I’m a super host of a downtown STR that is Business zoned and am fully compliant with all requirements of the city, state, county and Airbnb. But I live in an area outside the city in the County where STR’s are not permitted. As in not allowed, period. The problem is that the County has a policy of no proactive enforcement unless there is a formal complaint filed, a complaint that is public record including the names of all involved. Obviously, this seriously reduces people’s willingness to report their neighbors in the County who are operating an STR illegally. I am not personally AGAINST STR’s in the County, but the law is the law and it applies to STR’s that are joyful, well managed, don’t bother anybody, etc. and also STR’s that are purely there as money machines, cranking out the bachelor parties and the “Let’s cut loose in Montana” crowd and owned by non-resident owners and managed by a management firm. So has anyone had experience with using the Airbnb “Notice” part of “Report a Listing”? It allows an anonymous message to be sent to both Airbnb and the host in question raising issues about the propriety of how they are operating. Anyone ever used that and what was the result?
Considering that homeowners who have found that their tenants have listed the place on Airbnb, in contravention of their lease, and Airbnb doesn’t take the listing down when the distraught homeowner reports it, I wouldn’t bank on Airbnb shutting down those illegal listings. However, seems like you have nothing to lose by reporting them.
Just went through the process. Airbnb won’t do a damn thing. Not our problem, they say, basically.
It’s actually a solution for them: more hosts = more bookings. The value of a marketplace is proportional to the square of the number of participants.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who report their competitors as illegal. Airbnb barely has the bandwidth to do poor customer service for paying customers. I can’t imagine they will ever voluntarily do this unless there is a threat of legal action.
The place to report an illegal listing is the relevant zoning office, licenses and permits office, or revenue office, depending how the local government is structured.