A Different View
Is your house still a castle with a tenant in the spare room?
It used to be that your home was your castle – but that was before the credit crunch. Now it’s a place you can rent out a room for six grand to students, or open your door to complete strangers for a couple of euro a night.
The problem is that there are times I’d prefer to close the door on people I actually know, so perhaps the Airbnb concept is not for me.
Neither is house swapping because while the benefits might be a free gaff overlooking Central Park, the downside is some nosey Yank poking through your smalls in your absence.
But beggars can’t be choosers and in any event there are millions who either earn money or enjoy affordable holidays by making the best use of their own house.
Airbnb – the online company that allows you to rent out a bed, a room or an entire house to visitors – started out as a short-term solution to those having difficulties with the rent.
Just seven years later, it is estimated to be worth around $20 billion with over 1,000,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries– so clearly someone is doing something right.
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were roommates in San Francisco in the middle of the last decade – and they were struggling with the rent for their loft.
At the same time the Industrial Designers Society of America was staging its Industrial Design Conference – and the two boys realised that there were a number of attendees who couldn’t find a hotel room.
So they married supply to demand and made their living room into a bed and breakfast, accommodating three guests on air mattresses and providing home-made breakfast.
How they took it from Air Bed and Breakfast to a €20 billion company is a longer story – but clearly, given their number of listings, at least a million people bought into it.
And in a way we were doing this in Galway long before anyone else even thought of it – remember when families moved away for Race Week and rented out their homes for a price that more than paid for their holiday?
Airbnb doesn’t equate to couch surfing because while some people do just offer a fold-out sofa bed, some of the more luxurious listings would include, for example, a three-bed Manhattan apartment near Times Square at a cost of $575 a night, which generated an estimated $172,500 for its owner last year.
Clearly then not everyone is in it to try and earn a few extra quid to pay the college fees or budget for the heating oil – but a lot of people have just come to realise that they are sitting on an asset that’s not making any money.
Theoretically it is of course, because house values are again on the rise, but the only people monitoring that are your children and Michael Noonan – the kids so they can estimate their inheritance and the Minister for Finance so he can tap you up for the property tax.
Thus for those living in a University city, the rent-a-room scheme makes sense because you can earn up to €12,000 a year tax free.
But do you really want a student in your spare room – or more precisely one who isn’t related to you by virtue of you being one of his or her parents?
Think of the sweaty waft that comes from your own kids’ rooms – and they actually leave them to scatter their detritus downstairs. In this case, the paying student would be largely confined to their room.
So you can multiply those odours by two or three – and we all know that opening the odd window won’t undo that.
How do you react if they decide to bring home a guest? Given that you’re already in the rental business, presumably you charge – but do you really want to meet strangers on your way to your own loo at four in the morning?
That said, at least you might get to know your guest if it’s a student for the academic year – but some stray who can’t afford a hotel room? Different kettle of fish.
All of the registration and references in the world cannot guarantee that your iPad isn’t off to Mexico on the next part of your guest’s world tour.
And what do you do when voices are raised in some sort of domestic dispute – or that cold silence chills to the bones?
Do you have to act like you’re one of the Waltons or The Brady Bunch every time you have a house guest?
I know of people who were reared in B&Bs – their families owned them, they were not in temporary accommodation – and they are still haunted by the tension that is created when you cannot say what you want to say in front of the paying guests.
One particular friend of mine, who grew up in a holiday town in the south of the country, spent every summer sleeping in a shed at the bottom of the garden because his room was worth more with him out of it than in it.
And that cuts to the crux of the matter – is your house a means of making money or is it a home?
Admittedly not everyone has the luxury of making that call, because some have no option but to harness every cent of potential income to avoid having to hand the house keys back to the bank.
But isn’t there something about stretching out in your own seat in your own room watching your own telly – wearing whatever you like in the privacy of your own home – that money simply cannot compensate for?
Good luck to the boys from Airbnb and fair sailing to the landlords and landladies of students – I think we’ll keep the drawbridge up and the moat in place for a little while longer yet.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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