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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is interested, this looks like the link to the place:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/643721

Another thing to add to the "if you're thinking of doing this" list - don't write a post about it where you and the location can be identified. This is probably against the HOA agreement (short term leases are prohibited).

It also could be a safety issue if you aren't actually living there. Once someone knows the apartment number, someone could see when a particular place isn't going to be occupied and use that to their (ahem) advantage.

Seriously kids - don't do this. You'll probably be breaking a bunch of contracts and a fair number of hotel and zoning laws. Not to mention the insurance and liability issues that aren't even remotely discussed in the post.

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I recently bought a condo in Maui to rent and those places are sent up for this sort of thing. They even call them Condotels. Being designed for short term rentals brings a lot of benefits like resort manages check-ins/outs for you.

Also, there is an echo chamber in the tech community regarding AirBnB as the standard for short term rentals. From my experience, VRBO has been much better and provided significantly more bookings. ymmv and it could be your customer type as a two bedroom condo in Hawaii gets a lot more families and older bookings.

If anyone has any questions about this, my email is in my profile.

But the difference is, you bought something where short-term/vacation rentals are one of the main purposes. Your condo was designed so that it could be used as a short-term rental. You are working within an established business model.

Many dedicated AirBnB locations are supposed to be strictly residential with longer-term leases.

Rather than saying "don't do this", it would probably be better to say "Step 1: make sure it is legal to do this".

As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly legal to do this. My guess is that it's harder to find a profit opportunity, though, because the more profitable use (legal use as a short term hotel) is already priced into the unit.

I suspect that one reason airbnb is so profitable in areas where it is not legal is that the restrictions on short term rentals suppress the sale price of the unit. So you buy a unit that is cheaper precisely because it is illegal to use it as a hotel, and then you profit by using it as a hotel. So in cities with very strict zoning and tenant protection laws (like SF), I guess they're selling the assumption of risk.

Because they can't be purchased as a second home, the down payment is the biggest hurdle in getting a unit (30-35%). The cash flow after that is quite nice if you can find the right property.

Done: It is legal. This is a contract issue and is therefore covered by civil procedure and not criminal code. So, it is "legal". But, you may be sued for breach of contract and be found to have damaged the other party. But, that all has to be argued in civil court and you may win or the other party may be found to have no damages. Finally, be sure to pay your taxes. That actually is a law.

Zoning laws are a legal issue, not a civil one. So are licensing requirements and other hotel codes. The HOA stuff would be a civil matter, but that is only one of the things preventing this sort of action.

> As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly legal to do this.

.. Why the everloving fuck would this be illegal? What sense could it possibly make? -You have some property and you're letting someone use it for a fee.

I get that this actually might be illegal somewhere - I'm just trying to highlight the fact that it would be absolutely fucking insane.

> What sense could it possibly make? -You have some property and you're letting someone use it for a fee

This is the extraordinarily naive libertarian position. Most people would not welcome a brothel as their closest neighbor for example.

Funny that you should mention that. My next door neighbor put herself through nursing school on her back, and by renting her place to others in the same profession when she was at school. They were far quieter and less disruptive than the aging couple on the other side of my place.

If it had been put up for a vote, I probably would have voted 'no', but the reality was not what I would have expected.

This of course is not relevant to the discussion, where someone bought a condo which requires accepting the declaration, bylaws and rules and regulations of the HOA. If those rules, which the buyer accepted, forbid short-term rentals, then there's no excuse for doing it anyway.

>> This is the extraordinarily naive libertarian position. Most people would not welcome a brothel as their closest neighbor for example.

That's different from just renting out your place to some random traveller. Besides, even if renting your place is legal, nothing prevents you from whipping up a contract that places some limits on how rowdy the occupant(s) can get.

So no, there's nothing "naive" about thinking that renting out your property being illegal is fucking insane.

Hotels are regulated for fire safety, food hygiene, etc etc.

You can see how it's useful to protect society to not allow people to run unlicensed hotels?

A lot of people don't want to live next to a revolving door of new arrivals. They enjoy knowing their neighbors, having friends for their kids nearby, and building lasting relationships with the community. They are willing to trade their own right to rent out their house as a short term hotel in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that their neighbors won't do this either. Yes, this does amount to a limit on personal, individual freedom - you can not purchase a house and turn it into a short term rental unit (ie., a hotel) at will anywhere you please.

People have lots of preferences about housing, which is why people tend to make an effort to suss out their housing options. Whether your neighbors are permanent or transient is just another dimension along which your preferences can vary. I don't understand why that preference in particular should be legally codified, whereas practically every other variable gets determined by people voting with their feet and dollars.

The same argument, after all, goes through for long-term renters too, whom a lot of people don't want to live next to. Should we zone all annual leases as well?

Have you ever bought a house? It's exhausting and expensive, and it's not as easy to "vote with your feet" after the neighbor decides to make his new place into a hotel. It's not like changing pharmacists. These protections exist for a reason.

Well actually, speak of the devil, I moved out of my last apartment specifically because my downstairs neighbors, who had lived there for years, were completely intolerable. If I could have waved a magic wand and replaced them with an AirBnB crash pad, I would have done so in an instant. Restrictions on short-term rentals are of little comfort when your long-term neighbors are worse. Then again, the arguments against short-term rentals go through just about as well for long-term rentals, so why not just restrict rental properties altogether? Many homeowners seek to avoid neighborhoods with high rental density, so why not make their jobs easier with a law?

As I said, there are plenty of attributes that make different houses more or less desirable to different people. If the OP had converted their apartment into a sarin gas factory or a practice pad for MBV, it might be a little more understandable why regulation would be efficient. As it stands, having a short-term rental next door strikes me as an extremely vague sort of source of disutility: all you can say with certainty is that you won't have long-term neighbors. Which many people are fine with in the first place. If people have varying preferences about living next to short-term rentals (either because they view them as a source of variety in se or just don't mind that much either way, as I do) then it should be more efficient to let people figure it out for themselves. People already self-assort into spatially resolved communities according to many other attributes (e.g. school quality, proximity to nightlife, population density; all attributes which reasonable people can value differently) so it seems strange to pick 'proximity to a short-term rental' as the one intangible neighborhood-character issue to treat like 'proximity to a meth lab'.

So let me just state again: I wouldn't mind living next to a short-term rental. In fact, if they're as widely despised as you suggest, I'd mind it even less because the housing market would be effectively subsidizing my tolerance.

What's the name of the condos if you don't mind me asking? I'm looking for something similar.

Are there hotel and zoning laws in unincorporated communities in Nevada?

Probably. It's still in the state of Nevada and in a county. An "unincorporated" town isn't lawless.

Right but from a quick scan of https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-651.html (admittedly very quick) it appears all he has to do is post a rate card for his maximum daily rate and not discriminate against guests.

From a quick scan of what I think is likely the HOA rules (http://valenciahoa.com/admin/uploads/r&r.pdf), you can't have sub-30 day leases. I'm not sure this is the right HOA, but from the Google Street View, the logos are the same.

Hy HOA (not in Nevada) has this exact same clause, and when I read about this, I wondered what his HOA would say. If I were an HOA, I'd be pretty concerned about AirBNB.

If I worked for the HOA and I saw this I would try to figure out if anyone knows I saw it. If not, I would ignore it. It's technically against the rules but OP seems to be doing a good job of managing it, and I doubt I could apply a higher standard to the rest of the units. I'd wait for a resident to bring the issue to me, which would hopefully never happen.

If I managed a ritzier condo complex I'd probably do something about it immediately rather than take a wait and see approach.

It's probably an insurance coverage issue, so ignoring it wouldn't be a good idea. Especially if the insurance company feels that you should have known about it.

Wait, why does my insurance company care about my HOA rules?

You've clearly got a bit of a nanny mentality about this. Maybe that's unfair.. But you have strongly criticized this and posted rebuttals to anybody disagreeing with you. All on the grounds of "this is probably bad, don't make your HOA [or govt, or insurance company]" mad at you.

I have to confess I feel a bit of... revulsion... in your advocacy of docile compliance. It must be the rebellious streak in me. But it's something I bet others here can relate to. I'm more of a "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" type of guy.

All that said, I won't be rushing out to buy a condo to rent on AirBnB. But I also would never sit on HN and try to argue against it because of HOA.

Though I also think you're totally within your rights, to be clear.

I think he meant the HOA's insurance (including liability) for the common areas of the complex. If the HOA's insurance found out that an HOA board member or property employee knew about a residency violation, they might have grounds to cancel the policy, which would just end up costing the HOA money, which would raise the monthly dues of all owners.

Your (as the hypothetical owner of an apartment unit) insurance cares about whether you are occupying the unit as you said you would. I'm sure you can purchase a policy for primary residence, long-term leasing, and short-term leasing. If you're violating your policy, it could be declared void at any time, in particular if you ever make a claim.

If I were a good insurance agent, hypothetically, I also wouldn't write an insurance policy for short-term leasing in a property where I suspected such use wasn't allowed. It would probably be in my best interest to get proof from the potential insuree that such use was permitted.

As for that rebellious streak, we're talking about an investment here, and ways that people might be breaking voluntarily signed contracts in order to make a few extra dollars (the real-estate agent should offer the HOA terms to any potential seller, and then you sign the HOA contract when you purchase the apartment). Also, I prefer disruptions to business models, not disruptions to living arrangement. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, there is no upside to the other residents, it's all a nuisance to them.

As someone else said: The HOA representative should care about the HOA's insurance. If there's insurance covering e.g. common areas, it is problematic if the insurance does not cover short term lets and units are used for short term lets, because the expectations of damage from places e.g. rented out as party pads would be far higher than otherwise.

But this also means your insurance company should care, as depending on your policy, if your insurance company would be on the hook for damages not covered by the HOA insurance, it is very much in their interest to ensure that you are not doing anything in violation of HOA rules that might affect the HOA insurance cover.

So ask forgiveness all you want, but realise that your insurance may not be worth the paper it is written on if you break contracts that might affect insurance cover. And that's potentially a very high cost to pay for a "rebellious streak".

> You've clearly got a bit of a nanny mentality about this.

How is espousing that the right to swing a fist ends at another's nose "nanny mentality"? An apartment is in a shared property structure, with rules contracted into voluntarily, and in close proximity to the property of others. Insurance is offered as a contractual arrangement. No-one is forcing you to buy an apartment, but if you do so on the basis of a legal agreement around how you will use it with the co-owners of the building, breaching it justifiably attracts sanctions.

Former HOA president here (for a 77 unit building in downtown San Diego).

Short-term vacation rentals are forbidden here and they are absolutely shut down when found out. You can't 'manage' every single guest that comes thru - most will be respectful, but it won't take long before a group of college students use it as as a party pad. I lived next to one used for that purpose, and while I was on the board we had 4 others we fined to the point where it wasn't worth their while.

Did you ever consider changing the rules to allow short-term rentals?

You might want to reread my comment more carefully. I was actively stopping it in my building.

If anything we were trying to push an ammendment to make tenancy a 6 month lease minimum.

HOA appears to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association .

Why probably? Even some incorporated areas don't have zoning laws. For example, Houston.

That's right, Houston doesn't have any zoning laws.

Yes it does. Houston has tons of zoing laws. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/30/the_myth_of_z...

I was wondering about the HOA restrictions too. Our condo in San Francisco that we live in came with CC&R's that limit how we can rent the unit out. It's permissible only for periods over 30 days and you're not allowed to offer typical hotel services like changing sheets, towels, etc.

I'm curious if the author looked into this.

I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm surprised this is the top comment on "hacker" news.

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