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Sonder Airbnb

Cornell

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-d...shareToken=st80c30a3737d44c18b1da9cbfdb382852

This article discusses corporate-owned (Sonder) Airbnb purchase of an entire apartment building in Dallas.

I recently traveled to London and stayed in a Sonder property while there. It was AMAZING. Renting an Airbnb from a major company, where rentals is their business, was super-reassuring to me.

My rental was beautifully and thoughtfully furnished. I had a very spacious one-bedroom condo / apartment type unit in an absolutely perfect location on London.

I see these types of properties as being an excellent alternative to timeshares -- particularly in urban locations.
 

Passepartout

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We have found Meriton Serviced Apartments in Sydney (many locations in cities around Australia) and Waldorf Serviced Apartments in New Zealand. They are priced by the night and are a great analog to timeshare apartments in urban areas. No buy-in and our experience was that they are modern, clean (no old hand-me-down furnishings like some BnB's have). Before booking a hotel room in an urban area, search using rhe term 'serviced apartments'. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Jim
 

Cornell

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We have found Meriton Serviced Apartments in Sydney (many locations in cities around Australia) and Waldorf Serviced Apartments in New Zealand. They are priced by the night and are a great analog to timeshare apartments in urban areas. No buy-in and our experience was that they are modern, clean (no old hand-me-down furnishings like some BnB's have). Before booking a hotel room in an urban area, search using rhe term 'serviced apartments'. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Jim
My experience was outstanding. And my savvy travel companion booked directly with Sonder (vs Airbnb) and wrangled a discount as there was no commission being paid to Airbnb.
 

dioxide45

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Sadly, I don't like these trends. Many of these websites were setup to facilitate rental transactions between private individuals and in turn facilitate big companies consolidating and competing against those individuals. For someone just renting a single unit, it is hard to compete against a big corp with hundreds or dozens of units. An entire complex being rented out as individual units on Airbnb wasn't really the initial intention of the platform, but they will happily let the big companies swoop in to push out the little guy. I think of Airbnb when it started as Americas downtown. Then quite quickly the big guys moved in (Walmart) and started crushing the small competition. The same thing happened with YouTube. It started with YOU in the name, but many of the very large channels are mega companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. They even pritizie corporate journalism over the independent. If you want to rent a unit from a big corporation, there are alternatives. JMO.
 

WinniWoman

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And this is why in many areas/states there’s no “affordable” housing for average people to live in. Everything being bought up by these big companies for tourism.
 

Brett

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And this is why in many areas/states there’s no “affordable” housing for average people to live in. Everything being bought up by these big companies for tourism.

and why in many suburbs there is a shortage of "affordable" housing


What Happens When Wall Street Buys Most of the Homes on Your Block?​

As investors pluck up starter homes and convert them to rentals, residents are being forced to grapple with what the changes mean for their communities.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/16/realestate/home-sales-north-carolina-wall-street.html

"As investors pluck up starter homes and convert them to rentals, residents are being forced to grapple with what the changes mean for their communities.

Large, national single-family rental companies were born of the 2008 foreclosure crisis, plucking up distressed properties in the nation’s hardest-hit communities. During the pandemic-era housing market, these companies saw their profits soar as rents increased by double-digit percentages and home prices rose at their fastest clip in U.S. history"
 

T-Dot-Traveller

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That's good to hear as my friends and I have 2 Sonder managed properties booked. One in MOntreal and one in Ottawa.

We stayed 5 nights in a Sonder owned / managed 2 bedroom in Mexico City last Feb.
[~ 25% of the building was Sonder ]

Good unit / no issues .

We flew over and back from Puerto Vallarta on Viva Aerobus
 
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