Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 152 posts

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#131

Post by tatsuke95 »

z0r wrote: post #116
epo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is a parasite, abusing his landlord's resources for gain. Also, if he hasn't declared his 'rental' income for tax purposes then his problems are only just beginning ...

The OP pays his rent. He abused his landlord's resources in the sense that his lease prohibited his behavior, but there's no need to label him as a parasite. His behavior is no more parasitical than the behavior of the landlord himself. If you have no moral objections to rent, your objection to someone creating value by providing rental liquidity and turning a small profit while doing so is bewildering.

>"He abused his landlord's resources in the sense that his lease prohibited his behavior"

He signed an agreement with another party saying he would not do what he ended up doing, for profit. How are you equating that with the landlord collecting rent?

Maybe if the landlord signed an agreement with one rent price, then started charging a higher price, you could equate the two behaviours.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#132

Post by simoncion »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #126
simoncion wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would modifying the SFAA lease be legally risky? In the absence of a written lease, the obligations of a tenant to the landlord are to not cause damage to the landlord's property -beyond ordinary wear and tear-, to pay the landlord the agreed-upon rent in a timely manner, and to not interfere with the quiet enjoyment of others tenants in the building. A landlord's obligation to his tenants are to provide a place…

In San Francisco, the Rent Board places additional obligations on the landlord and declares random things legal and enforceable or not legal and not enforceable. (For instance, a recent example: if there are multiple tenants in the apartment and their rooms are the same, they may not split the rent unequally. it must be split proportionally. so decreeth the rent board.) The SFAA lease contains things that are... batt…

You're right. The SF Rent Board does add some rules to try to ensure that a landlord can't evict a tenant simply because he's insufficiently profitable. But, from my POV, those are obligations that a landlord has to the local government.

"if there are multiple tenants in the apartment and their rooms are the same, they may not split the rent unequally. it must be split proportionally. so decreeth the rent board."

Do you have a citation for this? The only possibly relevant section that three minutes of searching turned up was 37.3(c) "Initial Rent Limit for Subtenants".

"[The] Rent Board ... declares random things legal and enforceable or not legal and not enforceable."

Law at all levels is more like quicksand than bedrock. At least the Rent Board has a consistent and public agenda. Do the Rent Board's actions make more sense to you if you view them as a Renters' advocacy group?

"If you're a landlord, you probably don't want to ... [end] up with a tenant that ... pays half of what you could get if you could legally rent the apartment to someone else."

Is this the meat of the "legal risk" that you were talking about earlier? If so, you're not talking about legal risk; you're talking about limiting earning potential.

For something like forty years it's been the position of the SF Rent Board that the renters of San Francisco should be able to find, secure, and retain affordable housing whose rental rates more-or-less track the -actual- increases of costs to the landlords who rent out the space. If you do even the smallest bit of research before you decide to become a landlord, you'll discover that the city will make it hard for you to throw people out of their homes simply because they aren't making enough money for you. What's more, you'll discover that things have been this way for decades.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#133

Post by pyre »

mseebach wrote: post #66
pyre wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure that this makes sense. If he had picked up a roommate instead of renting on ABnB, the landlord wouldn't have gotten more money, yet there would more 'more people' causing 'more damage.'

Generally, the shorter time you're staying for, the less invested in the property and community you are. For an example, a guest will on average think less of making noise when coming in late than a tenant who will be having a longer term relationship with the neighbours.

Personally, I've never known anyone that would treat a place poorly just due to a short stay. The people I know that would treat a place poorly are people would do so on a long or short stay.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#134

Post by 205guy »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #99
fennecfoxen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take a moment and see the amazing things that can be accomplished with AirBnB and marvel at the things that we do to ourselves with regulation which could make things like this practically impossible. Stifling business and innovation, deadweight losses to society, and all that economics jazz. Great for the traditional hotel industry, though, and whatever lobbyists they have at City Hall and in Albany...

Okay, I don't want to drag HN into flamewars for the lulz, so... Man, all you guys, chill. I'm not saying let's all go anarchist hyper-libertarian on you, or say that no regulation has any purpose or any benefit. I'm just asking you to think about the costs we impose on ourselves with it - I think this is reasonable, because you're clearly doing a perfectly good job thinking of alllll the benefits already, as your re…

Yeah, but what are the "costs" when AirBnB "moves in?" Expectations of residential building/neighborhood such as certain amount of traffic and noise, as well as neighbors who are relatively long term (in other words, you can get to know them--example may not apply in some cities).

Face it, AirBnB is just the next hiding place for illegal rentals after tax and zoning officials caught on to vrbo. I don't understand how so many people think that they can turn the property under their control (owned or rented) into a business without liability or regulation. Just write the word taxi on your car, pick up some fares, and see what happens.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#135

Post by webjprgm »

Almost every rental agreement I've ever signed disallows sub-letting. They also have rules about having people come to stay (as roommates, rather than as sublessee.) no sympathy whatsoever.

Now why did the landlord decide to list rooms him/herself? That's interesting. Could Airbnb become a way for small-business hotels to book rooms? Generally landlords don't want short-term tenants for various reasons. I wonder if the Airbnb idea, which plays on the social aspect of borrowing an individual's house vs. dealing with an dispassionate corporate entity, enables leasing of smaller properties to work. If that's the case, then a landlord seeking to run Airbnb listings to turn a few rooms in an apartment complex into a hotel might eventually run into trouble if this kind of arrangement becomes common on Airbnb, since then you lose the social aspect that was making the tenants well-behaved. With tenants who might abuse the property a small apartment landlord probably would not want to deal with them.

Maybe an enterprising landlord could put in a clause claiming 50% (or more) of the revenues from Airbnb if any tenant chooses to use it. In fact, maybe the OP should offer such an arrangement to the landlord as a settlement and thus be able to remove the restraining order and continue making some profit.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#136

Post by adgar »

Torrents wrote: post #125
dagw wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy your innocence here. I don't find it that hard to believe that someone would blindly sign a lease after only quickly skimming over the important bits and then never look at it again. I remember one landlord looking quite surprised when I sat in his office and read all 8 pages of the contract, asked for clarifications on a couple of points and asked for one clause to be changed. It seemed to me that she'd…

As a landlord my lease agreement is only 3 pages, and I have always reviewed it with tenants before I allow them to sign it. I review every clause with them and have them initial every page. If they have questions or objections we sometimes modify clauses; we cross out the standard language and write in the new agreement and we both initial the change. It only takes a few extra minutes to review the entire agreement,…

My current landlord in Chelsea walked me through the exact same process. Took 10 minutes.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#137

Post by rayiner »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #33
hack_edu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, though if the landlord had a hand in the operation I'd imagine it would have to be a legal business. This means taxes, insurance, wages, administration costs, permits that probably make it more trouble than its worth.

Let's take a moment and see the amazing things that can be accomplished with AirBnB and marvel at the things that we do to ourselves with regulation which could make things like this practically impossible. Stifling business and innovation, deadweight losses to society, and all that economics jazz. Great for the traditional hotel industry, though, and whatever lobbyists they have at City Hall and in Albany...

The problem is that it's hard to tell when value arises from the elimination of a deadweight loss and when it arises from externalization of costs. E.g. environmental regulation generates some deadweight loss in the form of compliance, etc. It also seeks to internalize inherent costs of activity that would otherwise be externalized. If we got rid of the regulation, a factory owner would see a small amount of benefit from the elimination of the deadweight loss, and a very large amount of benefit from being able to externalize the inherent environmental costs of operating a factory on the local community.

In the situation of AirBnB, the externalities are imposed on all the other residents of the building and the neighborhood who signed up for apartment leases on the assumption that random people would not be coming and going. The value that accrues to the AirBnB host is generated partially by the loss of value to his neighbors. So what you have is not a creation of value, but rather the opportunistic transfer of value.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#138

Post by cge »

hack_edu wrote: post #7

Again and again, people who use Airbnb to 'hack' the rental market get little sympathy from me when the chickens come to roost. If your landlord was interested in running a tenement home/boarding house/hotel, they wouldn't sign you into a year-long lease. Also, and I know this has been hashed out before on these comment threads but he's grossing $30k a year on the back of his landlord. The landlord has every right to…

As landlords, we obviously have language prohibiting these sorts of actions on the parts of our tenants. But that isn't just because of our own greed. Tenement homes/boarding houses get worn down quite a bit faster than rentals. It's easy to end up with the property completely trashed, it's easier to get sued or otherwise in trouble, and it's easy to end up with neighbors complaining and disliking you.

In addition to all of that, often codes simply don't allow boarding houses, regardless of who is running them. One of our renters tried to run a boarding house without our knowledge, and when the police were called to one of their parties, the city threatened to levy considerable fines against us for running a boarding house, regardless of whether we were actually running it or getting any money from the tenants.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#139

Post by peterjancelis »

rayiner wrote: post #137
fennecfoxen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take a moment and see the amazing things that can be accomplished with AirBnB and marvel at the things that we do to ourselves with regulation which could make things like this practically impossible. Stifling business and innovation, deadweight losses to society, and all that economics jazz. Great for the traditional hotel industry, though, and whatever lobbyists they have at City Hall and in Albany...

The problem is that it's hard to tell when value arises from the elimination of a deadweight loss and when it arises from externalization of costs. E.g. environmental regulation generates some deadweight loss in the form of compliance, etc. It also seeks to internalize inherent costs of activity that would otherwise be externalized. If we got rid of the regulation, a factory owner would see a small amount of benefit…

Negative externalities are best handled by tort law. Let case law develop over time. Central planning (i.e. one law with 'good intentions') does not work.

Re: How Airbnb Earned Me $20,000 And A Restraining Order From My Landlord

#140

Post by lamnk »

dagw wrote: post #117
parfe wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attached to the order was a complete printout of my Airbnb listing and all my reviews, included as evidence I had violated clauses in my lease. (Some leases, I have since learned, have evolved specific language prohibiting tenants from listing their pads on vacation-rental sites such as Airbnb.) I don't buy your innocence here. I've been leasing houses for ~10 years now during and after college. The leases have alway…

I don't buy your innocence here. I don't find it that hard to believe that someone would blindly sign a lease after only quickly skimming over the important bits and then never look at it again. I remember one landlord looking quite surprised when I sat in his office and read all 8 pages of the contract, asked for clarifications on a couple of points and asked for one clause to be changed. It seemed to me that she'd…

I think it's pretty much de facto standard that you must disclose first hand before you sign the lease contract whether you rent the place for living or for business. Subletting is not always forbidden but you have inform the landlord before you subleasing.
Post reply on HN