> I don't see who's harmed as long as guests behave responsibly, which should be ensured by the reputation system.
I agree, but I have a feeling that it won't play out that way in practice.
I would have agreed with you up until about 2 years ago. I've been a home owner for a good 10 years now, we moved a couple of years ago into a new neighbor hood.
Most of hte homes are very nice and well kept up, but the ones that are the most in need of repair are the rentals. And subsequently the houses beside them take a hit in property value.
We know most of the renters and they are nice hard working people who do the upkeep( cut grass, weed flower beds, etc), but the large repair items are always left undone.
the painting, shingling, gutter cleaning, etc. And it makes sense for both parties not to do it. The renters don't care and the home owners don't care about their property values until they sell.
Sadly though having renters in a neighborhood brings down property values. I'm pretty certain that having a high concentration of AirBnB renters would bring down values even more.
My wife's uncle had a renter for a house in the woods. The renter let her dogs urinate freely in the house. My wife's uncle has totally resurfaced the floor and still can't get the smell out. He'll have to rip out all the drywall because the urine has wicked into it from the floor boards.
Now obviously this is an extreme example, but stories like this aren't totally unheard of. If you know several people who rent out properties regularly, chances are that they have a couple of horror stories between them.
Presumably your wife's uncle did everything right (credit and background checks) and still got burned. Without being snarky, he might well have had more luck with AirBnB.
The point isn't that AirBnB is better or worse for finding a renter than Craigslist or an ad in the local paper. The point is that renters create more risk than owners, and short-term renters create more risk than long-term renters.
If you own a house in the middle of the woods, you bear all the risk for the quality of your renter. If you live in a condo building, the other tenants are exposed to that risk. In the former case, I can totally control the level of risk I'm exposed to based on my choices of who I host. In the latter case, if I'm a fellow tenant, I have no control over that risk. The AirBnB host in my building might only choose tenants with 100+ reviews, or they may choose tenants with no reviews.
Your argument is that you wouldn't want to live in a building where the tenants hadn't undergone background checks and credit checks, and that this increases risk. My argument is that they obviously don't do much to protect the host anyway, if plenty of landlords have horror stories. I've talked to every AirBnB host I've stayed with (and I've stayed with a few) about this and not one had anything negative at all to say about their guests.
I would suggest trying AirBnB a little and looking at what the people who actually use the service are like first without worrying about some kind of imagined stranger danger.
Having any short-term renter increases risk versus a long-term renter versus an owner. That's just the nature of the industry.
My point is that as a tenant in a building with an AirBnB host, I have absolutely zero guarantees about what kind of tenants AirBnB hosts take on. Maybe some need the money and are willing to take on people with no reputation scores? I'm willing to trust my building management to take responsibility for screening tenants because if they fail I can sue them and I know they can pay because they are insured.
That's the point you keep dancing around. AirBnB's reputation system might be great. That's irrelevant to me as a tenant in the same building. I don't get to see or have any control over the reputations scores of the people AirBnB hosts in my building take on. The AirBnB host exposes me to a level of risk, he is in total control over that level of risk, and he doesn't carry insurance against that risk. That is a harm to me.
> Your argument is that you wouldn't want to live in a building where the tenants hadn't undergone background checks and credit checks, and that this increases risk.
Not really, my point was with respect to who cares for their property the most: owners > long term renters > short term( 1 week or less) renters
Comments
> I don't see who's harmed as long as guests behave responsibly, which should be ensured by the reputation system.
I agree, but I have a feeling that it won't play out that way in practice.
I would have agreed with you up until about 2 years ago. I've been a home owner for a good 10 years now, we moved a couple of years ago into a new neighbor hood.
Most of hte homes are very nice and well kept up, but the ones that are the most in need of repair are the rentals. And subsequently the houses beside them take a hit in property value.
We know most of the renters and they are nice hard working people who do the upkeep( cut grass, weed flower beds, etc), but the large repair items are always left undone.
the painting, shingling, gutter cleaning, etc. And it makes sense for both parties not to do it. The renters don't care and the home owners don't care about their property values until they sell.
Sadly though having renters in a neighborhood brings down property values. I'm pretty certain that having a high concentration of AirBnB renters would bring down values even more.
So there is harm done, a fair bit of it.
My wife's uncle had a renter for a house in the woods. The renter let her dogs urinate freely in the house. My wife's uncle has totally resurfaced the floor and still can't get the smell out. He'll have to rip out all the drywall because the urine has wicked into it from the floor boards.
Now obviously this is an extreme example, but stories like this aren't totally unheard of. If you know several people who rent out properties regularly, chances are that they have a couple of horror stories between them.
Presumably your wife's uncle did everything right (credit and background checks) and still got burned. Without being snarky, he might well have had more luck with AirBnB.
The point isn't that AirBnB is better or worse for finding a renter than Craigslist or an ad in the local paper. The point is that renters create more risk than owners, and short-term renters create more risk than long-term renters.
If you own a house in the middle of the woods, you bear all the risk for the quality of your renter. If you live in a condo building, the other tenants are exposed to that risk. In the former case, I can totally control the level of risk I'm exposed to based on my choices of who I host. In the latter case, if I'm a fellow tenant, I have no control over that risk. The AirBnB host in my building might only choose tenants with 100+ reviews, or they may choose tenants with no reviews.
Your argument is that you wouldn't want to live in a building where the tenants hadn't undergone background checks and credit checks, and that this increases risk. My argument is that they obviously don't do much to protect the host anyway, if plenty of landlords have horror stories. I've talked to every AirBnB host I've stayed with (and I've stayed with a few) about this and not one had anything negative at all to say about their guests.
I would suggest trying AirBnB a little and looking at what the people who actually use the service are like first without worrying about some kind of imagined stranger danger.
Having any short-term renter increases risk versus a long-term renter versus an owner. That's just the nature of the industry.
My point is that as a tenant in a building with an AirBnB host, I have absolutely zero guarantees about what kind of tenants AirBnB hosts take on. Maybe some need the money and are willing to take on people with no reputation scores? I'm willing to trust my building management to take responsibility for screening tenants because if they fail I can sue them and I know they can pay because they are insured.
That's the point you keep dancing around. AirBnB's reputation system might be great. That's irrelevant to me as a tenant in the same building. I don't get to see or have any control over the reputations scores of the people AirBnB hosts in my building take on. The AirBnB host exposes me to a level of risk, he is in total control over that level of risk, and he doesn't carry insurance against that risk. That is a harm to me.
> Your argument is that you wouldn't want to live in a building where the tenants hadn't undergone background checks and credit checks, and that this increases risk.
Not really, my point was with respect to who cares for their property the most: owners > long term renters > short term( 1 week or less) renters
I sympathize, I've lived in a fairly similar area recently (the University District in Seattle - lots of student renters who obviously don't care).
However, at the moment, the landlord's not doing anything illegal at all. How can we deal with this kind of scenario effectively?