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Good morning,
We’ve been hosting since March 2023 and so far so good (knocking on wood).
We received an inquiry last night for a 2-3 month short term rental. As we have no experience with this I thought I’d ask my fellow hosts for their thoughts. What are the pros and cons? - Thank you!
con: Tenant rights / squatting potential.
Guess they can’t read and also it could be a scam depending on how the request was worded. Did they want to pay with a check from their employer?
A couple of months and a couple of days are very different on many ways. As @Rolf says, there’s the squatting angle and many many more issues.
This has been discussed so many times here so it’s a good idea to search the forum and find other threads,
Airbnb isn’t really the right platform for long term rentals. For example, you may find it a good idea to have a proper lease in place.
Ask yourself why they are doing this through Airbnb. Would they not pass a background or credit check, maybe?
Yes, I read several of the newer discussions on the forum.
I’m going to reply to the request and say we aren’t equipped for short term stays.
Thank to all for your time!
Most of our rentals are at least 30 days - almost always from overseas.
The reason they are “doing this through Airbnb” is because Airbnb enables them to find us from overseas, and Airbnb offers them ten years of reassuring five-star reviews from previous guests. No mystery there, and certainly nothing nefarious.
Some are from people moving to Canada who want a “home base” for a month or two while they look for a permanent home, some are waiting for renovations or new-home construction to finish… but often (especially in summer May - Oct) families living in a condo tower in Seoul or Beijing want to spend a couple of months living in a garden suite in Vancouver, the way my family used to go to a cottage in the mountains during the summer. I’ve never had a long-term request that set off alarm bells, and I’ve never had a problem with long-term guests.
In my jurisdiction, landlord-tenant laws only apply if the tenant and landlord have a direct money-changes-hands business relationship – which does not exist with Airbnb guests. If a tenant was renting directly from us, and decided (for example) to start smoking in our non-smoking house, we could not get rid of them until we had hearings etc. Under Airbnb – they have broken house rules that we specifically ask them to confirm when booking… so we contact Airbnb and the reservation is cancelled and they are immediately in trespass because they do not have any of the civil-law delays and protections that a direct tenancy would confer under local landlord-tenant legislation.
We have never had any problem with longer-term guests – our current guests are our longest ever – they booked for three months last fall arriving in January, and cancellations have allowed them to do two extensions until the end of October.
Can’t read what ?? Not sure what you are referring to.
In the past ten years we have had many, many totally legitimate requests (and accepted requests) for stays longer than a month, and not one of them has wanted to do anything irregular (like “pay with a cheque from employer”). I’m just curious – why did your thinking immediately go there ??
Pro
You don’t have to change sheets for three months (assuming your guests have access to in-building laundry room).
Perhaps we will reconsider it in the future. Perhaps, the next person will be more forthcoming with why they need a short term rental.
Our guest cabin does not have a washer or dryer. I have to think there are better appointed options for them…… or they didn’t read the listing.
Again, thank you all for chiming in.
No laundry really sounds like a deal-breaker… not just for clean sheets, but for guests’ own clothes as well (unless you wanted to bill it as a “pioneer living” experience: A special feature of our rustic cabin is the pioneer laundry room on the banks of a nearby crick. Hosts supply organic homemade lye and an heirloom washboard that’s been in the family for six generations.)
I am, of course, just kidding.
Which is a huge plus - but bear in mind that even if laundry facilities are available, there are some slobs who will happily not lauder the bedding for the full term of stay. Sad but true. ( I have a neighbour who has experienced this - a few times).
For any stay of more than 8 days I do a free beddings/towels etc change mid-stay. Guests like it and so do I - I get to spy on the guests and make sure that they are keeping the place in good nick.
The trouble with longer stays is that there’s a change in mentality of some people who decide that the place is their ‘home’.
I’ve mentioned before here a neighbour who had a longer-term guest who painted the bedroom walls a revolting 
green colour and the rattan bedroom furniture in 
brown.
I guess we’ve just been lucky – we stay out of the suite unless it’s an emergency, but we are aware of laundering because it’s a shared laundry room.
The fact that we’re in the same house sets unspoken boundaries (paint the walls?) that don’t exist when the guest and host dopn’t share the same front door and the same raspberry patch.
I am LMAO right now. Painted the walls and furniture. No!
This was an Airbnb guest, or just a tenant?
Oh yes!
No, not Airbnb. A tenant with a lease - three or six months, I don’t remember.
I don’t understand your terminology. A short term rental is anything from one night to a month, generally speaking. I’d call a 3 month booking a mid-term rental.
Another reason not to take these longer bookings is that it cuts down on the number of reviews you’ll get. If you already have tons of reviews, that doesn’t really matter, but if you are trying to build up reviews, it’s better to take shorter bookings.
Interesting, I’d not heard ‘mid-term’ before. Anyways, 2-3 months was the specific question.
Can’t read that it’s a short term rental. If you’re listed for 5 days max, why would you ask for 2-3 months. I never had anyone ask me except for one scammer. Seven days was the limit and people could see online that 2-3 months was not in the cards.
Many have had people request long terms stays and wanted to book with a check or off platform. Well known scam and I had someone try to do it to me, that’s why I went there.
The end.
Yes. I just opened up a new listing— not a different place, just a variant with a different price and shorter stay length. Within the first two weeks I had two different inquiries about one month stays. After a little bit of back-and-forth they each asked me to text them to discuss it.
I declined to do that, of course, and within a couple of minutes received an Airbnb notification saying that those individuals had been suspended from the platform and reminding me to ‘keep my account safe’
For years the majority of our nights have been 30 days or more, and – weirdly – we’ve never once had a request to “text them to discuss it” or any other first-step towards bypassing Airbnb. MAYBE A COUPLE OF TIMES WE’VE HAD PEOPLE WHO WERE STAYING WITH US SAY verbally “iF WE COME BACK NEXT YEAR, CAN we work out a private arrangement?”
Once again I’m left wondering why our experience is not what other hosts on this forum describe as commonplace.
