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.