Tenants sign agreements not to rent out their units all the time. Home owner's associations often have rules against short-term rentals as well.

If you don't like the idea of short-term rentals in your neighborhood or building, choose one protected by one of these types of contracts. In fact, they're so common, you probably already have such protections, even if you don't know it.

The government making something illegal really should be the last resort for societal problems. I'm not convinced short-term rentals are really so harmful as to meet that threshold.

What's the contract law remedy for unscrupulous businesspeople who buy entire buildings and convert them into Airbnb hostels?

I've used and appreciated Airbnb, but I think 'cletus is ultimately right and threads like this have a hard time of seeing the (valid) other side of this issue.

One long-term solution that could emerge is for it to be common to have provisions in leases that forbid both tenants and landlords from doing such things. It might take a while for that to happen, but if what you describe becomes much of a problem, it's likely to happen.

What if you're rent-controlled and the landlord says "go ahead, break the lease! woohoo!"?

Then your bargaining power is reduced in exchange for your below-market rent. Sounds fair to me.

What's the contract law remedy for unscrupulous businesspeople who buy entire buildings and convert them into Airbnb hostels?

That's a slightly different issue. I don't think this is necessarily unscrupulous to do this, but there's certainly a potential for externalities.

This came up last Abnb thread, and a bunch of my fellow message board nerds insisted that it was a commonplace to have leases that didn't forbid Abnb, but I don't buy it. I think the right rule of thumb is "you can't do it without breaking the promise you made when you rented the apartment and exposing yourself not only to eviction but to civil liability".

Incidentally, the case law behind landlord oversight over sublessors is very solid; this issue is some substantial fraction of every tenant dispute ever, because people very commonly want to break their leases, and expect their landlord to accept the very first person the tenant finds to occupy the apartment.

Demand a no-hostel clause at signing. It's silly, but there's your answer.

And BTW, having lived in a truly rent-controlled (1/5th market rate) place before, "go ahead, break the lease! woohoo!" is all your landlord says anyways.

Incidentally: I sued a landlord once a few years ago over a very simple issue (they unlawfully withheld my security deposit) and did not pull "2 years" out of my butt.

Except that the ease to which people can now rent out an apartment short term has created a situation that was not contemplated by existing laws (or if there were existing laws they were not violated to the extent to make enforcement necessary).

Let's take as an example, spam. The founding fathers of the Internet didn't anticipate that the scholarly people who first used the internet would violate the unwritten rules to not spam. The community was small enough and the members respectful enough that it wasn't even designed into the system (let's assume there could have been a technical way to prevent spam in the original design for a second).

But with the success of the internet and it being opened up to everyone the game changed.

"I'm not convinced short-term rentals are really so harmful"

If you've ever had bad neighbors you will understand why people often want a single family home with lots of land or want to live in an exclusive building.

It looks more like they are trying to shut the short-term rental business down, to please the large hotel business.

The preponderance of evidence available to message board nerds like us suggests strongly to me that enforcement of these laws is being driven by real complaints.

Airbnb rooms are usually more pleasant than the lower quality hotels a lot of businesses book.

Once it becomes socially normal in larger corporations, a lot of employees will ask to be booked with airbnb.

I'm saying: I doubt that's what's happening. I've heard too many anecdotal stories about complaints, and am too capable of looking at (a) revenue numbers for hotels and (b) stats on how people book hotel rooms to think that anyone at Marriott is really being kept up at night about this.

At some point, Airbnb will be too big and disruptive for the major chains to ignore. But now? I doubt it. I think cities are reacting to complaints.

I said, I'm sure some people in the hotel industry recognize airbnbs potential threat. I was responding to your first paragraph. I should have been clearer.

I suggest you browse areas with high AirBNB usage. In NYC, a nice AirBNB will cost roughly the same as the equivalent hotel room.

> Once it becomes socially normal in larger corporations, a lot of employees will ask to be booked with airbnb.

This is unlikely. The only reason to choose AirBNB is price, and the low price options in popular destinations are rarely particularly nice.

As a corporation, we're willing to spend the money necessary to be guaranteed determinism. Nobody in the travel department would want to deal with rebooking an employee if their AirBNB experience turned out to be poor.

I can book an employee a room at The Intercontinental and I know that there will be no issues, and we can worry about things that actually matter, like getting work done.

The nondeterminism thing with Abnb is a good point. I've always figured that if something fell through, I'd just book a same-night hotel, but it was a concern.

* A 4-bedroom 2-storey attached (townhouse-style) house in W'burg, less than a block from the Bedford stop; full kitchen, back yard(!). Cost less than any 3-star pair of adjoining bedrooms we could find --- and we booked 2 months in advance.

* A full-kitchen king bed studio in Chelsea, for ~150/night.

The last one is from a few months ago, the other from last year.

By the way: both of these feel like textbook cases of the kind of situation where Abnb is a win for everyone involved. The owner of the house was picky about us, checked in on us while we were there, and was renting a whole building to one party. The Chelsea apartment was its occupant's primary residence; they were renting it out while themselves traveling.

I think it's the situations where people are literally running full-time businesses on top of Abnb where we start to run into trouble.

Others prefer the airbnb experience, even at the same price. You get to meet new people, cook your own food if you want (anyone eating a special diet wants this), you often get to stay in a smaller building with its own style.

Some people hate all that stuff. But less than 100% of current hotel bookers. Enough people love what airbnb offers that this should start making a difference at the margins.

NYC may have more problems. I'm in Montreal, where there are a lot of renters but few horror stories.

In any case, the airbnb review system is getting better. People will learn how to avoid the dumps.

Others prefer the airbnb experience, even at the same price. You get to meet new people, cook your own food if you want (anyone eating a special diet wants this), you often get to stay in a smaller building.

Some people hate all that stuff. But less than 100% of current hotel bookers. Enough people love what airbnb offers that this should start making a difference at the margins.

NYC may have more problems. I'm in Montreal, where there are a lot of renters but few horror stories.

In any case, the airbnb review system is getting better. People will learn how to avoid the dumps.

When we talk about regs on HN, we tend to be thinking of rules, codes, and controls restricting what businesses can do. That's obviously a major function of regulation.

But another function of regulation is removal of uncertainty.

The alternative to regulation is contract and tort law. Airbnb participants who violate leases and homeowners agreements will be sued for breach; participants who create noise, theft, crime, and increased costs for neighbors will be sued for tort claims.

Court cases take for- fucking- ever to resolve themselves. Every B2B case I've witnessed up close dragged until it settled --- I've never seen (firsthand) a company stick it out to trial. The one (trivial) case I was involved in directly --- a statutory claim for unlawfully withheld security deposits --- took years to resolve.

Perhaps partly in recognition of that, and partly because of the spectacular cost of representation, the damages awarded in these cases can be enormous.

Long-term rentals indicate tenants that are stable enough to at least afford the lease. They are subject to at least some vetting (including background checks) prior to moving in. Short term tenants can be anyone. No background checks are conducted.

Strangers, even unvetted ones, almost never pose a danger to children. The vast majority of harm done to children is done by friends and family. Having more strangers around makes your kids safer, if anything.

I hear this a lot and my guess is this is simply a function of how much time family and friends spend with a child (in relative privacy) compared to complete strangers. The surface area of attack is way smaller for random people; they don't have the "reasonable" opportunity.

The danger comes from the self selected, if you have a crowd of random people and you choose one at random, then the chances that they have malicious intent are related to the incidence of that in the population; OTOH if you ask for volunteers, or worse, if someone spontaneously volunteers then the chance is way higher...

If strangers were afforded equal access to your children, the numbers would not be so favorable. Having strangers around does not make your kids safer. At best, your kinds would be just as safe around strangers. At worst, they would be exposed to far more risk.

I personally feel that short term rentals work very well in some places, but they can be very disruptive to neighborhoods as well. I guess it comes down to whether you feel that the preservation of the residential nature of a neighborhood is a legitimate reason to regulate. As you can probably tell from the way I set this up, I do.

Here's the real issue: So many people say this industry needs regulation. I don't necessarily agree; I lean Libertarian and tend to think the market will take care of itself. I have an incentive to make my guests super happy because I know they will write bad reviews and my days making extra money via Airbnb will be over if I don't treat them well.

Having said that, even if you do agree that the industry needs regulation, this isn't regulation! This is heavy-handed making an entrepreneurial venture illegal because of vested interests who are threatened by said entrepreneurial venture. As an entrepreneur and someone who's in favor of eliminating middlemen in general, I'm against this form of regulation.

Airbnb issues 1099's to its customers, so I do pay taxes on the money I make from it. If the city wants me to get a license and inspections, I might also be okay with that. But I'm firmly against making this illegal, no matter what strawmen others might throw up. (Heck, there is a "Hotel Hell" show coming out in August here in the U.S. featuring Gordon Ramsay screaming at hotel owners who have cockroaches and bedbugs. I've certainly never had that sort of experience at an Airbnb rental.)

As citizens, we have the right to make our own decisions. As a citizen and a voter, I hope we can start a campaign much like we did against SOPA and PIPA to help make sure our voices are heard. I'm sure these cities have heard plenty from hotels. Now it's our turn.

What you're asking is for people to engage in activism to overturn statutes and codes that every major city already has on the books. What statutes and codes do you propose to replace them with?

"In 2010 New York passed a law requiring a minimum thirty-day stay for any rental in a residential building—in effect making shorter-term rentals, the bulk of the market, illegal."

Am I mistaken about either of those points?

What AirBnB does is profit from an externality. When a company can profit by shifting risk to other parties who are not in contractual privity (and thus cannot bargain for consideration in return for assuming that risk), it's a classic case of where government regulation is required. AirBnB is a textbook example of this little bit of Econ 101. They shift the inherent risk of running a hotel business onto not just the hosts, but to the neighbors of the hosts, who are not parties to the rental contract.

Same from my experience on the east coast. I will assume that's universal.

"Renters don't tend to look after properties, tend to be less mindful of behaviour that impacts the neighbours (parties, etc), etc."

Once again true from my experience. And here we aren't even talking about longer term rentals. We are talking about days and the fact that you could literally have 50 to 200 different occupants per year greatly increasing the chance statistically that there would be some people who might cause problems.

"you are raising the risk of damage or theft to the property of others by bringing a stream of strangers into your home."

Iirc, while the Fred Wilson emails with PG regarding airbnb didn't reveal this I feel that this fear of strangers and what they can do played into his thinking as far as not wanting to invest in airbnb. It was my gut immediate reaction.

Edit: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/17/fred-wilson-o...

By the way there is also the chance of the renter having their things owned.

If I stay at a hotel there is at least some control over who can enter my room and presumably key card logs, as well as videos showing access (and a safe in the room). While this does not provide absolute security obviously, I feel more safe leaving my laptop in a hotel room then in someone's apartment where anyone (old friend or perhaps the super) could have a key and something could disappear.

Renters don't tend to look after properties. No, that's why it's called rent and they have property managers or landlords who have that responsibility. That said, I've been in my rented place for 12yrs and take good care of it, as do other tenants in our building. Myth busted.

How would I feel if someone opened a brothel? Not great, but then AirBnB doesn't really cater to brothel operations, and those don't usually fly by night so what point that is supposed to make other than setting up a BS false dichotomy (restrict renting or live with the sex trade next door).

Bars and clubs are regulated by zoning, so how would that ever happen?

The point is that a scummy hotel industry is trying to hedge out competition by using deep pockets to lobby local government into reinforcing their monopoly. Making apologies for them puts you against people like the guy in the article: hard times, tries to make a few extra bucks and gets shut down by the five cops at his door. Sound like America to you? Sound like he was opening a brothel? Look him in his unemployed eye and call the cops on him while you do.

I wonder if it exists? The room with a higher than expected rate and veiled hints of extra "amenities"...

I remember New York when any murder of less than a dozen people wasn't worth bothering with.

Not saying this is the case, but not saying it isn't either.

you are a tenant on the land, and your deed says this. the county is the owner.

Saying that "one person complained, once .." is just silly. Wherever you live, you may have a bad neighbor, but that doesn't mean your entire condo building is full of them. More so, if your bad neighbor buys a condo or a house right next door to yours, there's nothing you can do about it either. With short-term rentals, you at least know that less fitting people are only staying for a few days.

Finally, the only reason this issue is getting a lot of attention is because AirBnB is so freaking successful. Before them, you could find any short term rental, but you'd go to Craigslist to find it. You'd then have to connect with some shady people and pay them in cash, upon your arrival. With Airbnb, you get quality postings in great location, hosted by some really great folks. Travelers love it and use it. Because of that, hotel industry is getting upset. This small SF-based startup just kicked them where it hurts and shows no signs of slowing down. As a result, hotels are using outdated legal system in order to get their way.

Unless you never travel anywhere beyond your backyard or you just love to give up all your money to the hotel owners, you should be jumping up and down and cheering for AirBnB and for short-term guests in your area.

Transient tenants are not part of the community. They are not answerable to the community. Invariably a great deal of them will be poor members of the community, especially in an apartment building, and especially given that they're on vacation (and the rest of us aren't): late nights, smoking, drunken antics, or in the case of our building -- lighting the roof deck on fire by dropping smoldering cigarettes on flammable material.

> Unless you never travel anywhere beyond your backyard or you just love to give up all your money to the hotel owners, you should be jumping up and down and cheering for AirBnB and for short-term guests in your area.

People pay for hotels because they provide deterministic quality. I know that when I show up, the room will be clean, ready, and of a certain level of quality. It's less for me to worry about; worrying about the accommodations is not something I want to spend time on.

For some people, that determinism is not worth the money, or is not even something they're looking for. AirBNB offers an option for those people, but at significant cost to the surrounding community and commons.

What you described is handled quite well by regular contracts between tenants/landlords. If a tenant signs a lease where short term rentals aren't allowed and violates it then they can be evicted, lose their deposit, etc. Similarly, landlords who don't allow it could face slightly lower rents by losing tenants who want more flexibility. In other words, it reaches a balance as people negotiate contracts.

There is a big difference between violating a lease and making something illegal.

There's no question that most leases are done on boilerplate contracts that forbid Airbnb-type arrangements, often by spelling out by name each of the occupants, but at the least almost invariably specifying that the landlord gets reasonable approval over any sublessor. I'm sure there are pinholes to be poked in this point but I think as a general rule of thumb we can stipulate: apartment renters cannot lawfully put their apartments up on Airbnb, and the simplest remedy to them doing so is indeed to evict and then sue them.

But getting back to 'cletus point: focus your attention on those "apartments" we call "condos". If your association contracts are good, there are remedies for Airbnb abuse here too, but they're nowhere nearly as clean as the remedies for apartment renters.

Or, here's another wrinkle: go back to the apartment rental scenario, but stipulate that the landlord doesn't care to assert their right to curb Airbnb abuse. What recourse do the other renters in the building have now? They probably do have some; for instance, they can break their lease. But this is messy.

If the goal by which we make neighborhood/city wide planning decisions is the ability to "look after" one's property, I propose homeowners are clearly more socially derelict and likely to ignore the community.

[only partially sarcastic]

1. http://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news30381/nearly-24-...

A better argument would be about health regulations and competition. It is unfair advantage for these home motels because they don't have to abide by regulations and aren't even required to be insured/bonded. There's also a public safety risk since health regulations aren't being followed.

1) HN wouldn't understand because they're young men

2) Value of property in an area can go down

3) Property can suffer damages

4) Rentals may inconvenience neighbors

All these points can be overcome without eroding our property rights. While values of homes can go down, they can also go up. Property can be damaged, but it can also be insured. Rentals may inconvenience neighbors, but disturbing the peace is already a crime.

You are missing the point. I don't want common property in my condo building to be damaged, period. It just spoils my day.

The GP said that having too many renters increases the risk of property damage (which is very true), to which you replied (essentially) - why worry, let them damage, the insurance will pick the tab - to which I said that it's the actual damage, not the cost of repairs that is an issue.

may i interest you in some Bear Patrol Tax?

[EDIT] When I go down to the polling station on election day, I assure you my rights are equal.

Yes, of course. Starting with the obvious, your landlord could just throw you out. Your agreement almost certainly prevents you from making significant changes to the structure of the building. You can't sell the property. Your rights are much, much less than your neighbor.

I am speaking of my rights in the community, not to the property. That is, should there be a speed bump on the street, should a WalMart be allowed to build on the condemned lot around the corner.

Discrimination is discrimination. These are public neighborhoods. Protecting one's property value does not make discrimination noble or any less discriminatory.

If you are not a voter, you do not and should not have the same rights because your social and economic investment in the community is not as great as your landlord's, or your underwater neighbor's.

(personally I consider the super-serious-HOA-attending-is-my property-value-always-increasing-neurotic undesirable, but that's just my bias.)

Yes, someone should be able to operate a brothel or bar on their own property. I don't see why this is even controversial, but for some reason it is incredibly so.

If the neighbors don't like it, they can move. As long as the owner isn't physically harming anyone, they should be left alone on their own property.

This whole argument is disingenuous, however, since the people complaining aren't neighbors, but hotels pissed off at having competition.

It is hotels complaining, for now, and I don't think anyone is taking the POV that we should respect their legally privileged position just because they already have it. But a lot of these and similar laws have existed for awhile, because various bad actors have abused short term renting in the past. And if Airbnb and similar setups become more widespread (as they're bound to do), we do want to have some legal framework to deal with issues as they arise.

I've traveled & stayed in Airbnbs quite a bit and have met the full range of hosts: those just doing it for fun & to meet people, working to cover their rent, allowing themselves the freedom to cut down work and finish their book, work on their startup, bring their B&B business back after 1 bad trip advisor review, and on and on. These are honest, good people with a variety of motivations. I've never stayed with a host that is doing it to screw over their landlord, spite the hotel industry or trouble their neighbors. Similarly, we aren't crafting our product to damn the man - we are driven by the lives we are enhancing by existing.

Regarding opening a brothel, bar or club in their dwelling? Think of it this way: if your neighbor has parties, all of the activities of those establishments can/will happen. As far as neighbors go some will not care and others will. If it is degrading your quality of life or endangering your wellbeing - then talk to the person and explain your side, file a complaint or whatever it takes to feel safe again.

As a side note, I am not a host. As I signed the lease my landlord said "I know you work for Airbnb and it's unfortunately not allowed in this building." I want to be host for a number of reasons but I've been told no, and that is fine. Though it is certainly a bummer.

The folks offering short-term rents are not excused from such laws. Why do we need new laws? If your neighbor's short-term tennats are loud assholes, make a noise complaint.

There is a place for piecemeal litigation of individual disputes. There is also a place for regulation and zoning to maintain order, especially in a large, tightly-packed city.

The assholes problem is why we have restrictions against short-term leases in so many areas. (Most such restrictions predate AirBNB, despite what the article would have you believe.)

I'm pretty sure you could actually correlate with life experiences as well (even though age and life experience correlate).

Someone who has not been burned and who hasn't seen or experienced some negative consequence of being open is going to tend to have a negative reaction when something like this is discussed. They don't know what they don't know.

Further, with the overlay of a giant social network, you can rent your spot out only to people with whom you share some indirect but useful level of acquaintance. So you can ask before renting: "Is Mr. X an inconsiderate ass?" And Mr. X knows bad behavior can affect their reputation moreso than just via a semi-anonymous blurb on a website.

That's the way you're going to go with it? Why don't you try it. You'll find that those issues are actually already handled by local laws in most places.