"Oops I did it again!" - Making immoral money with Airbnb
I just came back from Steemfest in Lisbon to my home-base Berlin.
I took the bus from the airport to get to my appartment, which means a long ride through the trending sites of the city. As always when I come back after a while, I be astonished how fast places can change within a few weeks.
Sadly I don’t really appreciate the way of change...
I mean things like having a new shopping-mall next to the shopping-mall which was build 5 years before.
Things like the closing of my beloved moroccon rastaurant just down the street.
And changes like having a new neighbor which is highly sensitive to noise.
This type of changes are common in every growing city, I guess.
In response to that, people have developed a routine of being angry about giant estate-investors who are speculating with the places we love.
But of course the changes I spoke about are more than just culturally. They reset the economic standard of value in your city.
Which means for random guys like me: The rent for usual flats are getting higher and higher - which is affecting my daily life.
So it could be easy to bitch out about these fucked up capitalistic world!
But to my shame I have to admit that I’m a part of the problem…
Like always, when I’m out of my home for a while I just rent my room via Airbnb.
When I did it the first time, I was travelling to Prague and rented my room to cover my own costs.
And I was wondering about the advice of Airbnb-Homepage to adjust the price to the average of the usual amount of renting costs in my area - which was way to much in my opinion. Particularly for reasons of fairness.
When I was travelling the second time I was kind of running out of money. So I was raising the price a little bit, which served me for a great trip through France. My guests where still totally happy with the proportion of price and accomodation.
As I travelled to Lisbon this time, it was already my sixth or seventh increasing of price for renting my flat. It is almost the double of the original price at the moment. And still people where not just ready to pay but where virtually happy about this offer. It seems that there is still a possibility to raise even higher.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see myself in a capitalistic manner normally. But to be honest, this is exactly what I’m doing here.
Caming back to Berlin today and saw the unattractive changes of my living environment, I found myself in the same routine of bleating about the sellout of my town as always.
But I realized, that I am just a part of it...
I’m confused right now about my own behaviour and about my seat in this capitalistic dynamics.
So I decided to extract this mind-discussion out of my head and direct it to my dear Steemian-Community.
What do you think?
Am I doing wrong by earning more money for renting my flat than it is normally worth?
Is it me which I’m supposed to be upset about?
What are you doing with your flat when you travel around?
And what do you think about alternatives like CryptoCribs?
I would be more than pleased if you could help me out of this way-loosing discussion inside of me. Tell me your experiences and let me know about your arguments. And please don’t be just kind but rather honestly if your opinion is that I am doing totally wrong.
Thank you Steemians!
Well particularly I have noticed those varieties of costs in the rents of Berlin (I am in Venezuela soon I will be over there), and sometimes I can not understand why? that's why I'm always involved reviewing the rents and above all paying attention to the Kaution.
I do not think that what you do is wrong, in the rents or sales of apartments you always win or lose, it may be that your property you can rent for more but maybe then it is worth less, so I think that while you are in the norm you will not have problems . I do not think you're a bad person, so do not get in your head about that. Regards
Thank you very much @jennifer.jimenez for sharing your thoughts!
I think the variety you spoke about is exactly what I'm referring to. Because people are speculating with housing spaces (as I do somehow), the rent is exposed to this speculation. And "wrong" or "bad" is probably not the best wording for this discussion. The question is more: Can you be angry on price-increasing at your city, while at the same time you are doing the same?
P.S. When do you come to Berlin? Maybe I know someone who can host you for this time, if you search for space...
Haha good seeing it so it is quite complicated to get angry if you also benefit from that not ?. Thank you very much, because I will arrive first at my aunt's house in Teltow Postdam Mittelmark, I will start my German course in berlin (if you know a German school that is not very expensive it would be of great help).
I plan to travel in February 2018, maybe we can see each other.
Pointed out well!
I don't know a cheap school so far.
But let me know when you are in Berlin. Learning a foreign language is best practiced by talking in real life than in class rooms ;)
Many thanks (:
Don't be confused. Welcome to the conditio humana. And forget about ideology.
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