The stagnating income and economic turmoil show that hard work alone cannot guarantee a comfortable life for the people. To resolve these issues the emergence of the peer to peer home-sharing concept was introduced by Airbnb that becomes a lifeline for the people in the middle class by paying their bills and make additional income. Many of the policymakers are ready to support the middle class and the home-sharing by passing common-sense home sharing rules. Many jurisdictions like the Philadelphia, Paris, London, San Josh, Amsterdam, and Nashville have implemented this law.
The company also has spoken with many of the civic leaders across the globe to collect house taxes, remit and collect tourist taxes and others in many other places like North Carolina, Washington, and states of Washington DC, Chicago, Palo Alto, Phoenix, Oregon, Malibu, Santa Clara, and Oregon. The company is committed to working with the collaborative leaders from all parts of the world to help and support the middle-class families to share their homes make it easy for their living.
The impact of the rental site
One of the most respected economists in the United States released a report about the online rental company on the significance of the concept that helps countless middle-class families get a little extra money to pay off their mortgages and bills. The company was founded in 2008 and has empowered a number of micro-entrepreneurs to make money with their asset and pay their debts. On average the families have earned $3.2 billion in the United States alone within the past few years.
The Director of the National Economic Council and the White House National Economic Advisor, Gene Sperling said that the main impact of the home-sharing concept in the middle-class families is that the money earned by the house owners has increased about fourteen percent of the annual raise. Gene Sperling added that the income stagnation in the middle class is part of the country’s economic imperatives. The report also shows that instead of the shrinkage in the income, the money is equal to the growth of the income at 0.5% over the inflation for the past few years. And with a single property, the host is able to make seven thousand five hundred and thirty dollars as the supplementary income each year. The report also shows that the host in the rental platform rented their primary house for an average of sixty-six days in one year.
At times when there are no jobs or medical issues or any other problems, the sharing economy offers an accessible and significant option for the middle-class families to earn some money to satisfy their basic needs.
A survey taken by the online rental site across the United States reports that the hosts have lived in the same homeland for nineteen years, and on an average fifty percent of the hosts receive not less than the median income. Some of the surveyed hosts say that their largest expense goes into the mortgages and rents and the rest of them said that the supplemental income they received from listing their property on the rental platform was able to help them stay in their own houses.
Regulating the rental site
A new bill was passed in the New York legislature that imposes fine on the house owners who list the whole apartment on the rental website. The house owners have to pay the fine for seven thousand five hundred dollars if they rent against the law. Earlier from 2011, there are many laws that forbid the rental platform; the fine also includes limitation of the financial opportunities and subject to expensive penalties for those renting the private property.
Many middle-class families rented an extra room in their apartment for the tourists and travelers for a temporary stay, either for vacations or holidays. Most of the travelers and tourist visit their family in the nearby location but wish to stay in alone and so they had an accommodation to stay while the house owners were able to make some money out of the renting. The house owners were aware of the outsiders who will lodge in their apartment and they also insured for one million dollars for the property damages. Hence, with minimal effort, the house owners had an alternate income while they were able to pay the taxes and insured the property and the documentation.
Those who have their own farm list their property on the rental website and rent the place, the income received from this platform is a reliable source of income that the house owner receives. With this minor income source, they can repay their debts and pay the mortgages. And by registering a business account with the rental site, the business person can conveniently and economically book for the meeting trips and the conferences and save up to two to three hundred dollars on a person from every trip. Although this might look like a small profit, it means a lot of small businesses. But the implementation of the new regulation, the house owners, the businesses and the consumers cannot enjoy the liberty to make use of their unused property.
Advantages of listing on the rental site
The Head of the Global public policy of the rental platform stated that about ninety percent of the hosts those who have listed their property on the rental site are the house where they stay. The rental platform is a great source of the tax revenue with clear tax codes, where major fifty cities in the US could net the revenues in the ballpark of two hundred million dollars. With the affordability and the growth in the market, the online rental website is subject to grow, attract more tourists and rake more tax revenues that were out of reach in most of the cities.
The rental company made it economical and simple for the short term rental economies to be a part of the transaction and so the summer homes in the south of France or in the Hamptons are rented for short term stay. About sixteen thousand hosts of the rental site have said that the supplemental income they received from renting their property has helped them stave off the foreclosure or the eviction. However, this opportunity for the middle class is restricted because of the new bill proposed by the Senate and the New York Assembly and it allows only a few percentages of the population to benefit from their unused assets.
According to the US survey in July 2015, the home-sharing concept was appealing and welcomed by most of the middle-class families in the United States. By renting the apartment room, a host can earn money that can be paid for the groceries for the whole year, so about fifty-one percent of the middle-class families in the United States were ready to share their property.
Many communities gave a positive response on the home-sharing concept, where 54% of respondents were Asians, 51% were Hispanic and 56% were Afro Americans. Though the income received from sharing the property is less; the significance in the income received makes a great difference for all the middle-class families. And fifty-five percent of the respondents from the survey said that the supplement income brought them a noticeable difference in their lifestyle.
