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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I was going to say that vacation rentals have been around since people lived in caves.

The surprise isn't so much that money can be made but that people are rather brazen about breaking lease terms and laws (which I believe are reasonable; who wants an everchanging parade of random, unvetted people traipsing through the hallways?).

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Someone's renting their place out on airbnb or similar in my building (in NYC) and it kinda sucks. Most people are just rude but otherwise uneventful, but some are noisy, some smoke outside my window, some can't figure out how trash works. Some lock themselves out at 4:30am and buzz and bang on my window until I let them in since my buzzer is the only one that works. Not sure what to do.

Make a fuss with the landlord. The standard lease agreement in NYC requires landlords to be informed of subleases in writing. They can object with a reasonable basis.

If someone who I didn't know was banging on my window at 4:30am asking to get into my building, I'd call the cops.

Heh, yeah I mean people do get locked out though sometimes... gotta do the neighborly thing.

Calling the LL / Calling the cops are a bit more of a nuclear option that I'm looking for; I just want to find out who's doing it so I can discretely ask them to inform their renters of a few things. I don't want to see airbnb go away :)

Most people never really technically lived in caves, its only most artifacts of stone age people that wasn't washed away with time was found in caves.

That being said, I'm sure you can find a cave-based Airbnb rental. [1]

[1] https://www.airbnb.com/wishlists/stay-in-a-cave

I imagine a major difference is that most vacation rentals are rented out by the owner of the unit, whereas it seems like a lot of Airbnb rentals are being offered by tenants who are under existing rental agreements (which likely stipulate they can't sublease without permission from the landlord).

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