This seems to be a bit of a minefield…
There seems to be a bit of a backlash against Airbnb generally at the moment with Barcelona often being cited as an example of a city where the platform has caused a massive shortage of affordable accommodation for local people. Placing some restrictions on numbers, type of accommodation and or number of nights might encourage some people to revert to offering longer term lets for local people but I’m not sure threatening the massive fines quoted is a proportionate response.
Difficult one to call. I have used Airbnb on a few occasions where I would not have been able to afford a hotel or B & B.
In all instances the accomodation was as described and I was impressed.
I can understand why someone with a room to spare wouldn’t want a long term renter, with the minefield of tenant/landlord. With Airbnb they choose when the accomodation is available, leaving it free for family or friends when needed.
Personally, if I had one spare, I wouldn’t want to rent a room to a stranger but then I do like my home to be ‘my space’.
I can also understand why some hotels/B & B business’ would be ‘miffed’ at the sucess of Airbnb but we are not all made of money and some of us need to budget carefully.
The backlash isn’t against people who want to rent out a spare room from time to time. That was the original purposes of airBnB and remains a good one. As someone who is a landlord for short term tourist accommodation and a long term rental flat that doesn’t bother me one iota.
The big problem is that AirBnB is being used by people renting their whole flats without meeting normal requirements for being a landlord, or for providing tourist accomodation. So if you have a small flat in Barcelona you can make tons more money renting it for short stays in the tourist season through airbnb than renting it all year round to a local person who needs somewhere to live. It also creates problems for neighbours, who don’t expect their apartment block to be a hotel.
In theory by registering tourist accommodation it allows the local authorities to balance supply and demand. Unregistered places skew everything.
And on the point of being miffed at their success. Yes I am miffed that a local airbnb’er (renting out a whole place not a spare room) can undercut my prices because they don’t pay cotisation foncière enterprises, taxe de sejour, cotisation to the tourist office, extra insurance costs, and so on. If it were a level playing field fair enough.
Yes there are some issues.
Tax should be paid on all rental income!
So the property needs to be registered.
Then, of course the property needs to comply with health and
safety rules. With our new agents we have to have life belts for the pool,
smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and special insurance.
And lots more.
Gosh Barbara, life belts for the pool is quite excessive.
If you have someone around to throw it in, wouldn’t it be just as easy to get into the pool itself.
.
Not a problem for me. They are taking good care of us.
You’ve never done a lifesaving course then! Getting into the water is quite far down the list of things to do, well below throwing a life belt.
just out of interest what does the list look like - if someone is having difficulty in a pool or is simply at the bottom of it?
You are trained to do everything possible before entering the water as a last resort. I believe my training was through the Royal Lifesaving Society. Have a search for them.