Governments should go after those who are buying multiple properties and listing them on Airbnb. That’s causing housing shortages and turning ordinary homes into commercial properties. Governments should not go after citizens sharing their homes to make ends meet.
Let me correct you please ------ Government should not go after ANY property owners. And …MANY short term vacation rental owners have been renting their full houses happily and successfully, since long before airbnb was born and before airbnb created this regulation mess.
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Airbnb’s ~popularity~, meaning were many more new people started renting their places more easily is what is leading to the ‘regulation mess’. They are a booking agency between hosts & guests, nothing more; they don’t own any properties or run any government agency at any level.
The battle is between you, your fellow man and your government. Not with Airbnb, and no, they can’t fight the battle for you. Nor can VRBO, Flip Key, Bookings.com, etc.
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But of course, …
and I am deeply involved with creating local regulations.
Airbnb does assist -
their legal dept has met with our town officials,
and they come to other meetings and given input, as has HomeAway and Expedia.
But I dont agree with the mentality of owners who rent a room in their home,
turning on owners who own houses and rent the whole house…
That is what Paladin suggested, and what many air owners suggest.
It pits one owner type against the other.
Agree, beware of what you ask government to do, for the petitioners (aka first set of cannibals) may very well be the next that get thrown into the pot. 
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If my neighbors took pics of cars in my driveway I’d be like “so what?” Short of subpoena-ing access to my business checking account, there is no proof that I’m not just hosting out of town friends or even just allowing people to park in my driveway.
That being said my city is AirBNB friendly - although we have to register as a landlord even as a live-in host, but that’s about it. It’s allowed without many other restrictions as long as you allow the city to inspect the property semi-annually to verify that is safe (so working smoke detectors, safe windows and exterior doors, CO detectors, etc).
I have no HOA in my neighborhood and thankfully have chill neighbors. Hope that doesn’t change anytime soon!
An active airbnb listing with a calendar with days unavailable and reviews might go a long way towards proving one is doing STR.
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It’s possible. But if you put a generic picture of a flower or something as your profile pic, and don’t include outdoor photos of your property (I don’t) it could be a stretch. My neighbors have never been inside so they don’t know how I’m decorated and etc. And unless they make a booking - then cancel - to try to see what the address is, there’s no exact way to tell based on the map.
It’s possible but effort.
Exact, no. Very close, yes. Unless there are a lot of airbnb’s close together it wouldn’t be hard to find it. But yeah, why would anyone be interested unless they were trying to get you to stop. Why would they bother taking pictures of cars in your driveway?
This is why I went to my City Solicitor and asked before even making a listing. They said they were concerned about not getting Hospitality tax, and so was the state (not the housing crisis that displaced me and my friends from the Big City) and to watch.
When I went back recently to see if hte legislation had moved forward, they said no, but we are opening up about 500 new hotel rooms, so unless my super low (and therefore not worth it) rates are my draw, it dries up anyway, and I don’t need to have tax issues, so I just got as much as could this summer based on this info. With some really bad customer service issues and the new ToS being handled so poorly and unprofessionally (cannot apply to previously booked guests, so you can;t lock me out of the app and website heyyy), its a good time to peace out. Your stories here are just extra confirmation.
And based a link I saw from here to disgruntled Guests, part bad hosts but largely customer service based on that side too I think the whole thing is going to collapse anyway TBH. And by their own hand. No tears.
My state (Mass) DOES have a sort of resident status after a certain number of days even for a free guest, I’m told, after which formal eviction proceedings are required, hosts may want to look into that as well.
I would like georgygirl’s post 100 times if I could!
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This will be what happens. The city will close the AirBNB down, and then AirBNB will close you down, and then the neighbors will sue for damages.
There are more articles about this, but they are generally behind a paywall.
this is my next tshirt slogan
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She is a nutcase. A troll.
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Perhaps we should consider not responding to brand new users so quickly. If they’re not legit maybe they’ll go away!
It seems like we are generally somewhat hostile to new users. I’m sure someone will step in to correct me but it’s a trial by fire here at times.
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I didn’t like the way she used the fake post to slam the whole forum.
She isn’t going to be back, but in the future, we aren’t going to allow fake posts. Period.
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Half the posts and posters on this forum could be fake. We know some people here, we’ve shared offline messages or our listings are public, etc. But there are a whole bunch of others about whom we know nothing. All their posts could be “fake.” Not disagreeing with removing this one obviously…just saying if you’re going to be fake you better keep it a secret.
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True!!! Good point! This one was so obvious though. I knew when they brought up the drone it was bogus.
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