By Carl Lambert
AirBnB is to Vacation rentals as Countrywide, Goldman Sachs and AIG were to the financial crises of 2008! AirBnB is all about corporate profits without responsibility. AirBnB is now worth over $5 billion and they have yet to check in a guest, clean one room or willingly pay bed tax!

Vacation Rentals have always been a part of many communities for over a hundred years. Many communities embrace them, Hawaii, Palm Springs, the eastern seaboard and Venice have all had vacation rentals since the dawn of travel. Owners would be responsible and police the guests and pay their taxes. There was a quiet coexistence between the operators and the neighborhood and Cities. Before AirBnB came on the seen four years ago, there were few if any problems in the communities with vacation rentals.

Similarly, before the advent of Easy Qualifier home loans there was responsible home ownership and responsible lenders policed their own loans to insure repayment. Countrywide and Angelo Mozilo, in his words, created the “perfect Box”.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo) Countrywide made irresponsible “Liar loans” to anyone who could breath and AIG would “insure” the loans and Goldman could leverage them up to 18 times and sell them to Wall Street and pension plans around the world. Other responsible lenders had to compete by offering the same. When the homeowner could not repay the loans, the financial markets collapsed and many of the old time responsible lenders failed too.

With the advent of AirBnB, irresponsible people are jumping into the vacation rental market for a quick buck without any skill to properly prepare the room, service and police the guest or pay the tax. AirBnB has created their own “Perfect Box”. AirBnB collects the money for the stay, takes their cut and never has any responsibility to pay the tax or clean the unit or police the guest. The addresses of the properties are not even disclosed so the Cities cannot regulate or supervise the rentals. AirBnB says it is up to the owner to pay the tax and police the guest.

Responsible and professional owners offer a different experience. Responsible owners get the credit card and have information about the guest and establish rules. Managers inform the guest as to responsibilities about parking, parties and other rules. This enables the owner to police and service the guest. If there is a party, the manager reminds the guest that there is a $500 fee for the party and it quiets down. Smoking fee $300. Managers then collect and pay the bed tax. The guest gets to “live like a local”, and have a great experience. The community can have international diversity and is not disturbed. The City gets millions of dollars of tax from responsible owners and ZERO for AirBnB.

Many managers pay a living wage, workers comp and payroll taxes. Some pay medical insurance too. Professional managers have more of a vested stake in the community. They support tourism public safety and help clean up the neighborhood. Everyone wins.

Like Countrywide, AirBnB has created a frenzy of irresponsibility that has created a community backlash with complaints to City regulators. The City regulators can’t find the AirBnB operators so they go after the responsible operators who they can find. So the City regulators try to put responsible owners paying bed tax out of business to say they are doing something. This is part of the “perfect box” because the City is attacking the AirBnB competition! Perfect!

Now that AirBnB is putting the competition out of business, AirBnB can lobby the City and establish rules that only benefit their “Perfect Box”. This is a Ten Billion Dollar corporate money grab. This is like when Goldman realized that the mortgage market was going to collapse, Goldman shorted their own stock and made Billions on the financial misery that they created.