Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

This stuff is incredibly common in short term rental market. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel on landlord scruples.

There was a recent fire in a summer vacation town popular with NYers. The town requires summer short term rental landlords to get a permit & inspection. The landlord did not get one. The landlord also had sketchy kitchen wiring that was probably some sort of DIY and not up to code. The landlord had removed batteries and hardwiring from 3 smoke detectors. These are the kind of things the inspector would have found immediately.

A family visiting from out of state lost 2 of their 3 children in this fire.

Apps like AirBnB create the facade of officialness on what are instead very sketchy markets. Family probably thought they were doing the right thing going through an app and the landlord must be verified and more "legit". Being from out of state they wouldn't know the intricacies of local town permit&inspection requirements and how to check if the landlord has one, etc.

Likewise in my condo in NYC, we had one particular owner who was trying to use their unit as an Airbnb. Regardless of the local laws which were tightening up at the time, our condo expressly forbid short term rentals, and had language around minimum length of stay and lease approval requirements. It only stopped when we started fining them $1000 per incident.

Stuff like this matters because you buy a condo to live in it and don't expect the unit on the other side of your bedroom wall to essentially be a hotel room with new neighbors every 3 days, staying up all hours (vacation, yay), dragging suitcases in&out at odd hours multiple times per week.. forever.

The building itself takes on a lot more wear & tear, and they put a burden on staff as they think the building porter&doorman are there for them like a hotel concierge and front desk.

I'm on the board of the Norwegian equivalent of a condo association, and I wish we could fine an owner every time we got complaints from other residents! Unfortunately the laws still have loopholes that make it very hard for us to hold him accountable as long as he claims to actually be living there. --In Norway you have to have a primary residence registered, and you're allowed to rent out spare rooms in your primary residence, even on short-term sites. We'd basically have to spend a lot of money to have a 3rd party come knocking on the door every night for several months to prove whether or not he's really living there so that we can take proper action.

Why does it have to be a third party? Can't it just be someone on the board who lives in the building?

Couldn't you just throw some security cams up at the entrances and just track coming and going and total stay time? You'd only have to review footage after a reasonable suspicion.

That is horrible. Let's just call it what it is: Airbnb are professional liars who use disgusting legal tactics like forced arbitration to sweep things under the carpet--all to make quarterly numbers.

> our condo expressly forbid short term rentals, and had language around minimum length of stay and lease approval requirements. It only stopped when we started fining them $1000 per incident.

At least this part sounds like the system working correctly?

A system, but not AirBNBs system.

It's unreasonable to expect AirBNB to enforce your HOA rules. That's a private contract between you and your neighbors.

Basically even if it's not expressly forbidden it's an obvious misuse in pretty much any multi family dwelling. If your lease doesn't forbid you from keeping cows indoors it doesn't mean your not an asshole for keeping cows in your apartment.

As long as it's not damaging anything, why should I care about someone having cows?

Damage is obviously a problem and not the issue at hand.

"As long as it's not damaging anything, why should I care about someone having cows?"

Noise, smells, sanitation, etc

If your floor isn't being damaged by cow, it's probably not very loud, is it?

Same for whether it's sanitary enough to not be causing any damage.

And realistically I'm picturing roughly one cow would fit.

It's reasonable for AirBnB to verify that their hosts are in compliance with the law.

I am a landlord: I let a single house, to a family. New regulations came in on 1st September, requiring the property to be registered. I already had a valid gas safety certificate, expiring in 2 months, and an electrical safety certificate good for two more years. Registration also required an energy performance certificate, which I had.

But collecting all these documents, along with the precise dimensions of each room in the house, including the kitchen and bathroom, has been a terrible hassle.

I'm a good landlord; I don't mess with the rent mid-term, I fix things quickly, aand I don't bother my tenants. They are good tenants; they are German, and Germans know how rental is supposed to work.

I live in a flat, and my neighbour is an AirBnB, whose owner lives in Bavaria, and whose "host" lives in another town. It seems to be a nice clean apartment; but it's illegal, because local regs ban holiday lets in homes that are suitable for residential use. AirBnB don't give a shit. I notified the local authority, and they're trying to close it down. The "hosts" have appealed, so this saga has been going on for a year.

The problems, for me, are that I share the front-door of the block with complete strangers (where my post is delivered); the guests don't understand UK recycling rules, and dump mixed waste in my recycling bin (resulting in non-collection); and sometimes they have noisy parties. More generally, most of my neighbours seem to be investment properties; there are no kids around here, and I only know a handful of neighbours. AirBnB has sucked the life out of this neighbourhood.

> local regs ban holiday lets in homes that are suitable for residential use.

Is that the same as banning holiday lets in homes entirely? What does a house or proper apartment that's not suitable for residential use look like?

This is a University town. It's stuffed with student accomodation, a.k.a. "homes in multiple occupation".

Yes, I think it's roughly like what you said: the Council doesn't want holiday homes in this town. Housing is expensive here, because in addition to two universites, it has a cluster of big hospitals. But we still need inexpensive housing for the multitude of low-paid wokers those institutions require.

Tourists are a boon for some places, but this town would work better with less tourists (few of the tourists buy anything, and most of them don't stay overnight anyway - they just want a selfie in front of an old building).

[Edit] Not exactly; an old-fashioned couch-surfing isn't ruled out. Nor is am apartment let for less than 90 days a year. But anything that could be an attempt to get around student-housing regulations is probably banned, because that's heavily regulated.

HOA rules aren't law.

But it's also unreasonable to expect AirBNB to keep up with the uncountable legal jurisdictions of the world. Every locality - down to the city block - could have different rules.

If your neighbor is violating the law, that's your neighbor's fault. If you want to do something about it, you have the power.

Why is it that when a broker shows an apartment they can be expected & liable for showing illegal units/terms/etc, but when Big Tech apps which replace their jobs at scale do it.. "it's hard" so "they shouldn't be expected to"?

It really isn't that hard, and they don't even try because it would reduce their revenue. We can argue if they need to enforce block by block HOA & condos/coops rules.. but they aren't even trying at more macro levels like state/town laws.

I live part of the year in a large summer town with ~100k residents. It has clear, well known rental laws that have been on the books longer than AirBnB existed. For example the minimum lease term is 2 weeks. Yet, of course, if I go to AirBnB and search in town, there are 100 homes being offered by the day. Meanwhile if I go to any of the brokerages to be shown rentals, they only offer month/summer/year length rentals.. because its the law.

Taking it a step further, even large jurisdictions like NYC with 8M people have 1000s of AirBnB listings that are not following even the basic parameters of local law.

"New York City: Rentals under 30 days are prohibited unless the host is present on the property."

OK, great, well why are there daily/weekly AirBnB rentals of "entire apartments" all around NYC with host descriptions like:

During your stay William is available via text or phone if you have any questions about the space. I will try my best to preempt any questions by leaving detailed instructions about the operation of the space.

During your stay I’m available everyday from 9 am until 12am to answer questions and help with anything you might need if I don’t reply fast, feel free to call me

During your stay Will have an open line of communication and on-site support Response rate: 100% Response time: within a few hours

No I think it is. A broker leasing a unit on an owners behalf would immediately confirm the lease is in compliance.

Why does a technology platform get to automate & scale in a less compliant manner?

Yeah, I'm sure the code is kind of hard to write, that doesn't mean you can violate laws & contracts, because the code is challenging.

We have so many examples of these platforms disrupting locals & human jobs to automate & scale globally, while ignoring laws, regulations, etc. Just because its easier to make money assisting illegality doesn't mean it should be legal to do so.

Look at all the work Banks have to do on AML/KYC/etc to make sure organized crime, narcotics, terrorism and sanctioned nationals money does not get to use the USD financial system. It's not perfect of course. And it's hard for sure, theres entire organizations at every banks with 100s or 1000s of employees responsible. Why does Silicon Valley always get a free pass?

I'm not sure that's true... 99% of dwellings in, say, NYC are Condos, Coops or Rentals - and all buildings have management agents (or acting as your own as an individual for a building) on file with the NYC Department of Buildings.

Requiring a letter explicitly allowing a listing from the managing agent on record prior to publishing the listing wouldn't be particularly onerous. Of course their listings would drop dramatically since most aren't by the book, but feature not a bug?

Agreed. Exactly my point.

These tech platform marketplaces are willing to do lots of AI/ML hocus-pocus & throw bodies at things like targeted ads, onboarding new suppliers (drivers/landlords), whatever helps their KPIs, etc.. but not on following the law/rules. That is because it would reduce sales, knowing that they are implicitly allowing illegalities on their market places.

The problem is all of these platforms that basically automate & scale illegality.

The platforms act like its not their responsibility to verify compliance and hide behind terms of use & arbitration. Consumers assume that everything is on the up&up because they are going through big public company intermediary.

For example, as sketchy as real estate brokers are (very) .. they generally aren't going to put you into a literally illegal apartment. There is personable responsibility and concern about liability.

Why is it that all these SV firms can use amazing AI/ML to target ads, and sell us stuff but its impossible to use similar for following laws. Look at Ubers efforts to circumvent local regulators, its the same flavor.

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