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I’m new to the group and am preparing to turn my rental property located in Kansas City, KS (near the Legends) into an Airbnb. Was disappointed to see the stringent permitting process the city puts you through, along with the $350 annual fee for the permit. They told me the process to get a permit takes 80 days and you have to go through the process once a year to renew.
It doesn’t look like it’s mandatory to get the neighbors permission but the permit process does ask if “you’ve talked to your neighbors about it”, does anyone have tips on how to approach neighbors on this topic?
Would love to connect with other hosts in Kansas City, KS.
Just go and chat to them about your plans for improving your property and reassure them about the measures you are putting in place to ensure your guests will not have a negative impact on them as neighbours.
STR Regulations are a good thing it helps prevent dodgy hosts who don’t care about the local communities their listings are based in who have guests who party and indulge in anti social behaviour.
Interesting that they only ask if you’ve talked to your neighbors. I looked into STR in Kansas City, MO in mid 2019 and they have a form that you are required to fill out and provide to your neighbors (all adjacent properties), and a form that you send to the city certifying that you sent the forms to neighbors (or more precisely, the owners of neighboring properties). I lived in the KC area for 20 years and their license and registrations are usually expensive and stupid, but their STR regulations were reasonable. E.g., keeping your property up to code, allowing inspections when not occupied, and limiting the number of guests to 2 per bedroom. There were multiple rules to prevent parties, too.
Back to your topic. You really want your neighbor’s support. You don’t want them to be enemies and you do want them to contact you first when they have a problem related to your STR. I would knock on your neighbor’s doors and tell them that you’re the owner of the neighboring property and you want to try out STRs. Tell them your concerns, ask them what their concerns are (take notes), and give them your contact info. The main concerns are going to be noise, parking, parties, so think about how to tell you neighbors what you’re already doing to address those. Tell your neighbors that you will draft your house rules to address their concerns and tell them how you will be able to immediately address any issues they may have when they contact you (have that plan in place before you talk to them, too).
I’m not in Kansas. I’m in Ohio and have none of the Kansas City-type requirements for permitting.
On the topic of neighbors, we notified our entire neighborhood about Airbnb through our neighborhood Facebook page. We started out telling them we were thinking of starting Airbnb. We ensured that that we would always be home when guests are here. (We house-share.)
Once we opened on Airbnb, we promoted the idea of our guest rooms being “guest rooms to the neighborhood.” We suggested to neighbors that if they had guests coming to visit and they couldn’t or didn’t want to accommodate them, they should give our Airbnb link to the guests to reserve with us. And they do that. We’ve hosted many of our neighbors’ guests.
We have also had one open house party a year, to which we invite the whole neighborhood. They are welcome to tour our whole house, including the guest rooms and baths.
At the beginning of our hosting, I posted brief messages on the neighborhood page, saying things like this: Two people are here from Alaska! A collage artist will be here next month! A guest from China next week! Just generic but interesting things. Neighbors got interested and often asked questions. They reported that they walked past our house every day to see where license plates were from.
After weeks, I asked on the neighborhood page if people were tired of hearing about guests, and many responded that they loved it. A number of neighbors have even met guests when they’re out in our front yard.
For us, it was a matter of being transparent and making it fun for neighbors. It was also a matter of being proactive about ensuring that guests never disrupt any of the neighbors, so they know they can trust us.
