Massachusetts Hosting - Yay or Nay?

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My in-laws have a 3BR-2BA+office house on the Cape, in Falmouth, walking distance to downtown and 2 blocks from the shuttle to Woods Hole for the Vineyard ferry. It’s unoccupied but no one is ready to sell it yet. It’s still fully furnished and would be easy to make it ‘cuter’ and we have the linens and such already. My husband and I are considering offering to Airbnb it, at least for the summer. Brother-in-laws want to rent it for $1800/month to, literally, “a guy they know”, but hosts with similar in the area are charging $350-450/night, rentals on the Cape are typically for a full week at least, and we would only give up $1800/month to the family.

However, we are in a state with minimal regulation and no hoops to jump through so I am wondering if the Mass regulations are worth dealing with? I believe there is a license and insurance requirement? If any of you Mass hosts have any advice or insight, it would be much appreciated.

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As this is an international forum, you may be better off looking for a local hosts facebook page and ask your necessary questions there.

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I know it’s an international forum but there happens to be multiple active posters that are hosts from Massachusetts on here. Hosts that I am already familiar with and trust. Also, Facebook is the devil and I don’t have an account. Can you just ignore it, since I sit through all that Aussie bonding all the time :wink:

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OK - I tend to group people by country and it appears that some states have some or are getting some pretty strict rules… Vermont comes to mind.

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So true, FB is pure evil.

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This absolutely not true in my little corner of the intetwebs but I’ll leave it at that.

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Massachusetts host here. Here is an article from 2019 when the stricter law was passed. https://www.avalara.com/mylodgetax/en/blog/2019/06/new-massachusetts-short-term-rental-law-starts-july-1.html
You might get around this if you do a stay of over a month. I am not sure what the Falmouth local ordinances are, but Cape Cod seemed to be one of the hardest hit by tax requirements. I have found the insurance quite expensive. Thankfully my town/county has no special taxes so I just have the state occupancy tax which Airbnb collects for me.
The “guy they know” might be OK if you have a written agreement with a deposit. Personally I might lean toward this option because hosting is time consuming and every guest brings different challenges. I’ll be interested to hear what you decide.

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Christine, thank you so much for answering! I appreciate it. I was doing some internet research but I realize now that what was so confusing is that the regulations were not consistent state-wide and I hadn’t realized that. So, a lot of stuff I read contradicted the other stuff I read. Now, I can be more specific with the research!

Yeah, they are wanting to do him a favor I guess. But, for us, it doesn’t seem worth it. We’d rather have the house empty so that we can use it, otherwise we can’t really afford to go. The $1800/month is much less than what it would cost to get some place else to stay.

We offered up the Airbnb idea because that would actually make some income for us and we could block off days for our own use. But even though we are very close, I think it may still be too complicated, the more I think about it. We do have a friend that would make a good local co-host there but I’m used to having more control because our current units are in the same house with us. It’s hard to imagine not being able to take care of an issue within a minute.

Well, to be honest, I don’t have a full share of influence over it. But from the Zoom last night, it looks like it might get put on the market for sale sooner than later. Which works for us too, except that I know who is gonna go most of the packing up and cleaning :wink:

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