All Forum Posts by: Kevin Dickson

I redevelop in Denver.

To satisfy all the minimum codes and provide water and sewer taps, gas and electrical service, and to put a tiny house on a foundation, you are at a starting point of $60k-$120k.  Then the cost of the land is $60k and up.  The tiny house cost is over and above this.

This approach costs more than most tiny house advocates want to pay.

I think perhaps there should be some options for temporary foundations and temporary utility hookups in the zoning codes.  I've done this as an experiment (illegally) for as little as $1000 for the utilities for a travel trailer.  You could call it "full-timing in the city"

Technically, rentals for less than 30 days have been illegal since 1956.  But next Monday, the Denver City Council will start deciding how to put thousands of providers completely out of business:

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=denver%20short%20term%20rental%20alliance

I was amazed at how Craigslist went from having 95% of the rental vacancy advertising in Denver to 5%.  This happened from about 2014 to 2016.  In Denver, it seems that all the business went to Zillow, but I'm not sure.  This trend leaves me with a few questions.

1.  Did this happen in your city yet?

2.  Did it happen in SF and NY?  Rental ads in those cities was always the biggest source of revenue for Craigslist.

3.  How do you advertise your rental vacancies in 2016?

4.  Is one site better for single family homes and another for apartment rentals?

5.  Zillow is clearly a much better tool for landlords and tenants, but there have been better tools for years, and no one ever even dented CL market share before.  So the last question is how did Zillow break through?

In 2016, it's Zillow for sure.

Craigslist is dead in Denver

Once you take it down from Postlets, it automatically expires on Trulia within a couple days.

Postlets.com takes you right to Zillow nowadays, but the same is true.

Evolvevacationrental.com will handle the bookings for about 10%.  That's quite a bit cheaper than conventional management.

They don't do the cleaning or manage the cleaners, though.

Ironically, their office is in Denver, which is just about to pass laws to put them out of business:

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=denver%20short%20term%20rental%20alliance

UPDATE 2016

Craigslist finally added a map to their listing tools in 2013.  Too late!!!

In Denver, CL is useless nowadays.  In 2014 and 2015 it was trounced by Zillow's listing tool, which is much better.  Zillow also automatically links to many other historical sites like HotPads, Trulia, etc.

Padmapper has also "fallen off the map",  but I still use it for rental applications.

Boulder is pretty clueless on the issue at this point:

http://www.dailycamera.com/top-stories/ci_27307446...

San Francisco has the "primary residence" provision, but that also means tenants can do short term subletting with the landlords permission.  San Franscisco's new short term laws are generally being ignored: 

 http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/S-F-Airbnb-...

Denver City Council is looking at the issue of short term rentals in the city because the zoning department has reported a total of 9 complaints about them.

Since 1956, it has been illegal to rent homes and apartments for less than 30 days.

With the popularity of websites like Airbnb, there are 1000 landlords in Denver currently flouting this law. Since it is such an obscure law, most landlords have been unaware of it. The nine with complaints have been threatened with fines up to $52,000/year

Council is considering changing the law under the condition that the rental is the landlords primary residence. I don't know where this strange condition came from, maybe some other city thought it was a good idea, and Denver is trying to copy their model.

When questioned about it, the chairman of the Sharing Economy Committee, said:

"Homeowners may operate one dwelling unit for rental periods of less than 30 days. This unit must be part of their primary residence. The reason for this is if a nonresident investor is allowed to offer multiple dwelling units for short term, then those units are out of the city's inventory of affordable long term rental housing. The result of that is higher rents across the city."

It sounds logical at first, but there is absolutely no data anywhere to support this assertion.

Councilman Chris Nevitt said, "I don't see embracing a new model of lodging that doesn't play by the same revenue rules as the old model of lodging," . "We are here to embrace new models of business, but we aren't here to pick winners and losers." Chris, do you understand what "disruptive business model" even means? Instead of supporting the aging status quo, consider what Long Beach did when the new Uber-style taxi companies began taking away business from the old-guard, regulated taxi companies. They loosened the old regulations! Smart.   http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-long-beach-taxis-20150512-story.html

Council should gather and then consider only the facts.

Here's what might really happen - If investor short term rentals are truly as profitable as everyone apparently fears that they are, then many more will be built in all the zones where additional units can be built. This increased supply could drive down prices for short term rentals to the point where these new units are returned to the long term rental pool! 

"It's Probation all over again."   Prohibition.

I'm impressed with Long Beach's decision about Uber-- loosen regulations on the old business model (taxis) to help it compete with the sharing economy model:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-long-b...

Now this is plain common sense.  Passing laws to regulate the innovative, disruptive business models is not.