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Comment by apaprocki | Hacker News Reader

As someone on the condo board of a building, I can guarantee you that we don't need any data dump to locate people illegally renting out units in our building. We regularly look on AirBnB and VRBO for units within our building that are easily identifiable through the photographs in the listing and fine anyone in violation of the condo rules.

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Other than the fact that such rentals are against the rules (malum prohibitum), has your condo board seen actual damages from such website-mediated-rentals, making the practice wrong in-and-of-itself (malum in se)?

The rules probably date back to when such arrangments were often quite sketchy and informal, whereas the Airbnb era adds traceable payments/stay-records, sticky reputations linked to real-world identities, and a commercial-entity's own "guarantee" against harms. So would the board consider waiving those rules under certain situations? It seems the option to rent out property in some cases will protect or improve the property's value... which I presume is one of the major goals of the condo board.

The rules date back to when I and the rest of the board put them into effect a few months ago. I can't imagine a situation where the option to short-term rent will ever increase property value. We have had short-term rental guests not obey other condo rules and cause damage / mess within the common areas of the building. The minimum rental period in our building is 12 months and we do not wish anyone sharing our common elements for a time period less than that. Everyone in the building is free to disagree, vote us out, then change the policy, but no one has expressed any desire to change this policy.

Thanks for your answers. Do you know if the problematic short-term guests came via Airbnb or some other avenue?

"No one has expressed any desire to change the policy" - not even the people who've been fined? (Were they renters subletting, or owners flaunting the rules?)

The unit that caused the biggest problem was listed on 2+ sites, so it is unclear which guests came from which platform. The person previously renting (an owner) ignored multiple requests to stop and only stopped when a fine was introduced. In the NYC market these situations can be very profitable so it is in the renter's/owner's interest to break the rules as much as they feel they can get away with until the equation no longer becomes profitable. This is how condo boards fight the situation -- the fines have to be heavy enough that it impacts the profitability of the entire concept. The condo board is in a position to put a lien on the unit for the money owed, so owners can not ignore the rules without potentially severe consequences.

But it's clearly more than "no one" would would like to pursue this profitable opportunity without fines, right? (Maybe they're the kind of people who don't show up and vote at condo association meetings, but presumably they're not voting in favor of the rules/fines but then blatantly violating them.)

Good idea to put "guarantee" in scare quotes. If Airbnb had an actual guarantee that landlords or tenants could depend on their terms and conditions would not be as scary as the are: https://www.airbnb.com/terms

Note especially this heartwarming section: "You acknowledge and agree that you and Airbnb are each waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class action or representative proceeding. Further, unless both you and Airbnb otherwise agree in writing, the arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims, and may not otherwise preside over any form of any class or representative proceeding."

What could possibly go wrong?

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