A Second Tale of One Airbnb
Having had a good amount of success renting the suite in our house using Airbnb, the obvious next step for us was to rent out the main part of our house occasionally when we went away on holiday. The first hurdle to overcome was the idea of strangers staying in our house. We spoke to some friends who had already been doing this during times when they were away. After speaking to them, it was clear to us this idea was worthwhile so we committed to giving it a try.
Setting up the listing was quite simple, having already done it for our suite. We hosted two rentals over the course of a year with no issues at all. We were very happy we did it and planned to keep doing it when we were able to. The third time we rented the house was for group of four guys who were working on a construction site in town for a week. Nice guys and they were experienced with using Airbnb. There were no red flags and we were perfectly comfortable with everything. There reservation came and went and they left our house in great condition. No problems. However, because of the business they were in, they had a couple of large company trucks which they parked in our driveway while staying at our house. It was these trucks in our driveway which we are certain drew the attention of some neighbours.
Shutdown
Within a few weeks after the third booking ended, we received a paper notice stuck to our front door from our municipality stating that a complaint of a short-term rental on our property had been submitted to the municipality and that we were instructed to cease short-term rentals. We are fairly certain it was from one of our next-door neighbours. We knew that they had previously sent an email to the entire street alerting the residents that our other next-door neighbours’ house was being rented out through Airbnb after there while a large group of people were staying there. This rental happened after the owners of the house moved but prior to them actually selling the house.
I contacted the municipality and a bylaw officer explained the situation. He said the municipality does not allow short-term rentals. But he also said that the municipality only acts on complaints otherwise they overlook short-term rentals are overlooked. This is most likely due to a lack of resources to investigate all the short-term rentals that are advertised in the municipality. The by-law officer also informed us that the complaint could be withdrawn which provided some hope for us moving forward.
In the meantime, we still needed rent out the suite to help with our mortgage. We didn’t want to move to a conventional rental so we adjusted our pricing to make our listing more attractive to long-term tenants. Effectively, we priced the suite so that we absorbed all the Airbnb service fees ourselves and so that tenants would pay a monthly rate comparable to a suite such as ours with a conventional rental. We also advertised for stays of no less than 30 days, which is the minimum to be considered a long-term rentals. Right at this time, COVID-19 hit. We had a couple of reservations that we were able to finish within the short time period we had to stop hosting short-term rentals. Fortunately, we got an inquiry for a six-month booking from a couple who needed a long-term rental. The booking was, ultimately, extended and turned into almost an entire year hosting the same couple. This was good luck for us because of all the restrictions with travel etc. at that time surrounding COVID-19.
First Appeal
However, we still wanted to be able to host short-term rentals when Covid-19 restrictions lifted. We decided to write a letter to the entire street, which consists of about 12 homes, in hopes that the complaint to the municipality would be withdrawn.
This is the letter we sent:
This past week we received notice from the Municipality of a complaint of a short-term rental business on our property. We wish this hadn’t happened. The complainant’s name was not revealed to us which is why we are sending this message to all the residents of our street.
We moved to this street in November 2016, returning to an area near where we were both born and raised. Our son is able to ride or walk to his school and we are closer to our families. Both of us are full-time, classical musicians. Each year, we are temporarily laid off for approximately 3½ months. We were thrilled to find a house in this area of the city that included a suite which we could use to supplement our income. It is an ideal situation for us and is something we waited for a long time to find.
In March 2017, we began hosting rentals in our suite through the Airbnb platform. Prior to starting, we carefully considered the options of a conventional long-term rental and rentals through online platforms such as VRBO and Airbnb, assessing the positives and negatives of each. The Airbnb platform offers advantages that are not available with conventional, long-term rentals. We have tremendously more control over our house when renting through the Airbnb platform compared to a conventional Residential Lease Agreement. This control was a major factor in our decision to rent through the Airbnb platform and applies to all Airbnb rentals both short-term (as defined by the municipality as a rental for less than 30 days) and long-term (defined as a rental for 30 days or longer).
The accountability the Airbnb platform provides, to both the hosts and guests, is invaluable to help ensure that every reservation is a positive experience for the hosts. If necessary, the ability to remove problematic guests is simple and easy through the Airbnb platform as opposed to a long and difficult process with a Residential Lease Agreement.
We established extremely strict House Rules (as shown on our listing) and we screen all of our guests carefully. Our House Rules include: no parties; no smoking of any kind; no illegal activity of any kind or the police will be contacted immediately; no unauthorized visitors on the property; quiet time after 10:00pm. All of our guests are required to be in contact with us before we confirm any reservation and we ask many questions to ensure we are comfortable with those coming onto our property and into our neighbourhood. All of this was put in place not only for our own comfort, safety, and security, but also for the safety and security of the neighbourhood, which we have always taken into consideration. We have had good success with our decision to rent our suite in this manner for the past three years without receiving any notice of complaint from the municipality.
We are aware of some recent increase in crime on our street. In the past six months since this happened, in lieu of leaving our house empty while we were away and rather than having house sitters during those times, we experimented with renting out the main, upper part of our house for three short stays. Renting the main part of our house is not something we had planned to do regularly.
We can only surmise that the complaint that the Municipality recently received was due to these short-term rentals in the main, upper part of our house, the resultant unfamiliar activity on our property, and/or our lack of constant presence during the rentals. We had absolutely no intention of causing our neighbours any concern by adding a second, short-term rental listing on our property but we now recognize that this must have been the case and for that we apologize. Complying with instructions from the municipality, we will no longer host short-term stays in the main part of our house or suite. As of now, we will only host long-term rentals in our suite as do other homeowners on our street.
We have also learned from the Municipality that complaints can be withdrawn. Having read the above explanation, and with the understanding that we will no longer have short-term rentals in the main, upper part of our house, we hope that the complainant is willing to withdraw the complaint. If the complaint is withdrawn, it would enable us to resume renting our suite in the same manner as we have been doing successfully for the past three years.
We appeal to whomever filed the complaint to understand our position and we respectfully ask you to reconsider and officially withdraw the complaint to the Municipality.
We received some support, in the form or messages, from some of the residents of the street. Unfortunately, we didn’t hear anything back from municipality. We were stuck with only being able to host long-term rentals for the foreseeable future. This was quite disappointing and frustrating.
Second Appeal
We still held out hope that the complaint might be withdrawn. In what we believed was a last-ditch plea, we sent a second letter to the residents of the street six weeks later. It read:
Since we sent our first message, we have not been notified by the Municipality that the complaint of a short-term rental on our property has been withdrawn. As we previously detailed, we manage our rental in a responsible manner for our own benefit as well as for the neighbourhood. We have proposed that, if the complaint is withdrawn, we would only host short-term stays in our suite, as we did for three years without any complaint, and not in the main part of our house which we suspect was the reason which led to the complaint to the Municipality. We are appealing for a second time to the complainant to withdraw the complaint to the Municipality and we believe this request is both fair and reasonable.
We chose to rent our suite for short-term stays because, although it requires more effort on our part to manage, it is significantly more beneficial for us financially. We are now facing a loss of $5000/year, at the minimum, given the way we have now had to price our suite for only long-term rentals as a result of the complaint to the municipality. Although currently in violation of the municipality’s by-laws, our municipality isn’t strictly opposed to short-term rentals in that the municipality addresses them on a reactive, rather than proactive, basis. The Municipality will only will act if it receives a complaint; otherwise, the Municipality allows short-term rentals to operate and there are hundreds of them operating throughout the city.
We have found with hosting short-term rentals that most of our guests use our suite only for sleeping. In general, our guests are visiting our city and spend most of their time out exploring the region. We have also had many guests who are either temporarily working at, doing schooling practicums at, or are visiting family members at nearby hospital. It is our experience that our guests are happy and grateful to stay in our suite, they treat it well, and they spend minimal time in it.
We chose to use Airbnb as a rental platform specifically because it allows us to manage our rental in such a way that ensures us the best possible rental experiences. Conventional residential lease agreements provide tenants with an unbalanced amount of power in property rentals. Certainly, tenants need some protections from unscrupulous landlords; however, landlords also need to be protected from tenants who become problematic and these protections are not properly in place using a conventional residential lease agreement. The entire process to recover outstanding rent payments, seek damages from, and evict a tenant(s) is prolonged and can be extremely costly to landlords. Using Airbnb eliminates these issues by offering many advantages including: guest screening, accountability for both hosts and guests, the ability to establish House Rules, the ability to quickly cancel reservations and remove guests should the House Rules be violated, payment guarantee, insurance policy, and more. Renting out our suite through Airbnb allows us to retain the control we rightly deserve as the property owners and we believe this is also an advantage for the neighbourhood.
We would like to clarify the point we addressed in our previous message regarding the increased crime on our street. An incident occurred last summer when someone attempted to break into a car parked in a driveway in the middle of the afternoon two houses away from ours. Having been the victims of a house break-in elsewhere, we were relieved to move to an area of the city that is safer. As a result of this unnerving incident, we are taking extra precautions to protect our property. We will likely be away in the summer and we are looking into having our house occupied in some manner during that time, perhaps with a long-term rental.
We still hope the complainant will withdraw the complaint to the municipality and we would be most grateful if this happens. We would welcome a confidential conversation with whomever lodged the complaint to discuss our hosting short-term rentals if this would help the complainant reconsider. Perhaps we could make some adjustments that would alleviate any lingering concerns.
We didn’t have any contact from the Municipality and we assumed that our efforts to have the complaint withdrawn were in vain. We began to accept that there was no hope for us to host short-term rentals in our suite again.
Complaint Withdrawn
It was during this year, however, that our next-door neighbours, who we believed filed the complaint, moved houses and left the neighbourhood. After they moved, I called the Municipality explaining that these neighbours, who we presumed filed the complaint, had moved and, because of this, asked if the complaint could be withdrawn. The bylaw officer looked into the file and told us that the complaint had already been withdrawn. This was great news for us. It turned out that the complaint had been withdrawn after we sent our first letter to the residents of the street. The Municipality had not informed us of this, which was a bit frustrating but understandable, given that short-term rentals are technically not allowed in the Municipality. Regardless, we were back to square one and able to resume hosting short-term rentals. A big relief.
Following Covid-19 restrictions being lifted, we have found, especially this year, that travel has not fully resumed to what it was before the pandemic. We have noticed fewer inquiries from out-of-town guests. We suspect that current, higher interest rates and the rising cost of living plays a role in this. As a result, we are now accepting a combination of short-term and long-term reservations to fill our our rental calendar for the suite which seems to be working quite well. We are looking forward to continued success using Airbnb in this way.
We recently stayed in seven different Airbnbs on a long trip while travelling to different cities. This was the first time we used Airbnb as guests. It was great experience but I’ll leave that for another post…
David
