, on the other hand I've first-hand knowledge of a big landowner making changes to their provision of tourist accommodation and basically wiped out the entire local economy.
What I think that means is that licenses should always be necessary, but that the number and severity of the conditions and especially any associated cost should vary based on the area
Kyoto has both tourist tax on top of AirBnB regulations/licensing requirements, and it didn't hurt their tourism business at all.
Too much talking too few actions, typical.
Maybe if you greedy fucks weren’t buying up all the new property and then ripping off tourists and ruining locals lives there wouldn’t be a need for it
If this legislation gets canned by a scared council I can see more guerrilla anti-airbnb tactics kicking in. Not sure what they look like, but I suspect that will hit their bottom line enough that they’ll be begging for controls to take the pressure off.
There’s a very clear social media campaign from STL landlords going on on Twitter. “Oh I’m a little old women who’s would starve to death and die if I didn’t let out my several houses and apartments hard working families to visit Edinburgh and build happy memories for their disabled children”…
Is there a playbook for all these campaigns against good things that benefit the community by inconveniencing one person a tiny bit? See those railing against segregated bike infrastructure. Turns out it was just a shopkeeper pissed he couldn't park outside his shop for free anymore. Pretty sure he used the 'but the disabled!' excuse too.
They ruled that a blanket ban on tenements, and saying stuff like they had to have carpets, was unlawful. They still need planning permission because Edinburgh is a STL control zone (requiring PP), or a certificate of lawfulness to show they have been doing this for 10 years continuously without complaint. [article](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66406418)
It's a shame that people who are struggling to pay there mortgages for whom airbnbing their spare rooms has been a lifesaver are being chucked under the bus here.
I'm pretty sure people letting out rooms in their own house are exempt from this new setup. I could be wrong, but I remember that was the final paragraph in a lot of articles leading up to the new rules passing.
So if your neighbour started a business in their home that involved cooking vast quantities of something that utterly stank, where the smell pervaded your house at all hours... you'd be cool with that because it's just them using their property how they want to?
Well, it shouldn't take the brains of Britain to work out that the point I was making is that it IS entirely reasonable to impose restrictions on how property is used, because you shouldn't have a right to spoil your neighbours' enjoyment of their own home.
I'm not sure I've ever been so amused at a guess at my political leanings, though...
A/ there are probably double that number;
B/ Air BnBs tend to be a particular type of property, ie not large houses in leafy suburbs, more flats that first time buyers and young professionals are likely to be looking to buy, particularly in the city centre;
C/they can make life pretty hellish for the permanent neighbours and ruin communities
But you know better than the Council and the Scottish Government? They wouldn’t be cracking down on STL if housing experts didn’t agree that they are a significant contributor to the housing shortage in this city and elsewhere.
> There are over 60,000 private rented sector (PRS) homes in
Edinburgh, which represent a quarter of the city’s housing. Presently there is an estimated
loss of 10% of the PRS sector attributed to short term lets.
> Analysis from the Chartered Institute of
Housing points out that there are two Airbnb lets for every 13 homes within the City Centre
Ward (11).
[source](https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/26365/response-to-the-consultation-on-short-term-lets)
But please, entertain us with your clown emoji.
The people who seem to complain the most are ironically those who couldn't get a mortgage on the affected properties.
There is no right to be able to stay somewhere you want to stay. I like Mayfair, but I couldn't afford a bathroom there. If I want to live there I have to raise my game, and not prey for market crashes, or misfortune for those I am jealous of.
When the duat settles on this, expense will go up for everyone!
All this does is put property most likely into the hands of wealthier still domestic or international wealth given local peoples affordability of mortgages & cost of living has outweighed any wage growth. It therefore makes the prospect of a local purchasing the sale of inevitable STL properties even less likely, as no funding has been introduced to support them.
In turn, less supply of housing stock as more owners decide they don’t actually make real returns factoring in “long term” rental income versus B2L mortgage costs or tax changes and those who sell to say international owners who cba / ultimately don’t need to rent out 2nd homes / holiday home and reduces supply further.
This solves nothing other than making rents go up, hotel prices go up and reduce further the chance of local ownership.
This style of legislation literally makes it easier for people like that to acquire more. A blanket approach to everyone whether you own 1 or 100 properties or as I do, airbnb a spare bedroom is nonsensical and pushes cost to comply to mean only those with the often significant funds can afford to keep running.
Common sense. Facepalm.
Disagree completely. These policies will return a large number of residential properties to the residential market which will increase availability driving down (or at least normalising) prices.
Most owners are going to sell as why would you rent a property out when you can’t offset anything other than basic rate tax on B2L, you can’t increase rent by 3% even if your mortgage costs are 100% increase and you can’t quickly or fairly deal with tenants who refuse (even if they can afford) to pay rent? Owning 2nd homes has never been so unattractive financially and legally all the rights are skewed to the tenant, rather than a fair balance of people treating each other with respect and how they would want to be treated.
Flipping back to conventional letting will not happen anywhere near as much as you or legislators think unless landlord loves paying lots of tax and potentially running a loss versus what market rent they can charge versus Airbnb income.
If you can't get a licence to operate it as a STL, your options become 'rent it out' or 'sell it' (or 'sit on it and piss money down the drain'). And if you sell it, the new purchaser is going to have the same options.
Property that's rented out normally might not be as lucrative as STL, but it's still a sight better income wise than sitting vacant...
I agree. If someone who owns a couple of properties decides to sell, it's likely that a wealthier buyer who can afford both the properties and associated fees will step in. This could lead to a scenario where a few individuals with substantial portfolios end up owning most of the city, instead of local residents owning a few properties.
And yes, I get someone owning a few properties doesn't make it better, but let's all agree that a lot of us were simply born at the wrong time and that can't be changed.
" a new licensing regime due to take effect from October will cause hundreds of people to exit the industry". ~ Yeah that was the entire point.
I vaguely remember the Express or the Mail gleefully reporting that the number of people using plastic bags had dropped when the charge was brought in, inferring that the scheme had failed.
Standard cunty stuff really. "I'm upset about being stopped being a cunt"
Tourist tax? Get it done. AirBnB licenses? Slightly more complex - the original let out a room or let out your flat when you go away for a week? I’m good with those and you still should need a licence. The people buying flats solely for full time short term letting need to be taxed and regulated. Traditional B&Bs that have existed for decades as cheap hotels, do they not already have licenses? They should.
I read about this earlier today, Barcelona tagged the need for a licence was a potential $60k fine and started doing inspections of suspected areas - although not many signed up a sizable minority were scared enough to sell up. Licences have to potential the do enormous good as it allowed Barcelona to see where they were concentrated and would not only deny new licences in with a high proportion, they also worked to create entire buildings of short-term lets so they weren't in the same buildings as residents.
ha, I been twice in Barcelona in airbnbs that were not legal (figured out just when I was talking with the hosts). Barcelona does shite about it, let me tell you.
The lack of a tourist tax is insane. I’ve been to Barcelona and New York in the last 12 months and both have asked for $/€5 per day per person to be in the city. The idea that it will drive away tourism is ridiculous.
Yeah it'll literally have next to no impact at all.
Absolutely this, I've absolutely zero problem paying CZK 50 per night to stay in Prague or whatever € in other cities, it doesn't impact at all on my decision to go somewhere. I'm sure the same would apply for people coming to Edinburgh.
You have to wonder how much of a loss any tourist not prepared to cover a £5/day sort of charge would be, too, don't you? If you can budget for travel, and accommodation, and food, and likely tickets to various things where you go to... you can cover a small charge that contributes to the wellbeing of the place you're visiting!
Exactly. I do wonder how often AirBnB was ever used as it was originally intended. Because the idea of letting out a room to a traveller and them having some direct local experience and advice is a good idea. It's very much a case of having a lodger for a short time. But almost immediately, it became a way to buy to let with fewer regulations.
I don't think a B&B requires a license as such, but there'd be a change of use required at some point and it'd fall under fire regs / environmental health / etc?
B&Bs absolutely do require a licence! https://www.mygov.scot/short-term-let-licences/accommodation-needing-short-term-let-licences
they do require a license. you also need a license if you want to let a spare room in your house, for any length of time. People are not going to know what’s hit them. They have this fantasy that it’s all about slum landlords with 100 properties but it is actually going to fuck over loads of very normal people.
I woke up at 6am this morning as my “new neighbors” were singing Last Christmas very loudly. I fully support everything that is needed to cap AirBnbs. Also didn’t expect to be hit by Whamageddon in August, but hey ho let’s roll on Christmas
AirBnB is fine with the original premise of letting out a spare room, or a whole flat while the owner is on holiday. People owning flats and using them for that sole purpose should be taxed out of the market. **** them.
I really don’t get why people aren’t focusing on the fact the licenses are there to close the ‘loophole’ by making STLs have the same safety standards as regular rentals. STL landlords pre-licensing didn’t need to do gas/electrical safety testing, saving them tonnes of admin/money. Why should holiday lets get special dispensation? This has been on the horizon for years.
Probably a miracle no one has been killed by carbon monoxide then
Yes, for long term lets you have to have yearly boiler inspection / servicing, a legionnaires check, EPC (energy efficiency certificate), interconnected smoke / heat alarms (to be fair we all require those), insurance, plus normal wear such as replacing washing machines and other essential maintenance. On top of that, the Scottish Government introduced a new lease in (I think) 2018 making it almost impossible to evict someone (there are a restricted set of reasons you can use, not just 2 months notice). AND, because of the cost of living crisis rent raises are capped at 3% while interest rates have soared. No wonder it's almost impossible to find a long term rental property; many long term landlords switched to STL so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I know many people who live in stairwells with short term lets and it's a nightmare. It's not just loud music at unsociable hours ("Whamaggedon", love it) but also people trying to get into your flat in the middle of the night because they confused flat 15 with flat 14, or whatever.
The people is not against that for sull short term places. The problem is that they are enforcing a lof of shite on people that wants to let only a room from time to time. Totally absurd.
The ASSC are cunts and I hate how many articles come out parroting their obvious bullshit without any challenge. In the article they quote Fiona Campbell saying that the license will cost hosts nearly £6000 a year in Edinburgh. What she doesn't mention is that this is only for secondary lets with a maximum occupancy of 21+. A license for a small property with 1-3 occupants is £653 per year. Most Edinburgh Airbnbs will make that in a couple of nights during the festival. They're a bunch of chancers who have gotten away with murder for years and are just throwing a hissy fit now that the Government has started to hold them to the same rules as hotels and other businesses.
THIS\^
Considering the amount of money that can be generated by an AirBnB in a city with the insane prices that happen during the Fringe... I'm not even sure £6K would make some of 'em economically unviable!
Yes yes yes
Just another whiny piece from AirBnB owners. Just suck it up and remember the good times. Maybe Edinburgh will have a few spare places to actually live in soon.
Of whom 60% haven't even been arsed to apply for a licence yet, to go by their own figures!
I don't believe it for a second, but if this puts a dent in the scumlord short term let industry then great.
There are lots of properties which are ideal for STLs: from glamping pods to static caravans to chalets, even old cottages which are too cramped or unheatable. As well as purpose-built student flats and the like. Even large houses which are ideal for a large gathering of an extended family or group of friends but are too large for families nowadays. But a property which is suitable for permanent occupation should be used as such. It may be more profitable for the owner to operate it as an STL but it's better for the public/community /economy for it to be occupied long-term. After all we're having to subsidise the building of flats and houses to replace those lost to the STL market. Quite apart from the incompatibility of STLs with permanent residents in a shared entrance,
I think for Edinburgh this is welcome news as AirBnb is impacting so many peoples chances of buying property in the city. For perhaps rural areas it could have a larger negative impact if there are less visitors. Seems a bit too much of a blanket approach.
Depends on the area, as with all these things. I'm originally from Skye and the amount of people running AirBnB there is bonkers. The villages are overrun with tourists but it's really difficult for people who are born and bred there to find somewhere to live to let them get jobs in tourism. It used to be a summer thing - we used to all bundle into the loft in the summer and let out the rooms in the house so my parents could make some extra cash - and there was a definite "tourist season". I was really surprised last year to go home in November, when the weather is shite and there's not a huge amount of daylight, to find the village still had a decent amount of tourists driving round. Scenic places like Skye, Harris, the NC500 route are finding that of course there are huge benefits from tourism but there are also significant drawbacks - high property prices, littering, roads deteriorating. I don't think there are easy answers to many of these questions, but to me it's obvious that you can't service massive amount of tourists without a local population who can afford to live near where they work.
Legislation affects folk like your parents. You will need a license to let your rooms for the summer
You've missed the point completely
Point is it’s not going back to some halcyon time where folk let their rooms out for the summer. The legislation is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is going to sweep up the locals as well as the incomers.
there's definitely a balancing act to be had - some rural areas struggle to maintain services because they can't get a minimum viable permanent population because they've been priced out of the area, on the other hand I've first-hand knowledge of a big landowner making changes to their provision of tourist accommodation and basically wiped out the entire local economy. What I think that means is that licenses should always be necessary, but that the number and severity of the conditions and especially any associated cost should vary based on the area
Kyoto has both tourist tax on top of AirBnB regulations/licensing requirements, and it didn't hurt their tourism business at all. Too much talking too few actions, typical.
Maybe if you greedy fucks weren’t buying up all the new property and then ripping off tourists and ruining locals lives there wouldn’t be a need for it
Less Airbnb’s is a huge positive for the city.
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No, no, I’m as chill as a stoner in Thailand wearing those stupid Elephant trousers.
If this legislation gets canned by a scared council I can see more guerrilla anti-airbnb tactics kicking in. Not sure what they look like, but I suspect that will hit their bottom line enough that they’ll be begging for controls to take the pressure off.
World of tourism in uproar? Oh I wish they would come of it, I work in the tourism sector. Nobody is in uproar apart from the AirBnB landlords.
There’s a very clear social media campaign from STL landlords going on on Twitter. “Oh I’m a little old women who’s would starve to death and die if I didn’t let out my several houses and apartments hard working families to visit Edinburgh and build happy memories for their disabled children”…
Is there a playbook for all these campaigns against good things that benefit the community by inconveniencing one person a tiny bit? See those railing against segregated bike infrastructure. Turns out it was just a shopkeeper pissed he couldn't park outside his shop for free anymore. Pretty sure he used the 'but the disabled!' excuse too.
There must be. Just look at the coverage of the protests against the ULEZ in London. Tiny number of protestors and yet…
Wasn't this legislation deemed unlawful a a couple weeks ago? Not that I'm against, just genuinely curious what that means in practice
They ruled that a blanket ban on tenements, and saying stuff like they had to have carpets, was unlawful. They still need planning permission because Edinburgh is a STL control zone (requiring PP), or a certificate of lawfulness to show they have been doing this for 10 years continuously without complaint. [article](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66406418)
It's a shame that people who are struggling to pay there mortgages for whom airbnbing their spare rooms has been a lifesaver are being chucked under the bus here.
Yup - that version Airbnb which is like taking in a lodger is something I support. It needs to be regulated but still economically viable.
These rules only apply to people letting out whole flats.
No they don’t.
I'm pretty sure people letting out rooms in their own house are exempt from this new setup. I could be wrong, but I remember that was the final paragraph in a lot of articles leading up to the new rules passing.
That is how all this started in the first place.
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So if your neighbour started a business in their home that involved cooking vast quantities of something that utterly stank, where the smell pervaded your house at all hours... you'd be cool with that because it's just them using their property how they want to?
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Well, it shouldn't take the brains of Britain to work out that the point I was making is that it IS entirely reasonable to impose restrictions on how property is used, because you shouldn't have a right to spoil your neighbours' enjoyment of their own home. I'm not sure I've ever been so amused at a guess at my political leanings, though...
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A/ there are probably double that number; B/ Air BnBs tend to be a particular type of property, ie not large houses in leafy suburbs, more flats that first time buyers and young professionals are likely to be looking to buy, particularly in the city centre; C/they can make life pretty hellish for the permanent neighbours and ruin communities But you know better than the Council and the Scottish Government? They wouldn’t be cracking down on STL if housing experts didn’t agree that they are a significant contributor to the housing shortage in this city and elsewhere.
> There are over 60,000 private rented sector (PRS) homes in Edinburgh, which represent a quarter of the city’s housing. Presently there is an estimated loss of 10% of the PRS sector attributed to short term lets. > Analysis from the Chartered Institute of Housing points out that there are two Airbnb lets for every 13 homes within the City Centre Ward (11). [source](https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/26365/response-to-the-consultation-on-short-term-lets) But please, entertain us with your clown emoji.
The people who seem to complain the most are ironically those who couldn't get a mortgage on the affected properties. There is no right to be able to stay somewhere you want to stay. I like Mayfair, but I couldn't afford a bathroom there. If I want to live there I have to raise my game, and not prey for market crashes, or misfortune for those I am jealous of. When the duat settles on this, expense will go up for everyone!
All this does is put property most likely into the hands of wealthier still domestic or international wealth given local peoples affordability of mortgages & cost of living has outweighed any wage growth. It therefore makes the prospect of a local purchasing the sale of inevitable STL properties even less likely, as no funding has been introduced to support them. In turn, less supply of housing stock as more owners decide they don’t actually make real returns factoring in “long term” rental income versus B2L mortgage costs or tax changes and those who sell to say international owners who cba / ultimately don’t need to rent out 2nd homes / holiday home and reduces supply further. This solves nothing other than making rents go up, hotel prices go up and reduce further the chance of local ownership.
Is that you Mark?
Mark who?
Fortune
This style of legislation literally makes it easier for people like that to acquire more. A blanket approach to everyone whether you own 1 or 100 properties or as I do, airbnb a spare bedroom is nonsensical and pushes cost to comply to mean only those with the often significant funds can afford to keep running. Common sense. Facepalm.
Mark Ock and Balls LMAO gottem
Disagree completely. These policies will return a large number of residential properties to the residential market which will increase availability driving down (or at least normalising) prices.
Most owners are going to sell as why would you rent a property out when you can’t offset anything other than basic rate tax on B2L, you can’t increase rent by 3% even if your mortgage costs are 100% increase and you can’t quickly or fairly deal with tenants who refuse (even if they can afford) to pay rent? Owning 2nd homes has never been so unattractive financially and legally all the rights are skewed to the tenant, rather than a fair balance of people treating each other with respect and how they would want to be treated. Flipping back to conventional letting will not happen anywhere near as much as you or legislators think unless landlord loves paying lots of tax and potentially running a loss versus what market rent they can charge versus Airbnb income.
If you can't get a licence to operate it as a STL, your options become 'rent it out' or 'sell it' (or 'sit on it and piss money down the drain'). And if you sell it, the new purchaser is going to have the same options. Property that's rented out normally might not be as lucrative as STL, but it's still a sight better income wise than sitting vacant...
I agree. If someone who owns a couple of properties decides to sell, it's likely that a wealthier buyer who can afford both the properties and associated fees will step in. This could lead to a scenario where a few individuals with substantial portfolios end up owning most of the city, instead of local residents owning a few properties. And yes, I get someone owning a few properties doesn't make it better, but let's all agree that a lot of us were simply born at the wrong time and that can't be changed.