Squatter doesn't sit well with Airbnb host | Hacker News Reader

Squatter doesn't sit well with Airbnb host

sfgate.com

98 pointskqr280 comments

I wrote about this exact situation and the legality's regarding it in 2012.

http://harknesslabs.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-sa...

The gist of it, is that San Francisco and California's rental and rent control laws will supersede any private contract you can write. No way around it. If there was a way around it, you can bet that landlords would simply be including clauses in all new leases they say "rent control not valid here".

What I wrote in the above article amazingly still stands today. You can even find a 1bedroom in Nob Hill for a affordable 2200 a month! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1605304?

There is so much education AirBnB should be doing for their hosts in CA and SF especially.

Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever, so long as they keep paying rent? Yeah, no mention of that when you create a new listing on the site.

Well not exactly. If the AirBNB host is a tenant themselves, then the subtenant relationship will end when the AirBNB host vacates the property.

Not all SF landlords are opposed to their tenants rerenting the units on AirBNB. Some even deliberately rent for minimums of 30 days, to avoid running into zoning regulations against short term stays. AirBNB promised to start collecting hotel taxes in SF, but such taxes wouldn't apply in this case either.

That is not entirely accurate. If you were renting a room in a apartment (you being the master tenant) and you still resided in the apartment in another bedroom AND also showed/informed the new tenant a copy of San Francisco Rules & Regulations 6.15C- then yes, you could evict them.

Otherwise, you cant- and the tenant takes over the defacto 'lease' from you.

Costa Hawkins (which I believe you are referring to) is a landlord/owner option. You as a tenant cannot initiate it and would be shit out of luck. You might be able to get your landlord to initiate the lawsuit for you, but I doubt they want to come out of pocket on legal expenses on your behalf.

This "30-day for just-cause-only eviction protection" isn't, as far as I know, quite right. Given that AirBnB guests don't really sign any contracts (aside from the website boilerplate), you may be correct in this case. But in general, it's very possible to sublet your apartment in SF and have your subtenant sign an agreement to wave their just-cause eviction protection on the grounds the rental is temporary. See this page for more information: http://www.hrcsf.org/subletting_basic.html

Note that the property in question isn't anywhere close to SF. It is in California, so those laws are relevant, but SF's laws aren't.

> Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever, so long as they keep paying rent?

Are the rent terms fixed at the time they occupy? If not, one assumes that the landlord could just up the price repeatedly to force them out.

In SF, yes.

I found a message board thread in which the Airbnb host this article is written about describes the issue and asks for advice.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/136498-evictin...

I'm in real estate and was able to locate the owner's condo. It's part of a HOA. The HOA's CCRs forbids leases for "transient or hotel purposes." The typical meaning of this is leases of under 30 days. The CCRs also require that permitted leases be in writing.

The sfgate article says that the owner was renting this out for $450/week to help cover her mortgage and expenses so it is probable that some of her activity was in violation of the CCRs. It also sounds like she didn't actually have a written lease with the squatter tenant who booked a 44 day reservation and therefore has tenants rights.

I am not a fan of AirBNB but AirBNB doesn't deserve blame for this. This owner thought it would be cool to become a real estate investor and she didn't know what she was doing. Now shes paying the price...

Sometimes, I think the "friendly" community of AirBnB needs to be a bit more business when dealing with squatter scumbags.

Once AirBnB couldn't collect the money, the rental should have been terminated and the host should have immediately call the cops to vacate the property well before the 30 days was up. I'm not sure why they tried to work out something with the renter. Maybe they tried to be "nice" but if some situation starts to smell fishy, handle it quickly.

You don't get it. The squatter has been in the home for 30 days. On that 30th day he has tenants rights and the owner has to go through the process. If the owner knew what she was doing or hired somebody competent to manage her property she wouldn't be in this situation. AirBNB isn't a property manager. If you don't know what you're doing you shouldn't be renting out your home as a business.

the tenants knew what they were doing, they paid for 30 days.

the host should have immediately call the cops to vacate the property

As someone who has been in a similar situation before, the line you will get from any cop is, "This is a civil matter." And the cop is right. Police officers aren't equipped to determine who is right and wrong in a dispute among two parties when one of the parties isn't clearly violating the law. That's what courts are for.

The cops will not simply evict someone because they didn't pay rent. I have seen multiple cases where it took over 6 month of no rent to evict.

I agree with the point everyone is making about the cops not wanting to get involved since it's a civil matter but I stand by my statement that AirBnB is trying to be too nice. They offered those guys a hotel instead for 30 days? You don't negotiate with these types of grifters. AirBnB should do everything within it's legal powers to make life a living hell for them.

"I am not a fan of AirBNB but AirBNB doesn't deserve blame for this. "

Well (I'm not a fan either if that means I use it or have used it - I haven't)

Airbnb knows this situation could exist because statistically it almost certainly has happened to a group of people.

Consequently, Airbnb may very well decide, for business reasons, (so as not to scare off potential landlords) to not mention risks which they are fully aware of. Which someone who is casually using airbnb might not run into on their own for years, if ever.

This is a common business predicament. Say to much and you loose the sale. Say to little and you can get bad publicity. Obviously you have to weigh the pros and the cons.

As far as "hiring a professional" although that is certainly better than winging it generally it's not as if professionals will point out all the things that can go wrong, either. If you buy a rental property (as a newbie) the agent is not going to guarantee that they will get you a tenant obviously. But they are also not going to tell you all the things that can go wrong with a tenant unless you happen to ask. (And this isn't limited to realtors it's just a general business thing).

Its not an agent's job to provide advice about tenant laws. A buyers agent is there to help a buyer find the right property, negotiate a deal and handle the paperwork.

This is a property management issue. If the owner hired a local property manager instead of trying to make money as an absentee landlord she would have known the risks of 30+ day rentals and wouldn't have rented the condo so casually through a place like AirBNB.

I don't think AirBNB should allow apartment rentals because statistically they know that basically all of the hosts are breaking their lease but this is a condo owned by a host, not an apartment. A lot of CCRs have use restrictions that make AirBNB rentals problematic but not all do.

"If the owner hired a local property manager instead of trying to make money as an absentee landlord she would have known the risks of 30+ day rentals and wouldn't have rented the condo so casually through a place like AirBNB."

In "small business" you sometimes end up having to cut corners. The reason is there simply isn't enough profit unless you wing it yourself and learn as you go along. Taking chances.

On a larger scale of course it pays to have a property manager. Otoh if you depend on a property manager to take care of repairs (and unless they have their own dedicated crew) you will end up paying money for things that really you don't need a professional for. (Say a stopped up toilet in a commercial condo). Of course you could also save if the people they use are fair and vetted. All depends, right?

Now of course at scale all of this changes.

Anyway the people on Airbnb are mostly (with some exceptions) looking to make a buck off their homes, condos, whatever.

That said it's simply not something that I would ever get involved in personally but I can see why people do use it (both as landlords and renters).

Here's a funny story you might appreciate. I rented a vacation property that I owned (through a realtor btw - was yearly rental) and the tenant was told to deposit the rental check directly into a bank account that had been setup for this purpose. (Instead of mailing) He sent a text with this question "is it ok to deposit cash or does it have to be a check"? Now of course maybe there might be a reason why he would want to use a check but to me I didn't care as long as the money was deposited. I got a laugh out of that. Sure cash is always good.

Trying to start a business without having even a basic understanding of relevant laws is just stupid.

In "small business" you sometimes end up having to cut corners. The reason is there simply isn't enough profit unless you wing it yourself and learn as you go along. Taking chances.

The owner says she bought a property in Palm Springs because she couldn't afford one in the bay area. Her biggerpockets profile says "Newbie investor, current focus on vacation rental condo in Palm Springs."

Some of her leasing activity probably violated her HOA's CCRs and she didn't research the laws. This isn't cutting a few corners to maximize profit. This is choosing to be 100% ignorant.

The owner is an entirely unsympathetic character. I've been in real estate 20 years. People like this who think they can make money as absentee landlords and are too lazy to understand the business and laws lose their shirts 99.9999% of the time.

This seems to be as much a problem with eviction laws as with Airbnb.

In Ohio, the eviction process isn't exactly landlord friendly, but it doesn't require a lawyer either. And in most cases, deadbeat tenants aren't going to show up at the court date anyhow - then it's trivial to get a ruling in your favor. You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight.

And Airbnb has, by far, returned me the highest margins I've ever gotten, so it's certainly worth the risk of squatters.

> You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight.

And if the tenant trashes the place in the meantime? You're not out your margins, you're out actual damages that need to be repaired.

Disclaimer: Was a landlord. Once.

That's what insurance is for. And the court system so you can get the tenant to pay back damages. Either that, or filter your tenants a little better.

Disclaimer: I know people that got burned by "tenants", and they're resolving it just fine through the legal system.

Disclaimer: I, and others I know, have been burned by tenants as well. We attempted to resolve it through the legal system. If the tenants have no assets, and no income (which they did have at time of lease execution), you have little to no recourse.

A judgement against a stone is useless.

Did your property insurance cover the damage?

I've had damage happen and my insurance, less dedictible, covered the damage from paint spilled on carpeting. (Got all new carpeting as a result).

"If the tenants have no assets, and no income"

Well, a little bit of luck/intuition is required on that one prior to accepting them as tenant. Because, by the time you're trying to get what you're owed from them, it's too late.

Also, another way around that (depending on your local laws) is to have an upfront 2/3 month deposit. That should more than cover any unpaid bills/damage/rent that you would be out. Not only that, but it filters out all the tenants that are unable to steadily pay for rent.

The main thing is that Airbnb offers a lot of people a way to become a landlord while not telegraphing to them the fact they are now in a business with risks and dangers as well as rewards.

Well you can't make people read too much during the sign up or they might abandon the process and ruin the metrics.

In San Antonio, TX I was surprised to find the shotgun-wielding landlady telling me to get out before midnight exactly the day before my rent was due... turns out she wanted to kick out a delinquent tenant in the unit with the same letter but one civic number over, but I can't blame her for taking direct action. Scared the piss out of me though! At least I got a free month out of it.

Probably was an illegal eviction however, one that she could have received criminal charges for.

Maybe (I don't know what TX law looks like) but that's not a lot of comfort once you've been shot.

Probably the case of an illegal eviction. Other illegal evictions include: changing the locks, shutting of the utilities, blasting music outside the apartment at 3am.

I'm baffled at how people rent out houses without doing the research first.

I bet that if you asked to rent their car, they'd go check it out first. Call their insurance company, find out what the legal requirements are, etc.

Yet do the same thing with an item that costs 10, 20, 30 times as much money and people's approach seems to be, hey, free money, woooooo.

Maybe it's just a case of only hearing about the rare fools.

It's because AirBNB makes becoming a landlord point-and-click simple. "It's so popular and easy! It's a big website, it must be legal!"

The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it.

RelayRides? JustShareIt? Getaround?

etc.

> The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it.

https://relayrides.com/

It came along... 14 years ago when Zipcar was founded.

Not remotely similar. Zipcar owns and maintains the cars they rent.

Title (article's own) makes it sound like this is some sort of trend. But unless I missed something, this is just one unfortunate host's struggles with a jerk tenant.

In that case maybe we'll change the title to use the singular instead of the plural.

I like the new title better, thanks.

Perhaps Airbnb should post a warning to hosts allowing tenants to rent more than X days if its going to give those tenants renter's rights in their jurisdiction.

Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever , so long as they continue paying the same rate they did from airbnb ?

I bet you didnt. In order to get them out, you would need to ellis act or do a owner move in eviction- Both of which cost well over 25k and can only be done once for the lifetime of the property.

The historical solution to this (illegal tenant in an illegal short-term sublet doesn't want to move out) would be to have some vowel-suffixed friends encourage them to move out. Which isn't exactly "nice", but at least has the virtue of being nicely economically efficient.

I was thinking something similar, the AirBnb host however doesn't think of themselves as doing anything illegal so they constrain their thinking in that way. I have certainly met people over the years who exploit this in others.

that's true, I guess a lot of underground markets, black markets operate under the hand of physical enforcement or intimidation, I guess the more unregulated a market is, even lead to death. ex. drugs, prostitution etc.

Landlord ends up in jail, and property ends up destroyed. Since the landlord probably doesn't have insurance, or has voided that insurance several different ways, it's an expensive method to achieve nothing. And that's if the tenents decide to leave, because they could just stay.

> some vowel-suffixed friends

Sorry for OT, but I've never seen this phrasing before. I assume from context that you mean the mafia, but why "vowel-suffixed"?

It's a way of saying "Italians" while trying to avoid appearing racist by directly saying it. Many Italian surnames end in a vowel.

It's called an allusion, and it has nothing to do with "avoiding appearing racist".

Good, because it didn't work -- you sounded kinda racist.

Would you have been less offended if he had just said "friends named Guido"?

Looks like just the threat worked in the case of a soldier who went to Afghanistan and returned to find that his renters had become squatters.

http://www.wfla.com/story/25320239/outpouring-of-support-for...

This isn't really Airbnb's problem, though I imagine they could do a better job of showing what lengths of stay would make tenant rights' laws or other legal complications kick in.

So...help me out here. The host met a stranger and rented out the apartment (even after herself seeing warning signs) in such a way that her renter has renter's rights under California law?

I'm relatively young and have never been a landlord: in the pre-Internet days, did landlords not rent to people they didn't know well? Did they not have to comply to certain state laws? If we switched "Airbnb" with "Craigslist" or "San Francisco Chronicle's Classifieds Section"...would this be a story in the SF Chronicle?

Yep, media usually hypes these delinquent tenant stories though they are probably rare. Lot's of "Freeman-on-the-land" stories of squatters refusing to pay rent for 1-3 mos and landlord's can't evict them. Every story they interview some shady property management corp who insists all renter laws must be weakened.

A story the media hasn't done yet is how often traveling sex workers use Airbnb for incall. 2-3 workers will travel to different cities together and then use the apartment to turn tricks. Perfect incall solution instead of using hotels which charge extra for guests or clamp down on visitors. I'm sure there's a small minority of tenants using Airbnb to import narcotics or fraud hardware like ATM skimmers too, can always claim the previous tenant ordered the box full of drugs and you had no knowledge.

Airbnb as an address to get illegal things shipped and dropped off sounds just too easy. So easy to deny responsibility. Even just for using a courier service.

I have very little sympathy for Airbnb landlords: they want to make a quick buck without following the laws to run a real hotel, then they don't get the legal protections of hotels.

When honest people fall victim to scam artists, I do sympathize even if they could have avoided it with better legal knowledge.

Sounds like the guy might be using the host's electricity to do bitcoin mining.

Super scammy. This kind of thing should be criminal.

If the tenant is supposedly blasting the aircon, with the windows open in 114 degree heat ... I'm not sure an alternate explanation is needed. (Not to mention, bitcoin mining requires a lot more than cheap-to-free electricity)

Do hotels have different eviction laws?

yes.

This is why many chains have separate long-term stay places and hotels. Most hotels will not let you stay long enough to be a "tenant".

I remember reading a story in the recent Priceonomics book about a similar tenant conflict in SF. Tl;dr, a 75-yr-old lady was thrown out into the cold, but only after months of hearings and lots of money wasted on lawyers. Why do such laws exist at all in CA? Why not just send out several warnings in advance, explaining whole situation and the available options for tenant?

These two guys are just asking for a good old ass whooping. Throw them out, then let them try and prove that they were renting the place to begin with. Whatever the premises, you could certainly make it be your words against theirs.

AirBnB could just suggest to people to only rent a unit for 29 days, find another AirBnB property for 2-3 days to "break the streak" and the have the person in question return to the unit for another 29-day streak. I would imagine that all you really need to do is break the the contractual relationship into 29-day chunks with a provable different contractual relationship (another AirBnB host) for the interim between sub one month stays.

Could someone explain why he is still considered a tenant even though he pays no rent or utilities at the property? I am curious as to why he can't just be considered a trespasser and removed by police.

After you are allowed to stay in a home more than 30 days you become a "tenant" and are subject to renter protection laws. I'd imagine these short term rental companies will get much stricter about 30+ stays real soon now.

Does this apply even to people I would allow to stay in my home for free? Or does this only kick in when money changes hands?

Yep, even free.

Because he has been there more than 30 days and has already made complaints about the adequacy of the accommodations. I feel sorry for the property owner but she got into the landlord business without doing basic research.

The guest texted back saying he was legally occupying the condo and that loss of electricity would threaten the work he does at home that brings in $1,000 to $7,000 a day.

Oh, this must be the guy all those people are talking about in blog comments :)

Is the complaint about inadequate accommodations enough to withhold rent?

I think what I'm really getting at is, if he is _still_ a tenant without paying rent. When does a tenant become a squatter?

I'm clear on that certain rights kick in at 30d, I am just a little hazy that a right is to stay without paying for it.

I don't know. The complaint looks like a procedural maneuver to me, designed to slow down the eviction process.

This highlights how staff who handle emails or calls needs to be part of the business plan of a b-to-c startup. Or at least an explanation of why it's OK to NOT handle customer contacts.

Why can't she so 3 day pay or quit (plus eviction) and/or give 30 day notice for chronically late payments?

First thought was a meth lab or grow house.

obligatory educational material - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/

That first sentence is so poorly written.

Similar situation with a nanny refusing to leave.

http://time.com/2941176/nightmare-nanny-leaving/

Like any business decision you do need to risk manage it. Extremes like this are rare, which is why it's in the news but you do need to be aware of what you're investing in and the risks involved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com