Why Doesn't Airbnb Have a STR Regulation Strategy?

Regulations/Tax Issues
21

Guest fees, just like occupancy taxes, VAT taxes, etc, influence what hosts feel they can charge and still get bookings. There’s only so much guests will pay before thinking “Screw it, I’ll just book a hotel”.

Airbnb has the lion’s share of the market because of their aggressive marketing (much of which is false advertising, like making hosts and guests feel confident they’ll be covered if anything goes wrong), as evidenced by “Airbnb” having become a generic term for all strs, because a lot of hosts are undercharging for what they are providing, and because they don’t remove bad players, be they hosts or guests, nearly enough.

BDC has a bad rep for being very difficult to deal with and attracting a poor quality of guest, and VRBO only lists entire homes, so they are missing out on the business they could be getting from shared space listings.

22

you might find, if you go to your local council and plead your case, you’ll be exempt from new laws if you’ve been operating your STR under the old “no rules” system.

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23

I think so. I’m a progressive Democrat but I consider it wrong to regulate STR out of existence, because it is theft of property rights that have existed for literally hundreds of years.

I think the hotel industry drives a lot of the legislation. That plus the shortage of rentals in many markets.

If our place gets regulated out of STR we’re selling.

24

@HostAirbnbVRBO excellent observation thanks for the reminder!

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25

I’m not aware of any property rights that guarantee the freedom to house transients in one’s property. Can you point to where you think these rights are bestowed?

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26

Only the United States excluding Louisiana, and England. I don’t know what Mexico does. English Common Law. The Bundle of Title Rights, you can google it. The right to include people on your property and also exclude them. That right has been whittled away for sure but when I was a kid, there was no problem with having boarders in your house in the USA, where I lived.

27

But having boarders in your house is an entirely different thing than being an “investor” who buys up properties for the sole purpose of strs.

It’s like comparing a Holiday Inn to a small traditional inn, where the inn owner was also the manager and lived on the premises with their family- it’s apples to oranges.

If all strs were just people renting out rooms, in-home suites or mother-in-law cottages on the property where they live, all these anti-str regulations would likely not exist, because they don’t disturb the neighbors nor take available housing off the market for locals.

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28

Somewhat Influenced by what Airbnb charges its guests is one thing, to what degree is another. I would think hosts come to what they charge to make it ‘worth it’ for them, and not on an amount forced on them based on what Airbnb charges the guests. The preoccupation of what Airbnb makes never grabbed my attention at all, I am more interested on what I can make.

There is a lot more to Airbnb’s success than just aggressive marketing, even taking into consideration their ‘we got your back’ bs. Ease of use in one, review system (as flawed as it is) is another, and yes Cheski has a personality while their competitors are boring slugs who hardly anyone knows their names, and of course Airbnb is willing to deal with ‘shared’ places. Never mind that they book their hosts places quicker their competitors could only dream of.

VRBO not listing ‘shared’ places is not by accident, but design, while they stayed clearly away from this type of hosting, Airbnb had the guts (or craziness) to plunged into it. The day will come when they may drop it for it is that high maintenance full of entrappings.

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29

What is that supposed to mean? How are shared offerings high maintenance? What entrappings? Shared space listings are the least problematic in terms of issues that take up CS’s time, and payouts for damages. They also aren’t what lead places to seriously regulate or ban strs.
Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

Brian Chesky’s “personality”? He’s disingenuous and completely out of touch with the hosting community, who he seems to have forgotten he once was himself, just another dotcom billionaire posing as an aw shucks I’m just a regular guy. I find him disgusting.

30

One thing I do is set a Google Alert with the words ‘Airbnb,’ ;short term rental’ and my city, Worcester. I do that in the hope of catching any articles on local legislation discussion.

However, I have found that that is not good enough. I really also do need to look at the City Council agendas. For example, recently the City discussed a rental registry program. I don’t think it will hurt the STR business and feel the concept is a good idea but I did have some suggestions and wrote to my representative about them.

So, just as big companies have lobbyists we are in business too. It pays for us to stay attuned to what’s going on locally. There are many experienced and thoughtful members here. I’m sure if a location were experiencing a problem with short-term rentals members here might be able to make suggestions as alternatives to a broad brush simplistic approach of, for example, simply banning them. Still, it is certainly possible that a municipality will appropriately decide that its best interests lie in restricting short-term rentals – many have – and this is a risk that every STR owner should know.

Meanwhile, it’s in all our interests to weed out problem guests, especially those who would throw disturbing events or parties, exacerbate any parking issues or disturb neighbors. Having and advocating outdoor cameras, perhaps noise monitors and being ‘hands on’ Hosts with co-Hosts employed as needed are some of the things that we can do so that STR owners who come to this site are less likely to become the problem STRs that motivate legislation.

It might also be useful to get in the habit of speaking of ‘home-share STRs’ and ‘investor STRs’ hoping that the newspapers and ultimately legislators pick up on that difference, with a different legislative result because it seems to me that the concerns of gentrification, increased housing costs, smaller LTR supply, decreased community involvement are not criticisms that home-share STRs would be vulnerable to, but are criticisms that can be leveled at too many investor STRs.

I hope by saying this I have not wandered into a minefield. I realize that an investor STR might not like this kind of discussion. However, I’d be very curious about the quantity of investor STRs in communities where it is considered to be a problem. My hunch is, cannot prove it, that in those communities there are investors with MANY STRs. So if I were an investor STR, my distinction would be ‘solo investor STRs’ who have just one STR and ‘multiple investor STRs’ who have many (the phrases need editing to be more accurate).

The solo/many distinction is important because many owners, like the OP, have a deep commitment to the community in which they have their investor STR. They might retire there, if not full time, part time. IF there are not enough of these one-off kinds of investment that are causing the problems in the communities, it would make sense for the communities to legislate/regulate those STRs that are ‘one of many.’ Indeed, these communities might decide that protecting those STRs that are held by just one owner and represent future members of the community are part of the community’s seed corn.

This is all easier said than done because too often true ownership is hidden, but I would think that there is a way to find the real ownership of the real estate properties. If I were the legislator this would be step 1, to get this data.

31

Yes, I agree there is a distinction to be made between homeowners who are doing strs in a place they actually care about, where they stay themselves sometimes, or where they plan to retire. Even more so if they are hands-on hosts who deal directly with their guests, even if they use a local co-host to handle issues that might come up, to check on the cleaning, etc.

That’s very different from investors who don’t live in the area, might even live in another country, and simply use a property management company to deal with all aspects of hosting. A lot of the places that have a reputation as party houses are cheaply furnished, and the investor “hosts” only care about the money. If they have to replace some cheapo furnishings, no big deal. They may not even be aware of neighbor complaints, because everything goes through the management company and may also be listed under the company’s account. And even if they are aware of neighbor complaints, they don’t care. I’ve read posts from long-suffering neighbors who say despite all their complaints, the parties continue.

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32

I also suspect a lot of these party houses that give the brand a bad name don’t get shut down because Airbnb isn’t even aware of them. The owners/managers expect a certain level of mess and damages, so don’t report partying guests nor claim for damages, as other hosts would.

And although a neighbor complaints hotline exists, who knows whether Airbnb is responsive to those complaints in any meaningful way. It could very well be one of those PR exercises that Airbnb does to make it appear as if they are responsible and give a damn. I doubt that neighbor complaints receive any more appropriate responses than complaints from guests and hosts. Probably less, as neighbors put no money in Airbnb’s coffers.

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33

The party house in Pittsburgh where people were killed and lots injured back in the spring, they’ve still not caught anyone responsible.

I just looked and a couple people have lawsuits against Airbnb and the owner of the property. Can’t believe they’ve never arrested anyone.

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34

Shows you how well Airbnb vets guests. Was probably a false name on the booking guest’s account and fake or no verified ID.

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35

Not much in the way of updates from this tragedy, but they didn’t even know who owned the house. Looks like it was some company doing the hosting.

36

This thread gave me a couple of ideas.

Since Airbnb depends on me to make revenue, why doesn’t Airbnb clean my condo? Why don’t they do my accounting? Why don’t they give me furniture? Why don’t they increase the number of flights to this island? Why don’t they work with the local authorities to improve the internet speed so that guests can work remotely from my condo?

I really think Airbnb should do everything and I should get paid for doing nothing, and I shouldn’t have to take any risk.

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37

The concept of solo vs multiple is part of the key. San Bernardino County, where we live and host, just passed changes to the STR ordinance effective next summer. Some of the changes: no one may own more than 2 STR properties, and no more than 2 STRs may exist on a single parcel. (Only 1 STR if parcel is smaller than 2.5 acres.) That puts an end to rampant “investor hosts” who come in, buy 10 large parcels, build or remodel with 2 or 3 STRs on a parcel, or evict LTR folks to make more money in STR. It’s bad for the community residents. There are bumper stickers on a good handful of local cars here that say, “GO BACK TO L.A.”

Other changes include stepped up inspections to ensure owners are providing the required things like scheduled trash pick-up, 30-minute complaint response times, splitting the fines and penalties between renter and host. (previously I would be responsible for hosting an irresponsible guest. Now, that guest has to pay fines for their violation of whatever ordinances.

Before the previous owners remodeled the cabin it was categorized as temporary dwelling/camping cabin. after the remodel it became an SFR (single-family residence) and therefore permittable to use as n STR. So we did not “remove existing housing” from the market.

We have one STR in the same city that we live in and have moved here to retire. This is our retirement income, and we do every turnover ourselves. We’re experimenting with having a trusted cleaning crew to do turnovers if we want to go out of town or just have a week off. But we still manage it ourselves. We care greatly about and ore friends with the people who live on the property that abuts our 5 acres where the rental is. They have never had an issue with any of the now over 60 stays we’ve had since January. All this to say, “we are not the problem.” But any blanket regulation to control the problem owners that negatively impacts the good owners, should be avoided. I think our county is doing things pretty well with the traditional STR stuff. But on the other hand, they seem to be shutting down all the ALT-STRs (like yurts, Airstreams, tiny-homes-that-are-just-retrofitted-sheds, and such that can’t be certified as a “dwelling.” It gets really complicated with all the different use cases.

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38

This should be a key element for regulatory bodies to look at. The reason I started listing my guest room was that it sat empty most of the year aside from the occasional visits from friends and family.
I would never want a full-time roommate, and I also want to have the freedom to block off dates if friends and family want to come and stay. So nothing is being taken off the market for locals looking for housing.

In some cases, it’s not a matter of going from long term to short term to make more money. A friend who hosts 2 str suites in her home used to rent out those spaces long term (with less amenities, no cleaning services, etc- she made a lot of changes to the spaces to switch to strs, like adding kichenettes, and gutting her large bathroom, chopping it in half, so one smaller bathroom is hers and the other faces into the guest suite- her long termers used to share her kitchen and bathroom, often messily).

She decided to go with str because she had gotten burned too many times by renters who were always late on the rent, or unable to come up with it in an area where tenants rights are such that a renter can go months without paying before they can be legally evicted. She was fed up with renters asking to store stuff in her basement when they relocated, supposedly only for a couple of weeks, then letting it sit there for months or even a year.

Regulatory bodies should also consider the reason for these types of switch from ltr to str, as it isn’t necessarily to make more money, nor does the switch impact the neighbors.

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39

Oh I don’t think so. Quite the contrary.

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40

Yeah, I have no idea what he was talking about. I have a shared home listing and not once ever had to involve Airbnb about a booking, a guest, damages, a review, or a refund issue. It’s the lowest maintainance type of listing possible and I have no idea what “entrappings” is supposed to mean.