"18,000 houses to rent on Airbnb vs 2,000 on Daft"

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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I was astonished when I saw this headline in today's Irish Times.

www.irishtimes.com

Lorcan Sirr: There are more than 18,000 houses to rent on Airbnb vs 2,000 on Daft. Something is very wrong

It is not acceptable to have tourists living in houses while 13,300 people live in hotel bedrooms
www.irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com

But it's a false comparison.

An airbnb property will be almost permanently advertised as they take short term bookings.

Whereas a landlord advertises a property for rent probably only once every 5 years?

In fact, landlords now probably don't need to advertise as they can find a tenant very easily through a letting agency or personal contact.

Brendan
 
Daft is very expensive. Why does the IT and RTE always take the number or rental advertised on Daft as the total available nationally?
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I was astonished when I saw this headline in today's Irish Times.

www.irishtimes.com

Lorcan Sirr: There are more than 18,000 houses to rent on Airbnb vs 2,000 on Daft. Something is very wrong

It is not acceptable to have tourists living in houses while 13,300 people live in hotel bedrooms
www.irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com

But it's a false comparison.

An airbnb property will be almost permanently advertised as they take short term bookings.

Whereas a landlord advertises a property for rent probably only once every 5 years?

In fact, landlords now probably don't need to advertise as they can find a tenant very easily through a letting agency or personal contact.

Brendan
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The story does state they looked at the month of February on Airbnb. That search result should only return those that are available at that time.

It still paints the picture that more homes are being advertised as short term lets vs long term.

Airbnb is also very expensive and may not paint the full picture of homes available on short term lets.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
It is probably the only measure?
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Yea, but it's not an accurate measure so they shouldn't construct sensationalist articles using such data.
The last Census showed a large difference between the RTB figures and the CSO figures. It's reasonable to presume that many properties are rented through Facebook and other social media as well as locally and through word of mouth. Maybe journalists could do some journalistic research before passing off what is really nothing more than an opinion piece as news.
 
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Towger said:
"You can kinda join the dots to match your own agenda"

www.youtube.com

Lorcan Sirr delivers housing presentation to Social Democrats conference '22

TU Dublin housing lecturer Lorcan Sirr delivers a presentation on the state of housing in Ireland to the Social Democrats national conference 2022.Sirr outli...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
Click to expand...

I have made a presentations on mortgage arrears to Sinn Féin TDs and advisors. Does that make me a Shinner?

I have also presented to a group of FG and Labour TDs.

It's important to present expert evidence to all sides.

Brendan
 
Annieindublin said:
Implies that 18,000 homes are off the market due to greedy landlords.
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I don't agree with the comparison in the headline.

Some of the 18,000 are rooms staying with families, but I would have thought that most were self-contained and therefore off the market?

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I have made a presentations on mortgage arrears to Sinn Féin TDs and advisors. Does that make me a Shinner?

I have also presented to a group of FG and Labour TDs.

It's important to present expert evidence to all sides.

Brendan
Click to expand...
It's important that experts presenting moral judgements, "It is not acceptable to have tourists living in houses while 13,300 people live in hotel bedrooms" also acknowledge that those judgements are framed and coloured by their own political and social biases. If they are merely presenting data that's an entirely different thing.

While I have sympathy with Lorcan's view on this specific issue my own in tempered by the somewhat opposing right of people to retain control over their own private property, the abuse of the current social housing system, the imbalance in outcomes between those who provide for themselves and those who rely on the State for housing and the social cost of a model in which the State becomes a larger and larger provider of housing.

My view is that his view is driven by a far left ideology and will, as is inevitably the case with the far left (and the far right) leave most people worse off. Them's the dots I've joined but of course that's just my opinion.
 
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I agree in principle, but it's worth going through the article and deciding what you agree with and what you don't agree with.

I have made the mistake in the past "David McWilliams is suggesting it so it must be wrong". It's important to guard against that.

I don't think Lorcan Sirr is far left. And he is a property economist.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I agree in principle, but it's worth going through the article and deciding what you agree with and what you don't agree with.

I have made the mistake in the past "David McWilliams is suggesting it so it must be wrong". It's important to guard against that.

I don't think Lorcan Sirr is far left. And he is a property economist.

Brendan
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From what I've read of his, and I do read his stuff, he advocates for a larger and larger amount of State provision of housing with the State building directly.
 
Yes, but he has also pointed out that the state is building very little and that it is buying up private housing.

I assumed that this was critical of the state intervention.

Brendan
 
Purple said:
From what I've read of his, and I do read his stuff, he advocates for a larger and larger amount of State provision of housing with the State building directly.
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Brendan Burgess said:
Yes, but he has also pointed out that the state is building very little and that it is buying up private housing.
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The same thing really?

The elephant in the room is that private house and apartment building activity has been at pitifully low levels for 15 years now. An outrageous state of affairs on which people like Lorcan Sirr are normally very quiet.
 
Airbnb gets a bad wrap.....there have always been short term lets available in Ireland and it is a legitimate part of a functioning housing market. I doubt if those 18,000 homes became long term lets that it would suddenly solve the housing crisis.

The simple solution is to increase supply of homes available to meet demand.

The article insinuates that landlords are motivated to do short term lets because it is less regulated, this is a big assumption to make. I don't agree with it and I am not a landlord.
 
DublinHead54 said:
Airbnb gets a bad wrap.....there have always been short term lets available in Ireland and it is a legitimate part of a functioning housing market. I doubt if those 18,000 homes became long term lets that it would suddenly solve the housing crisis.

The simple solution is to increase supply of homes available to meet demand.

The article insinuates that landlords are motivated to do short term lets because it is less regulated, this is a big assumption to make. I don't agree with it and I am not a landlord.
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Why are people renting out their properties to the highest bidder greedy but people selling their properties to the highest bidder aren't greedy?
 
Being a landlord is about as different from short-term letting as running a DIY shop and running a restaurant.

Both short-term letting and landlording use houses and apartments but are very different businesses. Very few people do both or use the same property for both.
 
DublinHead54 said:
The article insinuates that landlords are motivated to do short term lets because it is less regulated, this is a big assumption to make. I don't agree with it and I am not a landlord.
Click to expand...

It is certainly less regulated in practice.

I have never heard of an airbnb customer complaining to the RTB or refusing to leave and they pay in advance.

Brendan
 
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