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posted by n1 on Monday June 05 2017, @08:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the death-and-taxes dept.

The next time you book a holiday apartment in Barcelona you may wake up to find an inspector standing at the end of the bed.

Amid growing evidence that the massive upsurge in tourist apartments is driving rents up and residents out, the city has launched a crackdown on illegal, unlicensed apartments, and Airbnb, the dominant platform, is in the eye of the storm, although not the only offender.

According to the council, there are about 16,000 holiday rentals in the city, of which nearly 7,000 are unlicensed. Last year Barcelona fined Airbnb €600,000 for continuing to advertise unlicensed flats on its platform.

The city has doubled from 20 to 40 the team of inspectors who roam the streets seeking out illegal rentals, armed with apps that reveal at a click whether properties are legal or not. By next year their number will have risen to more than 100. Cross-referencing licences with property advertised online, they identify rogue apartments which are then ordered to close down. Owners – when they can be found – face fines of up to €60,000.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:14AM (#521098)

    As someone who is trying to buy his first property on the way to becoming a landlord, it's way more complicated than that. Any landlord only looking at rent vs mortgage will quickly turn into a slumlord as they are likely losing money the instant they buy the property. There's taxes, minor repairs, major repairs, lawn care, common utility bills (sewage, trash, electric from the hall lights, often water, etc...), vacancies, higher insurance, professional non-payers who know how to game the system to live rent free while tying you up in court, background check fees, city inspection fees, etc... The rule of thumb is over the lifetime of the property, it costs 50% of the rent to maintain it.

    The majority of the larger landlords buy their properties from sellers who aren't on the market. Once a property hits the MLS, it's priced high enough that making a decent profit from it is difficult. All those illegal "We buy houses" signs and targeted mailing campaigns to poorly kept properties is how the rich landlords make their money. Buying 40% under market prices from people overwhelmed by the standard selling process (there's way too much manual busy work in buying/selling. Some new companies are starting to automate it, but they are also very greedy companies. Someone should come in and disrupt this industry. Almost all of it can be automated.) or who didn't know they didn't need to make everything perfect to sell.

    Once you're established however, yes, you can squish all the little guys. All those renters paying into your houses thus into your home lines of credit. So you can go out and buy whatever you want effectively in cash. The interest rates don't matter, you'll always have a renter paying those (in theory). You get great tax breaks and semi-passive income. Sadly too many people get greedy and simply go as big as they can, squeezing out everyone else by gobbling up everything using cash. Any family can retire on 10 properties, but finding those deals turns into dopamine hits. It's like playing video games, it becomes fun to out maneuver your competitors. Few larger landlords care anything about providing quality housing or supporting the people living there. Their tenant eviction rates are far higher despite having more rigorous screening requirements.

    This post wasn't really about AirBnB, but I needed somewhere to vent about landlords. I'm doing it because I can't hold a regular job due to a medical condition, so being a landlord is the best solution for me instead of going on disability. On the primary landlording forms, I see tons of posts with people twisting their actions and justifications into how great they are in providing a roof over the heads of the tenants. Or how doing side deals with real estate agents isn't immoral because anyone could do it and it helps the seller because they'll sell within a week even if it's 30% below asking price, instead of possibly waiting two months to sell. Illegal advertising signs work and in the rare case of being caught the fine is always way less than the profit, so they're a great tool to use. Etc... One guy was trying to figure out how to push paying the security system bill onto his tenants. The lease said they had to pay all utilities, but he had been paying that bill for 9 months and never told them about it. Could he force them to pay it through the lease terms? (at least he decided on waiting until the renewal date to add the bill)

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