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Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

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Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#81

Post by ianburrell »

cperciva wrote: post #61
lobster_johnson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal subletting isn't breaking and entering, though. A home is ultimately the home owner's responsibility; if your tenants break the law, you're likely responsible, which is why contracts typically disallow subletting (as well as contain many other clauses to prevent putting the owner at risk). This is why absentee owners with no property manager are putting themselves at a risk, as they can't check on the tenants…

The Airbnb customers had no legal right to be in the property in question. Maybe it's trespassing rather than breaking and entering; but they weren't legal tenants.

It isn't trespassing. They had the permission of the tenants. It was violation of lease but that is not a crime.

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#82

Post by yardie »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #58
yardie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They leave the notice on the door. Tenant will typically take it down and toss it in the trash. And like a speeding parking tickets the fines get sent to the owner on record. Which is public record.

Yeah, but eventually it will have to be cleared. This day my car was being driven by XX, or my apt was being leased to John Smith. While landlords can be more proactive, this goes against all common sense and fairness. If my tenant grows weed or kills a person in the basement, should I go to jail?

The owner will have their day in court and can clear it up about the tenant. I'm just telling you what I see. There were a few notices posted in our building. The owners have no idea until they get a court summons.

If someone grows weed in your house and no one is there when the cops come knocking guess who's getting a warrant?

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#83

Post by cat199 »

bdcravens wrote: post #71
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #29

I skimmed the article a few times. How did the City of Miami figure out the property was listed on AirBNB? If they're scraping the AirBNB website for images of the front of the buildings, or however their doing it, wouldn't it then make sense to contact the owner to advise them of the unlawful listing. This would give the owner an opportunity make a statutory declaration stating they didn't make this listing.

Complaints, police knock on door, guests say why they are there. Goes in police report, and the gears of justice grind on based on that.

> and the gears of justice

don't forget the invoices of fines..

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#84

Post by x0x0 »

cat199 wrote: post #78
x0x0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first blush, allowing the owner to exclude addresses from rental seems reasonable. But if an airbnb host is willing to violate their lease, why isn't that person willing to fake ownership? How far should airbnb be required to go to verify ownership, and what happens when ownership changes? To be honest, these people sound like shitty, lazy landlords who deserve their bad tenants. They 1 - didn't do a reference che…

> (I say this as a landlord). They feel they are entitled to take out a mortgage then collect checks without any work. It isn't that easy... (I say this a as a tenant). How is that any different than taking out a lease and then collecting checks without any work or risk?

What does this even mean?

And the tenants do have quite a bit of risk here: a fine of $20k is certainly worth pursuing through the courts. So also significant property damage. They seem to be banking (and to be fair, so far it's a good bet) on landlords being too lazy.

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#85

Post by cat199 »

yardie wrote: post #82
tryingagainbro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but eventually it will have to be cleared. This day my car was being driven by XX, or my apt was being leased to John Smith. While landlords can be more proactive, this goes against all common sense and fairness. If my tenant grows weed or kills a person in the basement, should I go to jail?

The owner will have their day in court and can clear it up about the tenant. I'm just telling you what I see. There were a few notices posted in our building. The owners have no idea until they get a court summons. If someone grows weed in your house and no one is there when the cops come knocking guess who's getting a warrant?

> If someone grows weed in your house and no one is there when the cops come knocking guess who's getting a warrant?

You do, which is then thrown out when you show that you are renting. Unlike the fines mentioned here, which stick.

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#86

Post by FICO »

x0x0 wrote: post #80
FICO wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property ownership is public information that can be verified with the town. Furthermore, I didn't see any reason to jump to such conclusions given in the article. These people seem like professional swindlers so they could have presented false documents when signing the lease.

Most false documents can generally be detected by reference checks, particularly if it includes a credit check. The landlords in the article did not sound like they'd bothered. Property ownership is not trivial to check: not only does the registrar vary by location, with varying availabilities of information, but who is to say that person X asking airbnb to do / not do something is the X on the title? Further, lots o…

Yes it is an API lookup to verify the LLC's authorized persons, for Florida: http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ByName

These people sound like professional swindlers, you can buy someone's identity on the darknet for a couple hundred dollars at the most. They almost certainly filled out the rental application using someone else's information. That was implied in TFA.

Property ownership is very trivial to check. Calling city/town hall when a property is listed is not an unreasonable task for a multi-million dollar company, more like the bare minimum due diligence. If they can manage to send out professional photographers they can manage basic ownership verification.

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#87

Post by cat199 »

yardie wrote: post #21

As a customer of AirBnB since they first posted here this doesn't surprise me. I live in one of the affected cities, Miami Beach. And it's depressing to see the neighborhood being hollowed out. Early on when it was just a few renters and owners renting out space in the spare bedroom or couch it wasn't a big deal. Half my condo, 24 units, is on airbnb now. We currently don't have a HOA president as the last one was fe…

Just like the person in the article didn't seem to do - I think the only way to deal is via legal means.

He didn't threaten them, and he got their runaround.

Similarly - I'd imagine this situation you are facing will impact property resale value - no lawyer here but you might look into legal channels - something like a class action or somesuch from all affected owners will definitely get their attention I'm sure of it..

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#88

Post by cperciva »

ianburrell wrote: post #81
cperciva wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Airbnb customers had no legal right to be in the property in question. Maybe it's trespassing rather than breaking and entering; but they weren't legal tenants.

It isn't trespassing. They had the permission of the tenants. It was violation of lease but that is not a crime.

If I give you permission to walk into the Y Combinator offices, you're still trespassing. The tenants had no ability to grant legally meaningful permission.

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#89

Post by ameister14 »

5555624 wrote: post #47
ameister14 wrote: post #26

Behavior like this will lead to Airbnb being sued until a point where they recognize it is cheaper to put a zip-code blacklisting system in than continue to break the law. Right now they make money from this behavior. It's a poor long term strategy that made sense when they were small and scrappy but is no longer acceptable. Also, they're losing public support - I've used airbnb for years in SF and around the country…

It's never been acceptable. From the start, Airbnb should have never accepted ads from locations where short-term rentals are against the law. As you said, black list by Zip Code. In addition, they need a way to block addresses on a case-by-case basis where tenants are violating leases/rules (i.e. cases like the one in the article, condo associations, apartment buildings, etc.).

Technically that shouldn't be difficult, right? I don't know what kind of database they use but the difficulty should come with the review process before blocking and unblocking, not the act of doing it

Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines

#90

Post by appleflaxen »

The local or municipal government should put the onus on AirBnB. If they made rental illegal, and fined the site for allowing a posting to go up, they would fix it immediately.

It's amazing why AirBnB insists on being the antagonist here. There is already a clear bad faith actor, and everybody wants to see them punished / fail. but AirBnB insists on inserting themselves as a side-plot, rather than simply recognizing the situation for what it is, and doing everything they would want someone else to do if they were in that position.

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