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Comment by pjkundert | Hacker News Reader

A first order effect of increasing a stock is that price/profit decreases, driving holders of that stock to diversify into different client bases:

- lower profit AirBnBs to long-term rentals

Reducing supply of AirBnBs does the opposite; drawing marginal suppliers (legal AirBnB units that used to be long term rentals, are converted to AirBnB.)

You’ll have to provide extraordinary evidence that reducing total supply of something (units) can lead to lower prices and more availability. Because it has never done so, in all of history…

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>A first order effect of increasing a stock is that price/profit decreases, driving holders of that stock to diversify into different client bases:

You know what would result in "driving holders of that stock to diversify into different client bases" (ie. long term rentals) even more? Forcing them to do so eliminating all demand from the short term rental side. Moreover, doing that would convert almost all of those units to long term rentals, not some marginal percentage your model implies.

As someone who was considering building a home with a rental suite, and who knows multiple others who were planning to do the same — I can assure you this is an incorrect hypothesis.

What's the logic here? If say, 20% of the housing supply is tied up in short term rentals (ie. airbnbs), why wouldn't outlawing them convert most of that supply into long term rentals?

The logic here is they might just not rent it out as housing stock, preferring instead to have a movie room or office and downstairs kitchen instead. If you make this huge hassle, they can find something else to do with their time than go have a fight with city hall for a bit of money.

>The logic here is they might just not rent it out as housing stock, preferring instead to have a movie room or office and downstairs kitchen instead.

But the scenarios you described seem to be excluded from the legislation?

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/short-ter...

>Effective May 1, 2024, the Province is implementing a provincial principal residence requirement which will limit short-term rentals to:

>* The host’s principal residence

>* Plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property

ah, you're right. I was thinking of more in the general case of anti-airbnb laws written elsewhere. the comment that started this thread's a bit hard to read.

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