22 ms·

My nextdoor neighbor sold their house last year and now it's an Airbnb. Despite the fact that I live in a house in a normal residential neighborhood, I'm now fo

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• alphabettsy 4y ago
  Why would or should you have a say in what the property owner next door does? What does having a say look like?
  • duxup 4y ago
    Cities and etc have zoning laws because it does matter what kind of activity happens next door. I lived in a town house association where the unit’s being rented were the source of noise, trash, crime, etc. People renting often don’t care as much for the neighborhood/ locals and they can move on at will. And you'd be surprised how much random citizen land lords are terrible at just being land lords. After the numbers of rentals were reduced (and background checks required) the neighborhood improved greatly. It was like turning off a light switch on noise, litter, crime, etc...
  • rcpt 4y ago
    I generally agree with you. But unless you're allowed to knock down your house and build a 10 story apartment in it's place then the argument kind of falls flat.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    Why should you have the unchecked right to disturb the peace of your next door neighbor?
    • Mystery-Machine 4y ago
      Who tf claimed that? It's two completely different questions. The issue is not Airbnb or not. The issue is guests etiquette and difficulty to penalize bad/loud/disrespectful people.
    • alphabettsy 4y ago
      You don’t have the unchecked right to disturb your neighbor anywhere in the US as far as I know. Who was suggesting anyone should?
  • dns_snek 4y ago
    Would you oppose a smelly wastewater treatment plant being built on the previously residential property right next to you? That's why they should get a say.
    • alphabettsy 4y ago
      That’s not even remotely what we’re talking about.
      • dns_snek 4y ago
        Is it not? I think it's very comparable, you attempted to appeal to the freedoms of property owners but there are laws the govern the use of land wherever you go.
        • deleted 4y ago
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• jeremyjh 4y ago
  I’m genuinely interested to hear what are the specific harms you have suffered due to this.
  • miguelazo 4y ago
    Gee, how about having a parade of random people showing up at all hours of the day/night just to start? The erosion of community. Further commodification of housing so that only the rich and upper middle class can buy a house in any city?
    • zbrozek 4y ago
      That last point - that housing is too expensive - is not something that airbnb causes or can fix. That's a supply side problem and the solution is housing construction. It may marginally exacerbate the symptom by providing liquidity.
      • jerjerjer 4y ago
        It removes liquidity from housing market, by repurposing flats/houses into hotels.
        • zbrozek 4y ago
          It's creating liquidity, just not the kind you value. It's liquidity of short term housing rather than long term housing.
          • tekknik 4y ago
            Ok, then more accurately it’s moving liquidity. The next question is which is more valuable to society?
            • zbrozek 4y ago
              The United States is short O(10M) housing units[0], primarily due to anti-construction policies. Airbnb has O(100k) listings[1] in the US. Banning short-term rentals is a 1% solution. That's a policy distraction, not a useful lever to pull. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing-gap-cost-affordability-big-cities/672184/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing... [1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/
• cycrutchfield 4y ago
  Why do you care if your neighbor has guests stay over at their house?
  • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    There's a big difference between dealing with something from a neighbor's property once in a while, trash ending up in my property, guests not following neighborhood rules for parking, etc., and having to deal with it every single day. Neighborhoods have a lot of societal norms, my house has frequently been referred to as "the rental" even though I've lived here for years and the prior tenants also all had long runs here... even being a rental house in the neighborhood is considered strange here.
  • kennend3 4y ago
    I take it you have never experienced an AirBnB neighbour? The people behind me have done it a few times. How can i tell they had "guests" over? I find beer bottles, coke cans and garbage on MY property. There is the obvious noise from the late night "pool parties" as well. Normally people dont care what their neighbours do, but when it starts to impact others, people start to care.
    • cycrutchfield 4y ago
      How is that different from you being neighbors with somebody that hosts parties?
      • dns_snek 4y ago
        The average person doesn't host a pool parties 100+ days out of a year as an Airbnb unit might. Filing complaints against a single noisy neighbor would also be a lot easier than doing it against people who will be gone by the time anyone looks into the matter.
        • cycrutchfield 4y ago
          The complaint would be against the property owner, no?
• adql 4y ago
  How's that different that having a neighbour in hot love with his lawnmover at 6AM ?
  • robg 4y ago
    Noise ordinances.
    • thefounder 4y ago
      Do they work?
      • Frondo 4y ago
        It depends, of course, but yes, I have had noise complaints addressed by some kind of code enforcement officer (i.e. unarmed, but able to write citations.)
      • ericpruitt 4y ago
        I've read they're taken very seriously in some places like Germany and Japan, but in my experience, a lot of people in the USA won't bother reporting noise violations because they know the chances of them being enforced and/or investigated in a timely manner is low.
        • nibbleshifter 4y ago
          Enforcement in Germany is quite funny. Lived there for some years. If you have a problem with noisy neighbours you basically must make a "noise diary" with date/time/description of the noise over a period of time before anyone will give a shit. Even then, enforcement varies wildly. Seems to depend where you are, etc. The best person to complain to is building management, but even then, they vary. The next best thing to do (and the most German solution) is leaving passive aggressive notes on the buildings noticeboard.
          • deleted 4y ago
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• robg 4y ago
  You have a say - go to your town’s planning and zoning commission, find others with similar concerns, and force votes on the legality of a full-time hotel next door.
  • everybodyknows 4y ago
    In my town, stays of less than 30 days are illegal, and there's a 10% tax. And yet, AirBnb and VRBO show dozens of listings. So if the rental contract itself violates city code, surely no tax is being paid either. This puts me off the idea of ever renting out my own place, because I would then have to choose between feeling like a sucker, or being a criminal.
• jiggywiggy 4y ago
  Come to Amsterdam. Its city wide hobby to shit on Airbnb by residents and complain to newspapers and city. They even had an official city sponsored online participation board dedicated to complaining about airbnb. And it was pretty successful. Now so much registration is required to rent on Airbnb and max days that pretty much only professionals are left. They also gave like 10k fines to citizens who forgot a few things or days in the registration process. So the pendulum swung the other way here.
  • cycrutchfield 4y ago
    So housing is cheap now, right? Right?
    • tekknik 4y ago
      Housing prices are more complex than that, but it’s inarguable that more houses on the market means cheaper prices. Out of curiosity, do you own properties specifically to rent on short term rental sites?
      • cycrutchfield 4y ago
        No, I own a property that I exclusively rent long-term. So I don’t have an interest in short term rentals, except as a traveler that likes to use them.
• cbsks 4y ago
  You absolutely have a say in the matter, but it’s possible that on one will listen. Talk to your local city council person (or local equivalent) and see if they are willing to ban short term rentals in areas that are not zoned for it. My city did that and it’s pretty great.
• ultrarunner 4y ago
  My next door neighbor also rents out her house. She has 5 others she does the same in. These are long term rentals, which means when the tenant is bad it's bad for me long term. We got new neighbors last year, and while they struggle socially they're respectful and it's a huge quality of life improvement. Our neighbors on the other side, unfortunately, own their home. This means I'm forced to live next to (depending on the day of the week), a live concert venue, a muscle car engine noise appreciation celebration, frat parties, and/or a farm (they had a goat for a week ?). There's nothing anyone can (or will) do about any of these things, and no one's checking their papers to determine if ignoring the noise is your only recourse. The only way to attempt to improve the situation is show respect and hope it's eventually reciprocated. This is just part of living around other humans. The systems in place to mitigate these kinds of petty conflicts aren't taken seriously, whether the rental is long or short term, or the property tax kind.
  • squintychino 4y ago
    This isn't the same thing as short term rentals thru AirBnB. Long term tenants are part of the rental market, not the hospitality market.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    Every time someone online complains loudly about an HOA, here is why people still choose to live in neighborhoods with HOAs.
    • ultrarunner 4y ago
      Specifically chose this neighborhood because there is no HOA. The goat/sheep/whatever was hilarious and was gone within a week. The point is that just because I don't live by an AirBnB (that I know of) doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to have no noise from neighbors. The renters before honestly did suck a lot, but if they wouldn't turn down their bass, and the cops couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, I doubt an HOA would have helped. I'd rather invest in quiet windows than live out the many many horror stories of my friends who live in HOAs.
    • 4y ago
• fenesiistvan 4y ago
  Here in Romania there are different rules if you rent your house this way (hotel style). You have to pay much more for the administration/utilities costs, which has some compensation effect
• rcpt 4y ago
  The house next door to you was de facto rezoned from residential to hotel. In the US, and California specifically, any kind of zoning change is met with pitchforks. If your neighbor tried to build an apartment and you didn't like it you could have easily held up the project for years. Airbnb figured a way to rezone property without invoking the wrath of local busybodies. Kudos to them. But at the same time, if you live in a place that takes zoning seriously then Airbnb shouldn't be allowed.
• latchkey 4y ago
  I am the opposite and I get asked about this a lot. I bought a condo in a building (and neighborhood) that is almost all STR's (near the beach). I'm the only person who actually lives in my building full time. I enjoy the fact that I get new neighbors all the time because, quite simply... in the past, I've lived next door to people I didn't like at all. When that happens, what can you do, move? This way, if there is an unruly renter, I just call the owner of the condo and they deal with it (only happened once in the last year). Worst case, they leave on their on in a few days.
• vlunkr 4y ago
  I tried to buy a house that was instead bought as an Airbnb. I'm still annoyed, but on the bright side it looks like it's almost never booked.
• prepend 4y ago
  > And I have no say in the matter. Super frustrating What say should you have in how your neighbor uses their house? You can live in an HOA with covenants that restrict renting, but that has their own set of problems.
• kjs3 4y ago
  But few people talk about how it screws the neighbors. This so much. There's a neighbor on the street with a 'unique' house who decided the way she would make money is AirBnB'ing it to film companies. So...a weekend or two a month (usually Th-Mo), we would have 50-60 cars parked wherever they wanted on our narrow street and sidestreets. We would have vans and delivery vehicles block our driveways and sometimes the whole street for as long as they wanted. They would drive over lawns to position trucks because the street is too narrow for a 20+ foot cargo truck to back into the driveway to unload. They would film until 3, 4, sometimes 5 in the morning with loud noise, dozens of people and floodlights. If we said anything, they would mob us and start filming us trying to get us to lose our tempers. Whenever the cops showed up, they would shut down and play nice until they left, and then crank back up. And every one of them didn't get the required city permits until after we complained. Lovely people in the film industry. /s The city has regulations against such abusive behavior but not the resources to enforce, and no real recourse when the film companies basically gave the city the middle finger. They're going to be gone in a couple of days so screw those pesky neighbors. So we became the squeaky wheel to get some action. We eventually had to get a lawyer to get this shut down. And you bet there's a bunch of us at the city council meetings lobbying for better enforcement. It looks like we'll get some new regs passed with more teeth. And, of course, AirBnB didn't care one bit.
• bittercynic 4y ago
  Same situation here, and I was surprised to learn that my city doesn't seem to have any rules against this. So far most renters have been friendly or kept to themselves. Some were noisy, and some left dozens of cigarette butts on the sidewalk and street, and for the past couple weeks the place has been empty. No one has even come by to put away the trash bins. The owner has over a dozen houses like this, and I really think it's a bad thing that these houses are not available to people who want to live in them.
• tptacek 4y ago
  Work with your municipality to pass an Airbnb ordinance. We have one; it limits the number of nights you can list your house for, requires a shall-issue license, an insurance certificate, and inspections, forbids rentals of less than 24 hours, and charges a fee for non-owner-occupied buildings.
• kwhitefoot 4y ago
  Isn't this a violation of planning law (zoning in the US)?
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  One thing I haven't liked about AirBNB is being told that I have to keep my status as a guest a secret from the neighbors.