Cities across the country have been cracking down on Airbnb and homeowners who rent through the service but may be playing fast and loose with the rules: from enacting city laws and creating offices to enforce said regulations, to ordering the company to pay millions of dollars in hotel taxes and levying fines against those who provide accommodations through the site. The latest such case comes out of San Diego where a woman was recently ordered to pay $15,000 for renting rooms in her home in violation of city laws. [More]
Airbnb
Airbnb To Get Serious About Attracting Business Travelers
By 7.20.15
In some cities, it’s much less expensive to find a room on Airbnb than it would be to rent out a hotel room. Yet most business travelers still choose to stay in traditional hotels, partly because their employer won’t allow them to or because they think they will have difficulty expensing the rental. After a year of seeing growth in this area, Airbnb is launching an improved experience for business travelers in the hopes of getting some of that sweet expense account money. [More]
San Francisco Creates New Office To Regulate Airbnb, Other Short-Term Rentals
By 7.2.15
The city of San Francisco and Airbnb have a somewhat contentious relationship, most recently involving tens of millions of dollars in back-taxes the short-term rental company agreed to pay the city earlier this year. Now, to ensure things continue to go smoothly for renters and rentees of services like Airbnb, the city has created a new office for the sole purpose of enforcing rules regarding vacation and short-term rentals. [More]
Airbnb Partners With Realtor.com To Show Potential Homebuyers What A Neighborhood Is Like
By 6.25.15
You can try out a mattress before you buy it, test drive a car or ask for a frozen yogurt sample before you buy, so why not a house? That’s the niche Airbnb and Realtor.com are trying to fill with a new partnership that lets potential homebuyers try out a neighborhood before they make the big decision to move there. [More]
Nobody Really Knows What To Do About Regulating The Sharing Economy
By 6.10.15
The car in front of you has four wheels and goes “beep.” For a certain fee, its driver will pick you up from where you are now and will shortly thereafter drop you off at the place you want to go. Twenty years ago, that car was an ordinary taxicab that you called on a landline. Now, it’s an Uber you summoned with an app on your smartphone. What’s the difference? In the world of regulation, everything. [More]
Airbnb Launches New Tool To Help Rental Owners Make More Money
By 6.5.15
Airbnb launched a new tool Thursday that aims to help owners of properties make the most money possible. Price Tips will create continuous suggestions for pricing based on metrics such as demand for rooms, local events and rental prices for hotels in the area. The company claims that owners who price their property within 5% of the suggested amount are four times as likley to attract a renter. [TechCrunch] [More]
U.S. Travelers To Cuba Can Now Rent Through Airbnb
By 4.2.15
While many American companies continue to make preparations for the loosened travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba, online-home rental marketplace Airbnb says it already has properties available on the island for booking. [More]
The Numbers Show Startups Can’t Get Enough Of Calling Themselves The “Uber” For This, The “Airbnb” Of That
By 3.20.15
If you’ve been hearing startup companies throw around phrases like, “We’re the Uber of [insert industry that is not ride-hailing]!” or “Our service functions just like the Airbnb of [another industry that is not renting out rooms to strangers]!” you’re not alone. A recent analysis of language used by startups to describe their businesses show that a lot of them are hitching their apple carts to those brands’ rising stars. [More]
Airbnb Pays “Tens Of Millions” To San Francisco To Settle Hotel Tax Bill
By 2.19.15
Airbnb finally gave in to San Francisco’s demands that it fork over a bunch of cash to pay back-taxes after failing to pay the city’s 14% hotel tax going back a few years. Airbnb wouldn’t say how much it had paid, but officials had said it ran into the millions of dollars. [More]
People Are Fine With Airbnb, Until It Comes To Their Neighborhood
By 2.5.15
There are currently two distinct groups who have problems with Airbnb and similar home-sharing services. There are hotel owners who believe that Airbnb operators get away with running de facto hotels without facing the requisite taxes and regulation. Then there are people annoyed by the constant turnover of visitors at rental properties in their neighborhood. A new survey seems to indicate that many of us would fall into that latter category if our neighbors decided to open their doors to short-term renters. [More]
It’s About To Get A Lot More Difficult To Run An Airbnb Empire In San Francisco
By 1.20.15
A common complaint against people who rent out their homes on Airbnb and similar sites is that some hosts aren’t just renting out a spare room or letting strangers use their house when it’s empty for a weekend or two, but that some hosts are effectively hoteliers and landlords who don’t have any connection to the places they let out. In an effort to crack down on this practice, the city of San Francisco is about to require that all Airbnb hosts register with the city, and that they do so in person. [More]
NY Attorney General: 72% Of Airbnb Rentals Violate State, City Laws
By 10.16.14
New York state’s crackdown on the burgeoning short-term home rental industry continues this morning, with a new report from the state’s Attorney General claiming that nearly 3-in-4 of the short-term New York rentals listed over the last few years were in violation of state and/or city law. [More]
“Don’t Flush Feminine Products” Signs In AirBNB Rentals? $10,000 In Damages Makes A Good Case
By 10.10.14
A Los Angeles AirBNB host probably wishes she had hung one of those “Please place feminine products in the trash” signs up in her condo’s bathroom. Doing so may have saved her more than $10,000 in damages after a renter allegedly repeatedly flushed the products down her toilet causing a blockage and massive leak. [More]
San Francisco Officials Vote To Legalize Airbnb Rentals
By 10.8.14
San Francisco is kissing and making nice with Airbnb, after city officials voted to legalize short-term rentals under 30 days — with some restrictions. [More]
L.A. Warning Airbnb Hosts About Their Tax-Collecting Obligations
By 9.10.14
Subletting one’s home or renting out space on your own property has long been a way for some Los Angeles residents to earn some extra income without telling the taxman. And the rise of home-sharing services like Airbnb and VRBO has only encouraged more people to make money off their unused rooms. But the city of Los Angeles is now sending stern reminders to people who list properties on these sites that they have to pay taxes similar to those paid by hotel operators. [More]
AirBNB Squatter Brothers Quietly Leave Their Ill-Gotten Condo
By 8.22.14
The AirBNB squatter nightmare is over…as far as we know. The owner of the property filed an unlawful detainer notice, which is part of the legal eviction process. While the squatters didn’t respond to that notice before their Monday deadline, instead they quietly left the condo, leaving surprisingly little damage. [More]
Ever Wanted To Sleep At IKEA? Thanks To Airbnb Now You Can, But Only If You Live In Australia
By 8.21.14
Are you Australian and in need of a new pair of sheets? Well, you can get a free set if you’re included in one of three groups picked to spend the night at an IKEA store as part of a promotion between the furniture company and Airbnb. [More]
Kickstarter Suspends Alleged AirBNB Squatter’s Second Game Campaign
By 7.31.14
In Palm Springs, California, a man booked a vacation condominium for 44 days, saying that he would be in town on a business trip. After 30 days, he gained rights as a tenant under California law, and refused to pay rent or to leave. When the story broke, he was discovered to be an indie game developer who has failed to deliver a Kickstarter-funded project. That’s when the justice of the sharing economy kicked in. Kind of. [More]
