airbnb - what can you tell me...

chucknorris

onlyroz wrote: »

I have a spanish work colleague who owns a flat in Peckham. When he goes back to Spain to visit family, or when he goes on holiday himself, he rents out his flat via AirBnB. He swears by it, but when I ask him about insurance he just shrugs his shoulders. What would happen if a guest burned the place down or robbed him, I have no idea...

His insurance would be void. If he has a mortgage, his mortgage lender won't be too impressed either, if they knew that he was letting his property.

Malthusian

paddyrg wrote: »

I think security is pretty awful seeing as your property keys get shared with the world + dog. I stayed at a serviced apartment (not actually AirBnB but similar), great price but I didn't feel safe. The front door code was *0005, I was in apartment 3 (of 4), the front door code for it was *0003. Bet I can guess what the other apartment codes were!

Only if the other residents were also lazy enough to have never changed the default door code.

It does strike me as stupid to have a front door that is only locked via a keypad with no physical key. But on the off chance that you see one, you don't have to rent them via AirBNB to break into the ones with lazy owners. Anyone can try the obvious defaults (the door number, 0000, and 1234) without renting them via AirBNB first. (Then raid their bin to find out their name, then go on Facebook and see if they've left their date of birth public.)

If it had been physical keys, I could have easily cut copies and been able to do likewise - and more importantly, so could anyone else.

Breaking into people's houses via the time-honoured methods like jimmying or breaking a window at night, or pretending to be the meter reader, is likely to be far more profitable than spending £50-100 or more to rent the place via Airbnb.

PasturesNew

Increasingly they're used as Pop Up Brothels. These are now using airBNB and holiday lets - pop up .... sh4g for a few days or a week .... disappear.

theburningcat

If you can set up a good process for cleaning and handover, the ROI is much better. You could even rent properties the traditional way and sublet them on Airbnb to make a tidy profit in some cases.

chucknorris

theburningcat wrote: »

If you can set up a good process for cleaning and handover, the ROI is much better. You could even rent properties the traditional way and sublet them on Airbnb to make a tidy profit in some cases.

If I caught you doing this with one of my properties you would find yourself in court.

PasturesNew

chucknorris wrote: »

If I caught you doing this with one of my properties you would find yourself in court.

How'd you know + it'd take you a long time + they don't care as they've rented 10 at a time and are in the process of renting more.

michaels

chucknorris wrote: »

If I caught you doing this with one of my properties you would find yourself in court.

Note it was only the subletting that worried CN not the brothel-keeping.....

Note2 how come PN knows so much about this?

chucknorris

PasturesNew wrote: »

How'd you know + it'd take you a long time + they don't care as they've rented 10 at a time and are in the process of renting more.

Well No. 1 would be that I monitor it the website, I use it anyway, I just had 5 nights on the Isle of Man using that website in September.

Malthusian

PasturesNew wrote: »

How'd you know + it'd take you a long time + they don't care as they've rented 10 at a time and are in the process of renting more.

If they have enough spare cash to rent 10 at a time they might as well get a mortgage, buy their own rental properties, and make a lot more profit while saving themselves the legal costs and eventual damages.

chucknorris

michaels wrote: »

Note it was only the subletting that worried CN not the brothel-keeping.....

Note2 how come PN knows so much about this?

I wouldn't like either, but it would be far more difficult to discover the brothel angle, than the subletting.