I love AirBnB as a customer, used it a few times and have a great experience with it... but I would be worried if somebody rent apartment next to me without they presence at all...
... on the other hand how would you enforce non-subletting policies? Likely only some high-end biometrics access could do that, but that won't happen any time soon in vast majority of the places.
Terminate which lease? Let's say I rent an apartment from landlord A. We are cool. Now tenant B rents the apartment next door from landlord C, and promptly lists it on Airbnb.
I am not a party to the contract between B and C, so can't do anything to terminate that lease. My landlord A hasn't done anything to breach our contract, so I have no grounds to terminate that. So I'm SOL.
C might be willing to terminate the lease, especially if it is exposing them to liabilities they don't want. And as the sibling comment mentions, C might need to deal with the situation to live up so some other agreement.
But sure, I was thinking from the perspective of the owner, not a neighbor.
They can't, because then everyone would opt out. Professional landlords keep up on what's going on in their business as much as any other group of people - you don't think they have sites and mailing lists? - and renting isn't a business you can be careless about, because bad things really do happen to property.
So AirBnB pretty much has to do the wink-nudge thing, where they officially forbid 90% of transactions, but let them happen anyway.
I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but hypothetically, couldn't the landlord simply have his lawyer send a list of addresses he owns to Airbnb? Shouldn't Airbnb have a responsibility to exclude addresses upon receiving a DMCA-style take down notice?
That has the same problem as DMCA takedown notices. Anyone could claim to own any address, so then Airbnb would have to verify every address claimed as un-sublettable by a landlord instead of verifying every address claimed as sublettable by a tenant.
I would suspect ownership of physical addresses to be a lot less murky and problematic than copyright ownership since it is a matter of public record and issues of fair use do not come into play. Ownership of a physical address could be verified once and thereafter excluded until a new landlord who buys the property opts-into the service.
IANAL, but I would think that if Airbnb ignored a request to exclude addresses, that would likely expose them to a greater chance of losing a lawsuit.
Additionally, cities or states could pass laws requiring services like Airbnb to have easy opt-out policies for landlords rather than banning the service altogether.
Comments
Yeah, it's happen again and again.
I love AirBnB as a customer, used it a few times and have a great experience with it... but I would be worried if somebody rent apartment next to me without they presence at all...
... on the other hand how would you enforce non-subletting policies? Likely only some high-end biometrics access could do that, but that won't happen any time soon in vast majority of the places.
Document the violations and terminate the lease.
If other tenants are being disturbed, they won't object to a camera at the building access door.
Terminate which lease? Let's say I rent an apartment from landlord A. We are cool. Now tenant B rents the apartment next door from landlord C, and promptly lists it on Airbnb.
I am not a party to the contract between B and C, so can't do anything to terminate that lease. My landlord A hasn't done anything to breach our contract, so I have no grounds to terminate that. So I'm SOL.
C might be willing to terminate the lease, especially if it is exposing them to liabilities they don't want. And as the sibling comment mentions, C might need to deal with the situation to live up so some other agreement.
But sure, I was thinking from the perspective of the owner, not a neighbor.
I'd look into the home-owner association's by-laws that usually regulate renting activity in the building.
One option might be for AirBnB to have an opt-out policy for landlords.
They can't, because then everyone would opt out. Professional landlords keep up on what's going on in their business as much as any other group of people - you don't think they have sites and mailing lists? - and renting isn't a business you can be careless about, because bad things really do happen to property.
So AirBnB pretty much has to do the wink-nudge thing, where they officially forbid 90% of transactions, but let them happen anyway.
I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but hypothetically, couldn't the landlord simply have his lawyer send a list of addresses he owns to Airbnb? Shouldn't Airbnb have a responsibility to exclude addresses upon receiving a DMCA-style take down notice?
That has the same problem as DMCA takedown notices. Anyone could claim to own any address, so then Airbnb would have to verify every address claimed as un-sublettable by a landlord instead of verifying every address claimed as sublettable by a tenant.
I would suspect ownership of physical addresses to be a lot less murky and problematic than copyright ownership since it is a matter of public record and issues of fair use do not come into play. Ownership of a physical address could be verified once and thereafter excluded until a new landlord who buys the property opts-into the service.
IANAL, but I would think that if Airbnb ignored a request to exclude addresses, that would likely expose them to a greater chance of losing a lawsuit.
Additionally, cities or states could pass laws requiring services like Airbnb to have easy opt-out policies for landlords rather than banning the service altogether.
They already have via their leases which prohibit subletting.