300K Damage from Airbnb Guest | Hacker News Reader

300K Damage from Airbnb Guest

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41 pointswiredfool77 comments

I think fully legit letting is a massive risk. People can be reckless and ultimately there is very little you can recover from an unreasonable, reckless person.

And AirBNB, well it's legal but it's certainly leaving hosts in some kind of grey area. I suppose one reason why hotels are expensive is they have to be prepared for such very cases. But Airbnb hosts probably don't think about that too often.

A lot of the "sharing economy" (a term that fell out of use a bit it seems) is about pushing the risks and external costs onto individuals, who are not well placed to deal with them, who can't price these risks properly and aren't well placed to deal with then if they do occur. But none of that interferes with the upfront platform commission so all is hunky dory.

They're still trying to do things at global scale when it's sadly limited to YC batch potentials to find a room in the Bay Area c. 2011 because there is a huge difference between mostly college-educated, investable individuals with socio-economic accountability for a smaller audience and the general public with only superficial, limited economic accountability.

I wish this wasn't the case, but the problem is the liabilities introduced in assuming everyone is cool and going to do The Right Thing™. Amongst a small cadre of cool people, it looks workable and it works for a while.

I believe it was called the "sharing economy" because advertisers spent several decades convincing people that cutting out intermediaries was in their best interest.

All I can say is that the reason this person hasn't received a response from Airbnb is because it is extremely difficult to prove that this happened and that this was the doing of the guest.

I get that this person is frustrated but throughout the entire essay that they wrote I just couldn't help but feel like they don't really have any proof.

Not only that, this person keeps using language like:

> Thanks for reaching out. I've filled out the information you requested (which should already be in your system at least 146 times), and I look forward to some real support -- though I won't hold my breath as I've played this game with you and lost many times.

You're not going to hold your breath on a $300k loss?

What I am trying to say is that this person should be looking into legal assistance and not hoping that Airbnb is going to take this seriously over social media. That kind of damage and what it amounts to isn't something you solve by posting pictures and being frustrated.

Does it really matter? So i have to install cameras in the bathroom to prove the guest was a reckless idiot? I thought this was the whole point of this protection that i as a host don't have to worry what happens if the guest turns out to be a maniac.

OTOH, insurance frauds exist.

Investigation take time.

Fraudulently misrepresenting the level of insurance cover also exists, and it isn't the first time Airbnb's supposed "insurance" left the homeowner holding the bag.

(not that Airbnb is alone in this, it's very common in the industry: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4404268)

> and not hoping that Airbnb is going to take this seriously over social media

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) social media is often faster than a lawyer:

https://twitter.com/AirbnbHelp/status/1715055098420748295

> An update Thursday Oct 19th 7pm:

> - no response from anyone at Airbnb

> - no email or call from Airbnb

https://twitter.com/ErikaCoaches/status/1715187405236703572

...except they already offered her $31k previously, and the case was ongoing for 6 months... https://twitter.com/ErikaCoaches/status/1715054055150555615

I've complained about companies on Twitter before, and it's very common to receive an immediate outreach tweet like this, followed by basically being funnelled in to the same non-functional support experience that you've already tried to go through a number of times.

I agree that the initial outreach is quick, but I don't think social media actually changes the timeline on getting things resolved.

If the social media damage gets estimated at more than 300k (which is possible, at airbnb's size), they may do just that.

Legal litigation is unlikely to bring a quick payout or anything at all and airbnb lawyers would probably be able to tire the host and get her to quit or settle for little.

Some of the social media damage is already done, so the question is whether acting fast now would mitigate an additional 330k in reputation costs.

That's not quite the right way to analyze it, because AirBnB's response (or lack of one) will be part of the story that gets amplified.

Accurate. It's manipulative language indicative of deception or half truth.

So, visitor flushed baby wipes down the toilet, toilet overflowed, 300K damage. Talk about small actions having large consequences!

Tangential to this case, I do wonder about the imbalance in insurance. I had a friend who had a small prang into another car only to realise with horror it was a Maserati. The owner was actually really OK about it but it made me think there is something at root quite unfair about people who expect to be able to parade about with immense luxuries and expect others to carry the can if they get damaged. I mean, sure, it's your fault but it's a very disproportionate punishment. Or do I misunderstand the insurance industry?

I couldn't find the toilet in a 5 star hotel, and threw up in the sink. I forgot to turn the water off and went back to sleep. I woke up to pounding on the door and stepped out of bed into several inches of water. The sink overflow didn't work, and the water went down floors like a Christmas tree, into their offices in the basement where it destroyed computers.

Yes, even though the overflow didn't work, it was still my fault. Thankfully, I had general liability insurance on my homeowners insurance.

> Talk about small actions having large consequences!

All small actions have large consequences, you just may not be around to see them.

There’s a reasonable chance that you’ll strike a building or multiple newish cars in a collision for which you’re liable.

I carry quite high liability limits, despite being anti-insurance for all small matters. That supplemental property damage liability coverage costs less than $350/yr.

If I damage your property in a collision that’s my fault, I want to make you whole, regardless of whether you were in a 1982 Chevette or a 2023 Ferrari.

I do get that, but it seems like an inversion somehow. MY desire for expensive goods puts YOU at greater risk. It is however true in real terms you get a lot of extra cover for comparatively little.

> If I damage your property in a collision that’s my fault, I want to make you whole, regardless of whether you were in a 1982 Chevette or a 2023 Ferrari.

Want is fine, but if said 2023 Ferrari is ferrying the Mona Lisa in its trunk, would you really feel like your fault is worth a billion dollars?

There's a certain amount of responsibility for placing a very expensive asset in a scenario where accidents regularly occur; if you drive a supercar, you should probably hold insurance that'll cover excess damage over the typical policy limits for someone who might hit you.

I assume most people driving >$100K cars on public roads do carry uninsured/underinsured insurance. If they don't, I agree, that's on them, but the legal system still (correctly) assigns liability to the at-fault driver in most states and the not-at-fault insurance coverage is a cashflow/coverage insurance who then turns around and gets a judgement against the at-fault driver, which may or may not ever be paid.

I guess the "Why should i let some strangers sleep over in my apartment?" startup hits its limits the more you try to act as an unsupervised hotel.

Having tenants in general have made me sympathize with landlords... a little.

For every well adjusted tenants you'll get 2 bad ones and it's usually even worse if you rent it furnished, since people just starts to magically break your stuff, but their own stuff is kept in pristine condition.

If the world wasn't full of landlords, people wouldn't need to use your stuff.

Who is paying the up front cost to build and furnish a residential property in a world without landlords? Renters are renters precisely because they don't have the money for that.

A mortgage. The cost of ownership only exceeds the cost of renting because ownership costs have been driven up by profit making: historically (and still today in some countries) it was cheaper to buy a home than it was to rent. If landlords were restricted from buying homes then the costs of ownership would become affordable for the majority of people who rent. A Hacker News comment isn't the place to propose radical policy change but just for fun, consider a world in which the only way to become a landlord was by building property specifically to rent it out. The majority of rental properties were previously owner-occupier, landlords have decimated the amount of property available for owner-occupiers which has driven up costs (pushing more and more people into renting).

How do ownership costs get driven up by profit-making? That doesn't make much sense to me. Prices are driven by demand, which in turn increase the value of a property if supply doesn't rise to match. This sounds more like a problem of NIMBYism and such than a problem of "landlords exist".

> historically (and still today in some countries) it was cheaper to buy a home than it was to rent

This isn't broadly true. Historically, renting has existed for thousands of years. That wouldn't make any sense if owning was (until recently) always a more desirable prospect than renting.

It works the other way as well to dampen demand for investment properties.

> How do ownership costs get driven up by profit-making?

The cost of owning a home for the average person is primarily reflected in the amount they pay for their mortgage. The cost of a mortgage is based on the value of the property as mortgages are secured against the property. The value of a property is determined by demand which is driven up when the market is filled with players who have easy access to capital to turn properties into profit-generating tools.

> Historically, renting has existed for thousands of years. That wouldn't make any sense if owning was (until recently) always a more desirable prospect than renting.

Renting is a very useful tool that many people (including myself) value highly: I rent out of choice. However, renting as a necessity (because it is the only option to live) is the position most renters find themselves in. If you poll the people in your life who are earning an average income you'll find most would much prefer to own their home because it provides much more security and it's typically more cost effective over the long term.

If there's 10 families and 10 houses for sale, each family can own their own home. The most desirable houses will cost more but at the end of the day, every family will own their home at a price dictated by the amount that they can afford.

If there's 10 families and 10 houses but only 5 are for sale with the other 5 owned by a landlord, the price of the houses for sale is pushed up not just based on desirability but also based on necessity, up to the price that 5 of the families cannot afford. At that point, the remaining 5 families need somewhere to live and so they are forced to rent from the landlord who can set their own price. Everyone (including those who were lucky enough to buy their homes) is paying more all because a landlord is involved.

Home ownership isn't the perfect option and so landlords provide some value, however, that value could still be realised without interfering with the ownership market. Most property is built to be occupied by the owner, it's only later that it gets taken out of the ownership pool by landlords with access to capital. Landlords purchasing owner-occupied property are much like cats let outside: they kill everything around them.

Some people go for a furious charge or switch their brains into moronic mode once they start dealing with someone else property, then they switch back when deal with their own property again. It's a phenomenon of human nature.

The profits are discreet, the losses call for worldwide attention.

It's crazy how much damage can be caused by the failure of a $10 part, the toilet flapper valve. An apartment on the 7th floor of my building had a flood once and it went right down to the ground floor, causing damage to half a dozen other units.

> They also damaged the valve that manages water flow from the tank to the bowl.

This seems rather dubious. I don't really see how an idiot tenant could damage the flapper valve through being aggressively clueless. On the other hand, how long was it since the OP replaced the flapper valve? They are supposed to be replaced every few years. It seems more likely that the problem was a combination of the tenant being an idiot (flushing baby wipes) and poor landlord maintenance of the property.

Yes, How would that be damaged?

Also, pro-tip, add water leak detectors if you're renting (or if you sometimes take holidays). It's cheap but it can save a lot of money.

>how I ended up pregnant and homeless and in over $300,000 of debt after Airbnb guests flooded my home

I don't get the pregnant part, like how is it related to the guests clogging the toilet

Edit: seems like just bad wording

Is landlord insurance not a legal requirement for letting in San Francisco? Especially if, as described, she was a regular, long term letting landlord before Airbnb, she should have it.

I would have assume she had it before. Maybe they dropped it thinking Airbnb would actually cover things? I am assuming a landlord type policy would also cover Airbnb but maybe they exclude it?

I would never use Airbnb without it though.

So it's a women who had enough money to buy in SF but still wanted to profit through renting (basically to make other peoples pay for her building in the long term). Since this wasn't enough she decided to rent short term on AirBnB (more money, more) largely ignoring the risk and work/maintenance it would require. Unsurprisingly a massive problem happened and now it will require quite a bit of work on top of being a massive hassle and pretty large expense in the end. It's probably less than she pretend (especially if you compare it to the value of the building in the first place) and there are a lot of details that do not add up but it doesn't even matter.

Clearly she is part of the problem, in fact I would argue she created it through negligence. She should have done a verification (as well as cleaning ?) right after the renters left, especially if they suspiciously left early. Trying to make the most profit with the least effort is what got you there. Not bad luck, and not even those specific renters ; it would have happened eventually.

The way she spins everything to make her look good makes me want to vomit. Now she is creating outrage to farm sympathy from touchy-feely peoples even though she is objectively responsible for at least half of the problem.

I know someone very similar who had some very similar "problems" through renting, some of them I had to fix. And every single time it got pretty clear that the problems were a long time coming and very much deserved in the end ! Something bad was bound to happen to this women at some point. She has probably has been flirting with the limit for a very long time and now it's time to pay. Karma is a b....

A clog is a clog. Even flushing twice wouldn't cause this. It would overflow, but at least it would stop. The real problem here is the broken valve which allowed the water to keep running.

Combine that with the clog and you have a literal shit-storm (or drizzle).

How does the valve get broken? Is it one of those shitty thin plastic ones?

Is the toilet one of those California water saver ones? I lived in a complex in CA where they replaced all the toilets with those, even though we all paid our own water bill. Horrible. I've never had to unclog a toilet before this toilet, and I've never had to since I moved out there. But that toilet just didn't have the umph to flush away a healthy fiber-heating adult's waste.

Also, it's a business venture, so being pregnant really isn't relevant here.

It is obviously a sad story, but kind of a little bit too dramatic:

1. 300k damage? I understand this is SF. My wife had one of those accidents, when her townhouse flooded because of the broken pipe in the attic. Insurance paid only 10k, and the final cost was about 30k. They had to replace all drywalls from the floor up to waist.

2. I am sorry, I am not a native English speaker. But this person is not homeless. I mean, come on.

3. This person does not have debt of 300k. Sure, the house might have lost the value. But if they were renting the house, I assume they should have an insurance. If they only hoped for the airbnb insurance, this is a different case.

Anyway, nicely written story for the attention. I am deeply sorry for that. Unfortunately there are always will be bad tenants. This is why I hate being landlord. Tried once to have a rental property, did not like to deal with all of that.

I can only see the first post. Is there supposed to be a threaded view? Cliffhanger indeed.

https://nitter.net/ErikaCoaches/status/1715053934585229806

Twitter changes this relatively recently, you can't see tweet replies if you're not logged in.

1) File a claim against your homeowners/landlords policy. Plumbing flooding is a common loss.

2) Let them argue with each other.

3) If things go sideways hire an attorney these sums are clearly high enough for that.

Exactly, flooding is a common loss especially with homes that have their laundry room on the top floor. The insurance usually pays for everything including having you stay at a hotel if required.

I am confused. Isn't something like this covered in your home owner insurance? I mean yes they would not pay for your "Lost revenue" but everything else including a hotel for you to stay while the house is being fixed is payed by the insurance.

Landlord property insurance policies do actually cover loss of rents - maybe the OP’s policy doesn’t have a landlord endorsement

Yes every homeowner at this point would be confused how this is not just a straight up accidental water damage claim. She has a mortgage so insurance is a must.

This story sounds fishy.

I have ordinary homeowners insurance that will cover me if I’m an idiot in my own house that I live in, or if a casual guest is an idiot.

That same insurance should tell me to pound sand if I’m renting the property out to paying lessees and one of them damages my property.

This was a multi unit property. No way the lender/mortgage company would allow a policy that didn’t cover rental use.

There might not be a lender/mortgage. "I used my life savings to buy the building."

Policies can cover long-term rental but forbid/exempt riskier AirBnB-style short-term ones.

She talks about expecting AirBnB to cover her mortgage payment in one of the tweets, so there probably is a mortgage.

It's less clear that this is legally a multi-unit building (as opposed to multiple single-units). If I own half a duplex, a third of a triplex, or a townhouse, I can insure the unit I live in on a residential policy. Surely the owner of a townhouse/rowhouse doesn't need to carry insurance on their neighboring unit.

Home owner insurance may not pay out if it's a regular "I live here" policy but actually you've been renting it out.

Yeah there’s something wrong with this story. It’s not at all clear that a clogged toilet automatically results in hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability.

How long did the water flow through the house before being detected? Was anything done to mitigate it, and so on. Either way why isn’t the claims adjuster handling this.

This sort of thing is exactly what insurance companies and attorneys are for. Not sure why this lady thinks social media should have anything to do with this.

Most insurance is invalidated by operating outside of the very narrow boundaries. For example, car insurance is often invalidated by driving for uber. If you're generating revenue from your property (home, car) then you need specialist insurance which is much more expensive for this very reason. Presumably the author of this story chose to believe the most convenient version of reality: that Airbnb's "AirCover" was a suitable replacement for landlord's insurance -- but it is not reality, oops.

why not reach out to your business insurance provider and get them to argue with airbnb?

Airbnb probably won't do much until a lawyer is involved. Whether the liability is with Airbnb or the guest I'm not sure. But I doubt either would be willing to pay without a court order, or negotiated settlement process.

Assuming the story is entirely true, I am honestly impressed that some people who have enough money to rent what is clearly not a cheap place are still stupid enough not to know about or think about the shutoff valve on a toilet.

I would have assumed the opposite. Can’t tell you how many rich people I know who can’t change a tire, or for that matter even own a modest toolbox stocked with generic tools. Plumbing, shewie. Talk about a bridge too far!

It sounds like by the time she knew about the problem, it was too late; the top floor was already fully flooded.

No I mean the guests who left the apartment with a toilet that was overflowing.

So she doesn’t have homeowners insurance that covers accidental water damage?

For a different unit rented out on AirBnB? Probably not. You’d need a separate policy for that, and they may be saying AirBnB is the primary insurance in this case.

This seems squarely in “get a lawyer ASAP” territory.

That’s not correct. I’m a landlord of a rental duplex and homeowners insurance policy is a valid policy for the entire building. The Mortgage company does not allow a policy that doesnt adequately cover loss.

The point is this: rental property coverage is a solved problem. It is neither new nor novel problem. Water damage claims on rental properties are dealt with in the tune of hundreds of cases per month in this country if not more. Why is her’s so special?

The thread says "I used my life savings to buy the building"; a mortgage company may not be involved at all.

I would presume your insurer is aware you let out part of your building, and that the premiums account for this fact. (Same scenario with Uber; folks who tell their insurer get a big bump in premiums, but folks who don't get claims denied when the insurer finds out they were driving commercially.)

I don't get the sense this poster told her insurer she was doing short-term rentals. The letting of the second unit seems to be temporary ("We hoped to have the upper unit available for our families to stay and help with the newborn"); it'd be entirely unsurprising if they decided not to clue the insurer in for the couple months of renting it.

> a mortgage company may not be involved at all

You don’t need a mortgage/lender to carry insurance

Sure, but if you don't have a mortgage/lender, there's no one to require you to carry insurance as a loan condition.

Yes, it’s defined as self-insure

Anyway it sounds like the landlord did have insurance- they mention their rates going up, I guess it didn’t cover all of the damage

So moronic guest + paper walls home: 300k in damages

Cool

But it only goes to show how "AirBnB is a great investment" is far from the truth. No wonder sometimes it seems only the scammers remain

> I submitted an estimate for the drying out of the house (just the drying, not rebuilding). It was $130,000.

What does drying a house entail?

Lots of industrial-grade dehumidifiers running for weeks.

Where is the actual story? It just looks like a tweet with no information

It’s a long thread of many tweets.

It's a thread, but twitter is broken nowadays and only shows threads when you're logged in.

https://nitter.net/ErikaCoaches/status/1715053934585229806

Good. We need people using Airbnb to go out of business.

Care to elaborate?

This happens with regular tenants and hotels as well, do you want them to also go out of business?

Landlords and hotels aren't causing major cities to become all but uninhabitable for the local population.

You should look up "buy to let" and take a look at UK rent prices, but if you happen to be in Eastern Europe let me know, I will show you around what owners do with their property.

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