Hi,
I have a guest that has booked a stay March 24-April 28. She has not arrived yet. So far I have received 4 letters in her name from Geico. I am not comfortable with that. Unfortunately though it was not in my house rules ( I have added it since.) would it be wrong of me to reach out to her now and tell her I am not allowing mail even though it wasn’t in the rules when she booked? I have been renting my master bedroom suite long term for the past 5 years without any problems, mostly traveling nurses. I have had people get packages here but not mail. I just don’t want any opening for someone to try to declare residency or something. Thanks for your help.
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Conveniently just over the amount of time to establish residency.
Then maybe you’re overdue. Do you have the tenants sign a real lease?
I’m not one of those hosts who worries about mail. I get misaddressed mail here all the time and have for decades. It takes far more than mail to establish residency. However, this combined with length of stay is worth spending a little time on. I’d ask the guest about it as a starting point, not asking us. Then if you are uncomfortable with her replies, go from there. If you don’t have a lease, make sure you get one signed ASAP, before she arrives.
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Yes, it would be inconsiderate of you and if it wasn’t in your rules at the time she booked, then she can ignore it anyway.
Legally, as a tenant, she would be entitled to get mail so you should check with your local authority to see if that applies in your area.
I find it a bit strange that people can get no mail at all in a four-week period and I’m surprised that this hasn’t cropped up before with you.
If you’re concerned about that then you should really stop allowing such long lets.
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Well, she’s not a tenant before her check-in date. So legally, I think a host could mark it “Not at this address” and pop it back in the mail if they were so inclined. I wouldn’t worry about some mail, but things that could be used to establish residency, like if mail from a bank comes for a guest, or from immigration if they were an international guest, might be of some concern.
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Well, lots of mail people used to get is now online paperless, i.e. bank and credit card statements, bills, etc., and not many people write actual letters anymore. I have lived in Mexico for almost 20 years, there is no mail delivery service in my area, so I have never gotten any mail here. For the few things that might come in a year, they go to my daughter’s mailing address in Canada, and I either ask her to open it and let me know what it is if it seems like it might be important, or look at it once a year when I am up in Canada, as it’s just junkmail and it gets chucked.
So not getting snail mail these days for a month isn’t that strange.
There are mailbox forwarding services that will receive your mail, scan the envelope, email you that scan and ask whether you want that mail opened and scanned, shredded or forwarded.
So people who travel a lot and haven’t otherwise been able to get all their mail electronically might use a service like that.
What I meant when referring to residency is if a guest used the address on some official paperwork to claim they were a local resident, for say, immigration purposes, or with the IRS, listing a place they’d booked for 5 weeks as their permanent official address. That’s a different issue from how local laws may establish tenancy and its attendant rights.
I’m assuming first of all that you are in the USA. I have pro landlord experience.
in all the states I have experience owning rental property in, which is 4, she will become a tenant after 30 days by operation of law. Meaning without anything else happening.
The mail does not have any significance except that it might reveal her intentions----it is so easy to get insurance online only, no reason to have it mailed. So why do it that way?
Depending on your state, once a tenant is in there it can take many months to get them out, even if they stop paying rent. In New York City when I was there, a few years back, it took about a year to evict a non paying tenant.
I would immediately write to her and say a lease is required. If she doesn’t write back or balks, I would cancel the reservation. (Yes I do know there are a lot of consequences for doing that. I would do it anyway).
If she agrees to a lease, I would use leaserunner.com to generate the document.
If you let her move in without a lease, well, I wish you good luck.
This lease would be signed before I would give her access to the space.
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I think it’s a bit off that the guest didn’t check with you first on getting mail delivered. And they are going to the trouble of changing their address to your Airbnb for about a month, then changing it to the next address? When it’s easy to deal with Geico or other providers online.
The link between establishing residency through a mailing address and squatting would be more relevant to occupying vacant properties than to long term rental tenancy, I would think. It could be your guest is planning to relocate permanently to the area (not to your master BR) and desires to establish residency for that reason.
Regardless:
“Dear Guest,
We don’t have the facility to receive mail addressed to you at the Airbnb and ensure it is delivered to you. Please make other arrangements.”
And absolutely yes on the signed lease agreement.
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It is not too late to cancel the stay and take the penalty.
RR
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Is that a common practice to have a long term Airbnb guest sign a rental agreement or lease? I naively assumed I was ok since the accommodations were booked through Airbnb. I will definitely research the link you shared, thank you. On a side note I reached out and told her that she would not be able to receive any more mail here. Her response was:
“Good afternoon. I am so sorry I just called Gieco to get rate quote if I changed states and the lady messed up and sent the quote. I have already spoken to them a few days ago and they fixed it. I apologize. You can just throw it away if you don’t mind”
I will definitely not throw it away, will probably do RTS since she is not even staying here yet
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Thank you so much for your input. It has been truly helpful. The space is a master bedroom suite in the home I live in in NC.
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Yes, I haven’t done rentals for over 21 days for many years but received a valuable lesson when tenants stopped paying and we had to take them to court.
It took 6 months to get them out (legally) and during that time it would have been against the law for me to stop providing them with utilities (which was the way it used to be done many years ago - now illegal) so for those six months I was paying all the bills for no return. Plus attorney fees and so on.
So please protect yourself if you can. Find out what the tenancy laws are where you live and abide by them.
Please please please don’t think that Airbnb covers you for anything. It is an advertising company that introduces host to guest - that’s all we should expect from them.
I love using Airbnb, I’ve never had unpleasant dealings with the company and I’m sure that there have been cases where it has looked after and supported hosts with problems but many hosts seem to think that Airbnb will get them out of any scrapes. That simply isn’t the case.
Make sure that you are in full compliance with your locality’s rules and regs, TOT or whatever your local bed tax is, make sure that you are covered by STR insurance and don’t assume that you can rely on Airbnb for anything.
Airbnb is a great company to use but you have to be fully responsible for your own business.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is actually more likely for a short term guest to refuse to leave than a long termer. (And altogether it’s quite rare). I’ve read posts where a guest who booked for a few days or a week refused to leave. After all, if they plan to make you jump through hoops to get them out, you’d think they’d prefer to pay for a 3 day booking than a month-long one.
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I use a written contract for the rare 28 day rental of my second home in another city. I have found that a rental contract avoids confusion and provides safeguards that are beyond that of an oral contract.
Includes circumstances under which guests are allowed, lessee agreement that the property and furnishings are in good condition, pets, etc. Say you bring 6 dogs into the property; now it’s your word against mine whether pets were allowed.
I realize JJD has legal training but it’s not just about the law here.
It’s also about setting expectations in the mind of the tenant, and making sure the tenant and the landlord have a very similar understanding of the tenancy.
It may be too late for Air’s rules but I would insist on a lease anyway. Speaking as someone who has had to hire lawyers to evict a few people.
But if your conscience is delicate, and I understand, I would at least provide a list of expectations. Call it “Long Term Stay Expectations” and hand it to the tenant without demanding a signature, but ask her to read it before handing over the keys. It’s better than nothing.
The list would say things like no pets, no painting of walls, no more than 1 person occupancy, no hot plates, etc etc.
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You can’t “insist” on something that wasn’t mentioned in the listing info when the guest booked.
From the response that the OP said she got from the guest re the mail, which sounded very polite and respectful, if it were me, I wouldn’t be too concerned about this guest causing problems. Also, this is a homeshare where the host lives. It’s not like she’s handing over the keys to an entire house. And the guest isn’t going to decide she wants to paint the walls in her room in a 5 week stay.
Never anything wrong with discussing expectations with a guest, though, just to make sure you’re on the same page, but as a homeshare host myself, I prefer just mentioning something when and if it comes up.
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Not the question you asked and maybe you do this already, but I suggest you REQUIRE a weekly cleaning for stays longer than a week. You or a cleaner does the cleaning. If you provide linens, then change the linens then, too. Gives you a chance to be sure the guest isn’t turning your room into a dumpster. Put it into your house rules.
I recall @jaquo had a good way of communicating this with guests - I think she says to them “I’ll be in to clean your room tomorrow. Would morning or afternoon work better?”
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Absolutely tell her NO MAIL, NO PACKAGES (even Amazon deliveries can be considered now-their-residence).
Also it’s over 30 days. Get a real lease that covers your butt in your state/province/wherever.
NO mail or packages.
Lease.
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I would consider sending [handing] the guest the paperwork, “Here’s our standard rental agreement for longer stays. Please read over, I can answer any questions, then please send me a message with you concurrence [sign here and return to me]. Thanks.”
They can always refuse. “Oh, sorry you didn’t get this in advance. I’ll need to follow up with my manager. Never mind and enjoy your stay.”
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