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
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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