An unnamed woman shared every AirBNB host’s worst nightmare in a recently emerged video earlier this month.
She began with a frustrated warning to the viewers, saying, “Y’all don’t trust no f****** AirBNB, okay?”
Then, she continued to explain the situation leading up to the fed-up video being released. She alleged that “I found myself trying to find a way to get down…pay off my mortgage a little better – a little quicker or whatever.”
The homeowner turned to the rental site to search for a subletter to rent one of the rooms in her home.
She found someone through AirBNB to do so while she went away on vacation. The agreement was for the renter to leave “3 days prior” to her return home. However, after contacting her housekeeper while she was away, she was informed that “yo that person is still here in your house.”
The woman quickly returned home to find the squatter was still in her house, “refusing to f****** leave.”
Shockingly, the homeowner turned the camera to reveal the intruding woman with the unauthorized extended stay was still in her home. The stubborn guest can be heard saying, “I ain’t going nowhere, so deal with it!”
According to the homeowner, going to the police presented nothing helpful. They told her that the woman was now a tenant in her home, and the hoops she had to jump through to evict her would be both extensive and expensive.
Despite all this sounding crazy, Tenant rights are legal rights – restated by the Air Host Academy. They wrote, “It sounds crazy, but if they have indeed gotten tenant rights, then you could be breaking the law in that case by illegally evicting them without going through the proper process.”
AirBNB has an entire help page for hosts that talk about how to deal with and prevent horror stories like this from happening to homeowners. The very first section of the page is labeled “The Danger of Extended Stays for AirBNB.”
The Air Host Academy guideline read, “There are some advantages to longer stays. There is a long time between turnover, less spent on cleaning fees, and fewer check-in logistics to deal with. It is important to remember the maximum number of nights your guests can stay. Otherwise, you might end up learning how to evict an AirBNB guest.” It simply explains the basis of tenant laws by saying, “The law regarding tenant rights is different in every state. In a nutshell, if someone develops tenant rights, you could be unable to get them to leave your property unless you go through the formal eviction process. This can take several months and thousands of dollars.”
There are other horror stories. See below:
So what can you do to protect yourself?
AirBNB recommends not booking people for longer than a few weeks to be safe, but homeowners should check the law in their state to know how long a subletter can stay before they’re considered a tenant. Along with that, it’s essential to get familiar with the eviction process.
