Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us. This is a personal finance show on money. How it

works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it. I'm your host, David Stein

today's episode 389. It's titled, Our Short-Term Vacation Rentals and Single Family

Rental Homes Contributing to the Housing Crisis. In 2009, our family rented for the first

time a vacation home. It was in Maine and we stayed for two months. We used Airbnb to rent

vacation homes and apartments in 2013. We rented houses and apartments in Japan, Korea, and

Europe. While we are in Kyoto, we gave the address of our Airbnb rental to a taxi driver,

and he drove around the neighborhood. It was in a residential area, and then he wouldn't

take us to the door. He called one of his taxi friends, and we didn't speak Japanese,

but clearly he was going back and forth thinking, why are these Americans in this residential

neighborhood? There's no hotel here. He found the whole experience a little confusing,

as did we, because it was one of our first times renting in Japan using an Airbnb. We finally

made it to our rental in that case, and then on our last trip to Japan in 2018, there was

much more regulation surrounding rentals. We had to upload copies of our passports, and

apparently rental houses or short-term rentals in Japan can only be rented for 180 days per

year. I've rented an Airbnb over 80 times in the past nine years, all over the world.

We've also rented our farmhouse on Airbnb. Short-term vacation rentals are convenient.

They give us a fascinating look at the culture, because we often can stay somewhere apart from

the tourist areas. Short-term vacation rentals can be economical. We have often used Airbnb

when traveling with family, because it was cheaper than renting multiple hotel rooms.

We last rented on Airbnb a house in Tucson for a month over Christmas, as we had all of

our family there. But using Airbnb or VRBO can also feel a little bit odd. Sometimes it feels

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