Rogue Airbnb listings still exist where short-term rentals aren't allowed | Hacker News Reader

Rogue Airbnb listings still exist where short-term rentals aren't allowed

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164 pointswalterbell147 comments

Recently I rented an Airbnb that turned out to be nothing like the pictures. The building that the apartment was in was falling apart, stank of cigarettes and was on a sharp slant to the point where my suitcase would roll if I left it standing in the apartment.

I left immediately, booked a hotel and messaged the host for a refund - they said no. I had to get Airbnb involved and they asked if I would accept a partial refund. I said no.

The Host asked me to cancel my trip, but I refused because I would have to agree to not accept a refund of more than $30.

At the end of my stay I was asked to leave a review and I left an honest, critical review of the apartment. Airbnb immediately messaged me asking if I'd accept a full refund to take down my review.

This is the kind of sketchy activity that will keep me booking hotels instead. I now have no faith in a place with all good reviews, as guests who leave critical reviews probably removed them for refunds similar to me.

I thought Airbnb was supposed to cover the cost of your alternative accommodation in this scenario as well?

If airbnb isn't giving you a full refund without removing a negative review just issue a charge back.

No way they will fight it with that behavior on record.

They didn't offer even though I told them we went to a hotel and I've never heard of this before, so I didn't ask. But given how hard it was to get a refund, I wouldn't imagine they would have offered anything more.

Thanks for sharing, good to know for future reference.

One should get a refund of the canceled booking but my last experience is they did NOT cover the extra cost of booking alternative hotel.

Had a NYE reservation in London canceled hours before my flight. Had to get hotel rooms ( I brought my parents on the trip ).

AirBnb support absolutely useless in rebooking (and no options, just one not close to similar listing repeating multiple times from different 'hosts').

What makes me so angry though was that a phone support agent told me they would give me 50% of a few days of the airbnb reservation cost to cover extra costs. I asked them to push too manager to cover full difference. But instead of offering to cover costs, over chat/email they claimed the phone person never made a promise and only paid me $85 (the difference was multiple thousands).

I asked for the recording but they never responded. I looked into arbitration but the cost/benefit of my time wasted doesn't work out.

Why not have your bank issue a chargeback? Takes like 5 minutes, never had any issues with it.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I got a refund for the price of canceled airbnb. But I had to get two hotels rooms, same day over NYE. Which was an extra few thousand on top of the canceled amount. This is the contention, where someone no phone told me an amount but then in the end I only got $85.

Ah, thanks for the clarification, I misread it.

Just last month, Airbnb reneged on its offer to cover the cost of my alternative accommodations when they let me a place without running water. Then they had to audacity to charge me for the first night; "it's policy," they said. Spent perhaps 5 hours chasing down their agents who use pseudonyms, don't have phone numbers, and have no stake in the matter. Now they deal with American Express.

Airbnb makes Uber look like Mr. Rogers.

Given that AirBnB is a YC company, maybe the best strategy is to use the Hacker News support channel? Other YC companies like CoinBase have notoriously bad customer support except for when posts reach the front page of Hacker News

Even if that were something that I could do, it's terrible that the MO is to fuck the customer.

* It turns out it was an illegal unit to begin with

* The unit was uninhabitable and would be unable to get a CO even if it weren't otherwise illegal

* The host wasn't a real person. It was a persona.

* A third-party is facilitating the whole thing. That company is called Makomi (https://makomi.com/) and makes its money operating illegal sublets in NYC.

Everyone here is playing the arms-length game as if there is some kind of plausible deniability that they are not prima facie illegal, and then they pile on by being dodgy even on top of that.

It's unfortunate, because when Airbnb works well, it's great, and when the slightest thing is wrong, it's donkey show.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees the irony here?

What irony?

Usually this forum is full of people praising Airbnb/uber for ignoring regulation.

Now it seems like we might need that regulation for a reason.

Your post just happened to include both sides of that quite comically.

I've had Airbnb simply ghost my negative review. It shows up on my account but not on the rental page. I called Airbnb for an explanation they said it could take some time for the review to show up. It never did.

You could post both screenshots somewhere public.

Airbnb will probably terminate his account for doing that.

...and nothing of value would be lost. A minor sacrifice to do good.

Then it would be HN front-page rage material. But I agree it's just a possibility, not a moral obligation.

No, seriously. There is a TOS against posting reviews outside of Airbnb. A medium blog post was posted here about it[0].

> I still can’t believe that leaving an offsite review was a bannable offense, but even more disturbing to me is the way AirBnB handled the situation with a one-sided, permanent, irreversible, closed book suspension.

[0] https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-go...

You don't have to post the review itself, just a screenshot showing that it exists. Btw, thanks for posting this, this is valuable to everyone who considers using their services.

The point is that if Airbnb is petty enough to ban people over off-site reviews, they're probably petty enough to ban people over off-site evidence of review manipulation.

I've also had VERY bad airbnb experiences deteriorating over the last 1.5 years ever since their intention to IPO/make profit. I'm a frequent traveler (4+ months abroad a year) and most of that time was in airbnbs. I made a pact to never use again if I can help it from here out.

I could give multiple examples/long stories. What's sad is the first many years using service were amazing!

I will not be buying their stock post IPO (and avoid renting at all costs); I'd be curious to see if a short is sustainable because it seems like I'm not the only one, compounding with all these other problems.

Why is it in AirBnB’s interest to help the fraud landlord? Isn’t it in their interest to get accurate reviews for bad properties to avoid having to refund again and again for the same place?

Is it any surprise that a vc funded business is short sighted? They are interested in getting to an ipo, not building a sustainable business where their reputation matters.

I actually think there’s a strong case that cultivated reviews (which are then displayed prominently next to product ads and sales pages) violates truth in advertising laws[1]. This is effectively the default in tech though; every company removes bad reviews because it’s in their financial interest in the short term.

1. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert...

But why is beneficial even for short term and valuation? Being the company known for fraud listings, lots of customers demanding refunds and so on can’t be better for growth and a future IPO than it would be if these (presumably quite rare) listings and their landlords were simply removed after refunding the renter?

Presumably because it's systemic and extremely costly to fix, so doing something about it would seriously damage their reported revenue and income, thus reducing their value at IPO. Somebody did the math and determined the damaged reputation would hurt them less than lower revenue for now.

I once took it upon myself to do an investigation after a terrible experience. Within 15 minutes I found that:

1. The building had numerous building code violations per NYC

2. The building owner had links to the Russian mob written up in Nytimes.

I dealt with completely awful customer service. Like terrible from Airbnb. Hours on the phone dealing with idiots. I finally get someone who mattered after I cc’d my friend who was an editor at the WSJ threatening publication of the experience. She finally gets on the phone, and I’m like, “ever thing to check listings against building code records?” Her response, “Wow, that is a great idea! Why didn’t we think of that!” Ditto for criminal ties and records of the building owner. I ended up getting a full refund and $5,000 in Airbnb credit. What she basically told me is to never book unless it is with a preferred host.

Needless to say, I no longer would ever use Airbnb unless it’s in a ski resort, or something similar.

>Airbnb immediately messaged me asking if I'd accept a full refund to take down my review.

This is very unfair to future renters, breaks trust in the review system, and detrimental to AirBnb's business in general. Offering money in exchange for promise to take down a bad review is a very bad idea. Instead, the review should have remained with a note that a full refund was offered.

I once used booking.com to book a hotel. The description did not match reality (it was a very expensive hotel, 'wifi everywhere' but in reality not in the restaurant). I complained with booking.com and they said the hotel would solve it, offer we something. They did not. So booking.com asked if it was solved to satisfaction, to which I replied 'no'. That was it. I never got a review request. Which they normally even send several reminders about. So I was unable to leave a bad review.

The shadiness is everywhere. And we just accept this as a Brave New World.

It’s crazy to me that Airbnb is this massive company that derives most of their revenue from illegal services. What other multi-billion dollar co is remotely comparable?

Agree last thing I want to deal with is this feeling I’m not supposed to be there when I enter a random condo complex in a new city.

> What other multi-billion dollar co is remotely comparable?

Uber

Uber was for awhile, but would argue now it’s become mostly regulated...drivers have to get the right TIC licenses, airports have official signage for rideshare.

Airbnb to me still feels like the Wild Wild West (Uber circa 2013) and they take so little responsibility to make sure listings are legal per terms of whatever city it’s located in.

In fact, AirBnB take active efforts to ensure that cities cannot verify that their listings are legal. They actively resist giving cities information about landlords using their platform.

It's not like the city can't factor the info about the owner from the address. They pay property taxes to the city, right? If a city council wanted a crackdown on illegal AirBnBs, they could compile a lust of properties every month and fine the landlords based on zoning regulation. They could also provide some kind of report form or telephone number.

Airbnb listings don’t provide addresses, which aren’t seen until they are long booked. You couldn’t just scrape them, you’d have to actually order and pay for each one whose address you wanted.

There’s nothing preventing a host from giving an incorrect street address. So even if an aggregator were to book rooms to find them, there’s no guarantee that the address would net them something.

It isn't. They're still very much illegal in Hong Kong and other cities around the world and very much still don't care and still operate.

It depends on the market, and in its most mature markets the company has worked with cities to make it legal and regulated. Uber has a tiny prescence in Asia at this point outside India having sold most of their biz to Grab.

The biggest turnaround I’ve seen is Las Vegas. Up until 2016 or so they were the most aggressive as far as arresting drivers and the company shut down operations for years. Then a year later the airport has a dedicated floor to pickups, official signage everywhere, all hotels have dedicated pickup/drop off.

I wouldn't say they derive most of their revenue illegally without more data, but regardless it's hardly alone. The ride-sharing services were the first of the modern companies push this model of "implement first, work out legalities later". Many of the scooter- and bike-rental outfits have operated on similar profiles.

Arguably the granddaddy of all of them was PayPal, which substantially strayed into banking territory without ever getting the appropriate accreditation.

Honestly, it seems to me the way much of this legislation moves forward. I don't know that I love companies flouting laws, but when those laws are kept in place against public interest (thinking especially of the state protection of taxi services), it can be hard to muster any serious antipathy towards them.

Uber and Airbnb are completely different beasts. At least rideshare benefits both residents and visitors alike and taxis are universally hated for high rates and fees.

How does Airbnb benefits residents of a city outside of landlords/slumlords? In markets with low housing supply they crowd out housing for permanent residents and create safety issues for neighbors. I would be pissed if I lived in an apartment complex with a steady stream of random strangers coming in and out because my neighbor rented it out on Airbnb.

Residential zoning laws are in the public interest. A city that made it legal for any home, apartment, or condo to be turned into a mini hotel does not benefit the people that live there at all.

I'm not defending AirBNB, nor castigating it. I haven't thought enough about the consequences of their behaviour to have a strong opinion.

You asked if there were other companies who operated substantially illegally,* not if there were other companies who operated substantially illegally and also weren't in the public interest. I offered examples.

Perhaps my musing at the end isn't widely applicable, the only one of the services listed I've substantially used is Uber, but nevertheless AirBNB certainly isn't alone in their behaviour.

* You said mostly illegally, but I don't know that that's even true of AirBNB.

They benefit their customers (who have a much wider and often cheaper selection available than the old hotel industry) and their hosts (many of whom keep their finances afloat through AirBnB revenue, or have been able to enjoy life-changing increases in their standard of living - like sending the kids to college - because of it). It's detrimental to the neighbors, who have to put up with a stream of transients, parties, noise, etc; and of course to the existing hotel industry (though many of them are adopting AirBnB as a booking platform).

Similarly, zoning laws are beneficial to resident homeowners and detrimental to renters, potential startups, real estate speculators.

There is no uniform "public interest". Any significant policy will have some people it helps and some people it hurts.

When I look at Airbnbs in SF, NY etc they are regularly more expensive than hotels with none of the benefits of a hotel.

Why should a city prioritize the needs of landlords and visitors over most of their constituents? Would love to see the number of mayors who love Airbnb. I can’t imagine there are many, if any.

I don't use AirBnB for staying in SF or NYC (although I highly doubt that's the case for SF - a hotel runs you $200+/night here, but you can get quite decent AirBnBs for $70-80/night).

I've used them for staying in Kirkland, WA; Amherst, MA; Santa Cruz, CA; Redding, CA; Gualala, CA; Carmel, CA; Morro Bay, CA; Kihei, Hawaii; Croatia; Sarajevo; and several other places. They're an absolute lifesaver there: in some of those locations, there are literally 1-2 hotels in the whole town, they are frequently fully booked, and they cost 2-3x an AirBnB.

And I'd also doubt very many mayors like AirBnB all that much. My point is that interests diverge - there are some people who derive a lot of benefit from AirBnB, and there are other people who have good reason to hate it.

I’m surprised Kirkland even has Airbnb’s. They seem to be almost illegal in next door Bellevue, but then again Bellevue has plenty of hotels.

They do, although selection was limited. A quick search just now turned up about 30 results.

East siders (police and residents) are wicked famous for not putting up with what they call quality life abuses. They are the exact opposite of Seattle in this regard.

They can’t be more expensive than hotels, worse than hotels, and still get booked without offering something of value, unless they’re just a bait and switch operation.

I suspect there are a group of Airbnb users who never look at hotels at all because "they're more expensive" and so higher price worse units can and probably do get sold.

Of course they can be. The fees on Airbnb add up e.g. service fee + cleaning fee + hotel occupancy taxes etc. You pay the same taxes as a regular hotel + at least two more fees (at least in places where Airbnb has agreed to collect hotel taxes on stays).

I used to work for a hotel company. When I moved to NYC, I had the option of getting the employee rate for my rooms while I was getting settled. For the same price, I got an Airbnb that was walking distance from the office.

The host had soft partitioned her apartment and was renting out the bedroom. Because it was “owner occupied” I don’t believe it is illegal. By being present, she could ensure I kept to the social norms of the building.

Airbnb in NYC isn’t just tourists having raves in quiet apartments. There are socially acceptable use cases that don’t result in housing shortages or significant downsides to current residents. I wish more people could accept nuance in the debate.

>They benefit their customers

While making it a nuisance for people actually living in the city. I live in a condo in downtown Toronto, and every tenant in my building unanimously hates airbnb residents. There are weekends when people who airbnb and come for the sole reason to party throw liquor bottles and garbage in the lobby, destroy elevator buttons because they can't access their floor with the fob, puke in the hallway/elevator when they come back from a night out at 3am. The list goes on. While it definitely does benefit people who actually want to travel and are respectful of the building, not everyone is like that.

>their hosts (many of whom keep their finances afloat through AirBnB revenue, or have been able to enjoy life-changing increases in their standard of living

Agreed, but this is when Airbnb is actually used how it is supposed to. Either the host lists it as a short term rental for a one off weekend, or a spare bedroom in their apartment. What ends up happening for a majority of units is, that a lot of rich people end up 1+xth property just for the sole reason of Airbnbing it full time and thus decreasing the supply of long term rental units for people in the city. You know what this leads to.

If airbnb actually cared, they would have more checks before a host can sign up, work the city to give them names of owners who list their unit for more than allowed days (a lot of European cities actually allow 90 days of rental or something similar), work with condo-boards to ban the building if it's against the building policy, etc.

> How does Airbnb benefits residents of a city outside of landlords/slumlords?

When I moved to Seattle a few years ago after college, I wanted to explore different neighborhoods to find out where I wanted to live. I found an Airbnb that let me rent out a persons mother-in-law house for $1000 for a month which is like 1/3rd of hotel rates and way more spacious because the alternative is that they would just let that space sit empty.

> mini hotel does not benefit the people that live there at all.

Become their drug dealer!

Nope. Porn industry was first. Online porn sales bypassed thousands of local rules re when and where it could be sold. That was long before paypal airbnb or even google.

Amazon.com as well. In the beginning one of their biggest competitive advantages was that they didn't charge sales tax.

Outside of tech - the history of Las Vegas is fascinating. It's a whole city built on nurturing industries that are illegal everywhere else. Many of the early casinos (1920s-ish) were also built by the Mafia with funding from the Mormon Church - there's one good example of capitalism allowing a group to reap the profits of sin without engaging in sin themselves. And of course, the modern Las Vegas Strip is actually built just outside of city limits because they didn't want to pay taxes to the city.

> Amazon.com as well. In the beginning one of their biggest competitive advantages was that they didn't charge sales tax.

Wasn't that basically the law of the land (until this year, due to Wayfair), based on the Quill SCOTUS decision?

My recollection was that Amazon started collecting sales tax many years ago, but apparently it was much more recent than that. They started collecting sales tax around 2011-2014 because many states passed explicit state legislation requiring them to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax

As of mid-2018, just about all retailers have to collect sales taxes on their out-of-state shipments, presence or not.

Funny how the law that allowed Amazon to grow so much has been unwound just as it stops benefitting Amazon...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/supreme-court...

of their biggest competitive advantages was that they didn't charge sales tax

absolutely untrue. in the beginning, Amazon was not required to collect sales taxes (in the USA, can't speak to other countries policies) and did not grow into what it has become because it saved people a measly 8-10% off the purchase price.

> absolutely untrue. in the beginning, Amazon was not required to collect sales taxes

You are correct in that Amazon wasn't required to collect sales tax. What you are omitting is that the buyer was supposed to submit the sales tax. Of course, no buyer ever did so.

So, what Amazon did was aid and abet tax fraud on a massive scale that effectively gave them an 8-10% discount on everything they sold until legislation caught up.

This absolutely murdered my favorite local technical bookstores. I'm sure other people have other stores that they know took a beating from that.

> So, what Amazon did was aid and abet tax fraud...

I don't see how Amazon can be held responsible for its customers' failing to pay use tax. It wasn't Amazon's obligation to ensure it was paid or even to inform their customers of the requirement to pay it.

It's very much analogous to AirBnB, though, which is the point of this thread. AirBnB has no contract with your landlord or condo association; they are breaking no agreement. They also do not reside within the bounds of the municipalities whose laws they are supposedly breaking, and so are not subject to their jurisdiction.

They, however, enable large-scale lawbreaking on the part of their hosts. Technically, it's the host's obligation to ensure that they comply with all applicable laws, contracts, and regulations. AirBnB has boilerplate terms to that effect. In practice, a significant number of them don't. AirBnB looks the other way because they gain a competitive advantage from it. Enforcement is difficult.

It's quite similar from Amazon gaining a competitive advantage because their customers are supposed to pay sales tax on their own (but don't).

That’s like saying that car dealers abet drunk driving.

In the UK, they and a few other companies pioneered shipping CDs from Jersey to avoid VAT (which was 15 or 17.5% at the time).

Uber?

What other multi-billion dollar co is remotely comparable?

Uber? Bird? Lime? Lyft?

ugh, uber? Not to mention, big pharma, alcohol, tobacco, pay day loans, pretty much all forms of loan sharking, gambling, insurance, financial industry, banking.

I mean you can argue each of those til the cows come home but it's relatively equivalent, there are a lot of industries that solely thrive on the exploitation and subsequent legalisation of things that are quite arguably things that should be outlawed or at least regulated very differently than they are today or would be if they kept their lobbyists out of it.

I'm not saying I think any of those things should be illegal either, just saying that the world is full of thes things. Airbnb and uber are just the latest who also happen to be silicon valley darlings.

You’re just seeing them at a unique point in their history where they haven’t yet bought enough lawmakers to make their revenue streams legal. Plenty of much bigger companies are well past this point.

The issue is that AirBnB (and Uber and Lyft and ...) make the vast majority of their money in the very biggest markets--New York, San Francisco, etc. So, until those cities get sufficiently aggressive and simply stomp AirBnB flat, this kind of misbehavior will continue.

Generally the secondary or below markets are ecstatic to have AirBnB and Uber, et al. as they are underserved by hotels and cabs and other things.

However, you won't become a unicorn serving Urbana-Champaign, Harrisburg, Lubbock, Columbiana, etc. so the VC's are happy to keep turning a blind eye to the misbehavior.

I don’t even think it would take a new law. A sufficiently ambitious prosecutor could make the case that AirBnB is the lead conspirator in a RICO, with wire fraud as the predicate offenses. The recent college bribery indictments were brought under that act.

I've stayed at quite a lot of Airbnb over 4 years of traveling and every time this happened I reported it to Airbnb and they were usually quick to help me get into another place. The service got worse as the years went on, though.

I basically said I didn't feel comfortable being stalked by hotel / lux apartment lobby staff every time I entered and left the building. Some buildings were worse than others.

Seriously? Why you gotta ruin a good hustle? I usually just give an upward head nod to lobby staff and its all good.

+5 Charisma

They know whats up.

Because this isn't a good hustle. By not disclosing this nonsense on their listing, they're putting the customers in extremely awkward spots. If you list it and someone else consents to it (and adjusts their mental pricing model accordingly), that's fine; not disclosing it is a huge asshole move, not a "good hustle".

This happened to me once and when I reported it to AirBnb, I got zero response.

Shouldn't you know that there's a good chance a listing is illegal and/or against HOA rules if you're booking a place in an apartment complex or condo?

I rarely book Airbnb's, but the only places that make sense as far as being "least likely to be against the law" are single family homes or Airbnbs run by a professional rental management co.

No?

AirBnB should put the onus on hosts to make sure the activity is welcome. If the site becomes a buyer-beware trap, where if I want to eg book a condo in Austin I better go figure out what Austin and the condo building feel about AirBnB, it does not bode well for their future...

What do you mean "if it becomes..."? It is a buyer-beware trap. There is no incentive for hosts to self-police themselves.

There are (were?) many lux condo buildings in Bangkok, at least a few years ago, that had plenty of open inventory so they were putting the units online themselves. The condo lobby would take care of your check-in process.

There are. I'm staying in one now.

It is somewhat concerning though, as there are big signs in the lobby of just about every luxury condo building stating — in English — that short-term rental is illegal, and you could face large fines and jail time.

We have been living out of Airbnbs for about 4 years now, and personally, I am usually fine if it's not totally above board for the most part. As you said "Some buildings were worse than others", and I haven't experienced a situation where we were being stalked/questioned to an uncomfortable level. I understand that would depend on the person, however.

I certainly wouldn't be one to report a host, but that's just me. We live mostly in Asia anyways where regulations aren't so strict and people care a lot less.

I used to live in SF and was being subleased to which was not allowed, but never ran into issues or cared.

Is this a surprise? I stayed at places in Vancouver and Seattle 2 years ago that had prominent signs in the lobby straight up stating the building did not allow Airbnb and the hosts had instructions about ‘community guidelines’ that were really designed to keep renters from being noticed by other residents.

Well, if you want to Do The Right Thing, here is the webform to report those hosts to the City of Vancouver:

https://vancouver.ca/doing-business/short-term-rentals-repor...

Seattle doesn't seem to have an equivalent.

Is it really the right thing?

It's "the right thing" in the same way that reporting someone to police for smoking weed "is the right thing".

In other words: no.

It’s the right thing because airbnb distorts house prices (among other factors too). In some cases pricing locals out of the market in place of tourists. Which is why those rules are often in place.

Sounds like there is just a shortage of high density housing.

Why not both?

"just" a shortage.

What I mean by that is its not a problem that people are paying for short term high price rentals. The real problem is more housing needs to be built.

How could prices increase? Effective supply of housing goes up so prices should go down.

Edit: Apparently sometimes whole apartments/houses become airbnbs, which I wasn't aware of. My experience has been spare rooms being rented out.

I don't believe that. The last time I saw a study claiming it, which was a long time ago, it turned out to be funded by the hotel industry.

Not only that, but the price was something like 0.4% in NYC.

What do you mean, distorts prices ? Is there a god-given “just” price which we should stick to?

> Is there a god-given “just” price

Incidentally, you can give up on God without giving up on justice. This is in fact the basis of the law in countries without state-sanctioned religions: coming up with shared axioms of just behavior and reasoning from there. So yes, there are means by which one can define just and unjust prices. If someone is hanging from a precipice by a thread he may agree that the price of his life is all his wealth and the value of his future labor. This does not mean that this is a just price for saving him. Maybe it is, but that depends on your axioms of justice.

Yes, the law is the law.

That's the kind of logic that kept Jim Crow going.

You just compared the fight against slavery to lining the pockets of a venture capitalist by annoying the neighbors.

You might want to think about that some more.

They did no such thing and its disingenuous to claim so. They provided a counterexample that illustrates a flaw in the ethical model "law = right".

Point take about there being unjust laws, but it would benefit your argument to acknowledge the difference between civil disobedience and theft.

Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.

If I wanted to live in a hotel, I’d move to a hotel. Instead in I rented in a residential building. If someone rents the apartment next door under false pretenses and turns it into a hotel room, violating his lease agreement and the law, he belongs in prison.

> Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.

While there might be some bad actors, the ability to sell/utilize unused space is very valuable. When I moved to Seattle a few years ago after college, I wanted to explore different neighborhoods to find out where I wanted to live. I found an Airbnb that let me rent out a persons mother-in-law house for $1000 for a month which is like 1/3rd of hotel rates and way more spacious because the alternative is that they would just let that space sit empty making it useless.

Think of it from the perspective of someone who owns a condo there: they didn't sign up to live in a hotel and deal with transient neighbours. There's a reason zoning laws exist.

I had the same experience in Chicago. Downtown apartments are worth the risk.

You know AB&B could easily add a “report illegal renter” to flag people renting out units that don’t qualify, but they ain’t because no ones gonna drag them over the coals for that.

And why would they do it voluntarily and lose revenue? Cities and locales should _demand_ they deploy a very visible “report illegal unit” form.

Seems like a good sized development place could just sue AirBNB and probably win if it wasn’t doing enough to keep people from subrenting where it’s not allowed.

Taking legal action against AirBNB would be an uphill climb, but you can construct leases (AirBNB subletting triggers eviction, making it incredibly difficult to rent in the future) and HOA covenants (hundreds of dollars per day in fines for AirBNB listing, with homeowner on the hook for legal fees, liquidating the property to recover them if left unpaid) in such a way to make it so incredibly painful to the renter/owner party that it mostly dissuades the listing attempt.

I always try to blend in when visiting an areea, wether staying in an airbnb, my camp trailer, or a hotel or any other accommodations. It seems like the right thing to do as a community guest, and is the best way for me to sample the local culture and learn from it.

I did stay in one airbnb that had a sign in the lobby about no airbnbs, but I did not know if that was a legal rule or if the unit I was staying in was grandfathered in or what the situation was, and I did not know the local language well enough to ask. I would probably not stay there again.

In this Airbnb drama there's a company getting all the business and none of the hate: Booking.com. They list apartments, don't perform any more checks on the legality and are never mentioned. It's amazing to watch.

In that case though the worse crime is its website...

Some will say the booking experience on booking.com is easier but that's not the point. The amazing fact is how they are reaping all the benefits of this growing market while being shielded by Airbnb getting all the bad press. Of course Airbnb started it but now they are both doing the same thing.

Most importantly they take huge commissions and force the hotels not to offer a lower price anywhere else.

And even less support.

I had an awful experience with Booking.com where I paid for and turned up with my family to a non existent scam apartment in Melbourne late at night.

Booking couldn’t care less and the apartment is still for sale on the site.

It took me weeks to get the money back.

It’s super awkward & sketchy things like this that have prevented me from really trying Airbnb in earnest.

Almost every Airbnb I've stayed in has felt a bit like this--like I'm not really supposed to be there--and it's a reason I tend to stay in hotels.

I appreciate the premise of staying in a city a bit more like a local and having a kitchen, but I'm at a loss for how people get over how it always feels a bit sketchy and anxiety around the inconsistent process.

How they get over? Saving a bunch of $ helps.

Every time I’ve looked at an AirBnb the prices are the same or higher than a hotel or real bnb unless you compromise on location or sketch factor.

I've noticed prices between hotels and Airbnb are closer. I think part of this is cities have caught on and are either charging fees (like SF) or are enforcing more regulations, which limits supply.

In the past (2014/2015), AirBNBs were generally 30% cheaper than hotels and provided better amenities (like a kitchen).

It's the same NIMBYism and real-estate-related corruption ring in many large cities that should be upended. If they don't even care about reasonble-cost housing for their own residents, even less so will they care about reasonable-cost lodging for guests.

"Compromise" on location? Some locations are zoned so they have no hotels/Airbnb at all, so if you want to be in a convenient place, especially without a car, you can only get Airbnb. If you add up all the costs of a trip, you absolutely save money.

Can’t use rewards points on Airbnb in the same way as hotels, though.

100% agreed. I've used Airbnb several times now, and any time I'm in any kind of shared housing environment (e.g. an apartment), I've felt this. At this point, I solely use it for renting entire houses, and that's been fairly fraught with difficulty. (E.g. the last house I was in trying to scam me out of $15k for plumbing damage myself and my guests couldn't have possibly caused.)

I've used AirBnB to stay in, what was essentially, a motel, and also a room in someone's home.

Both felt above-board, even if they were illegal in the area - which I don't think they were (Because I wasn't taking a full-fledged apartment off the rental market.)

I've had many great experiences in Airbnb through trial an error. A few lessons I have learned through trial by fire:

1) Preferentially select super hosts.

2) Preferentially select places with at least a washer.

3) Never rent places that are run with an absent owner unless I am renting the entire place (i.e owner has multiple properties and runs them like businesses).

4) Never rent places that have restrictions (i.e. no kitchen access or partial kitchen access).

5) Never rent exclusively on price.

6) The look and feel have a big impact on if I will rent.

7) I will rent again from hosts that I like. I never chase a new renting experience.

To offer the alternative experience -- I've stayed at >60 Airbnbs around the world and have never had to lie or sneak around. Much of the time I've picked up the keys from the building's reception, telling them that I'm an Airbnb guest.

I'm curious what cities that was in. Because honestly I can't think of a condo or apartment building I've seen that didn't prohibit short-term rentals unless it was specifically in a vacation destination, like a beach town, or if it was in those "hotel/residence" places that are already full of transient guests anyway, where if it was a short term rental you had to rent through the hotel.

As far as I know, the only cities full of apartments that prohibit short-term rentals are high CoL cities in the US and perhaps some parts of Europe. I've travelled all around the US, Latin America, Africa, and Asia without issue.

The first thing I ask when looking for an apartment to rent is if they permit Airbnb’s. If so, I don’t even bother checking out what they have, too many bad experiences with kids getting them to hold very into the late night parties.

Never heard of it London, mine certainly has at least one: I had a guest of a neighbour on a (very) different floor try for some time to open my door - with a key - in the middle of the night one time...

My friend had someone sleep on his floor after mistaking his door for the apartment above.

Before that, I was pretty lax with locking the door at night.

I doubt that I have ever seen a lease agreement that allows subletting.

I've never had these kind of issues.

The article I'm waiting for is how everyone leaves each other good reviews even though some shit went down.

It's kind of a code.

I used Airbnb for years, but after a lot of strange experiences like this I was just tired of it. It was just constantly so much grief. And some of Airbnb's policies and customer support was just plain useless or outright hostile.

At one point I realized that if I just stayed in Marriott-branded hotels all the time, I could get platinum status. Now I have it, and I'm much happier with Marriott than I ever was with Airbnb. They give me lots of extra care and free stuff because of my status with the chain. If anything at all doesn't meet my expectation, I just ask them and they always fix it.

It's pretty shitty of hosts who know there are rules against Airbnb to Airbnb their homes out, even shittier of the management of such buildings to lock or kick people out (would they do the same to friends and family they didn't recognize?), and shittiest of Airbnb to not take responsibility and at least put up these people elsewhere and stop allowing listings in banned buildings. Of course, if you're a multi billion dollar company, laws don't really apply. After all what are the consequences to Airbnb? None.

Just because there is law doesn't mean it can't be bent.

Some might say that multi-billion dollar companies got those laws passed.

Airbnb, where the renter is not the customer, but the product being sold to hosts. Airbnb is a middle man, they dont care about renters or hosts, they only care about connecting the two and getting their cut.

I would like to know why the photo was taken that way and why it was used in the article.

It makes you feel like you are the person about to stay in the place, only to find out that it's not allowed.

Can't the local governments use the homeless population to track such AirBnBs - the homeless will have a place to stay, will earn money(like 20% from the fine given to the landlord) and help detect an prove foul play.

If they are successful, the program eliminates itself.

What's to prevent the person from lying about visiting places? A failed career and ruined finances?

Also if the government is going to gather evidence about a crime, even a minor one, the evidence needs to stand up in court.

Can some people enumerate pros and cons of hotels vs airbnb?

I've always stayed at hiltons- granted my firm pays for it. Besides kitchen, I've never felt anything missing.

Stayed in an airbnb and had someone come round and say the manager was illegally letting it. No official response to a complaint to airbnb. Haven’t used it since.

This is nothing new, I've used airbnb since 2015 and had the same with hosts, and also tell my guests the same sort of rules too.

Airbnb isn't banned at my condo, but - why tell people what you're doing?

Then again I have 100+ positive reviews, and I invite my guests personally in/meet them in the parking lot, etc.

The head line should actually read, “Hotels are so bad, airbnb guests put up with lying and sneaking”

Stories like this is exactly why I've created Roamie (www.roamie.co)...for those that want the safety and reliability of hotels, but also might be solo travellers and want to meet others.

Why is this women so scared? She seems kind of an idiot, tbh. Who cares? Just play it cool, no one is going to kick you out.

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