Pretty much all tenancy agreements will have terms written into them that prevent you from sub-letting your property to others. Despite this, it’s a practice that is remarkably common, especially since the arrival of platforms such as Airbnb.
If you have spare capacity in your property then renting them out on sites like that can be a serious money spinner, so it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that some estimates suggest up to 75% of Airbnb listings are just such illegally sublet rooms.
Trouble ahead
All of which makes it perhaps unsurprising that a number of services are emerging to help landlords fight back against tenants that are breaking their terms. One such service, called Building Snitch, tracks sites such as Airbnb and alerts landlords if their properties appear on any of them.
It follows hot on the heels of Huntbnb, which offered a similar service, albeit a short-lived one as the site closed recently due to lack of financial success.
The makers of Building Snitch hope to prove more sustainable. They’re offering landlords a subscription based service that will allow a range of rental sites, including Airbnb, Couchsurfing and Homeaway, to be monitored.
As Airbnb don’t provide street addresses of their properties, the Building Snitch algorithm will instead use publicly available information on the site together with a bit of human detective work to locate illegally sublet properties.
Airbnb doesn’t provide street addresses on its site, so Building Snitch will rely on search algorithms that comb publicly available information on short-term rental websites, as well as human detective work, to figure out which listings correspond to which buildings. It’s the kind of surveillance San Francisco has failed to do effectively thus far, and although Building Snitch doesn’t plan to partner with any cities or municipalities yet, the co-founders say they’ve “definitely thought about the idea.”
Should a landlords property be found on any of the sites, the landlord is immediately notified, allowing them to take suitable action. The site is due to launch shortly, and it will certainly be interesting to see the impact it has on the number of properties listed on Airbnb et al.
Hopefully Airbnb will modify the platform to prevent such scraping to take place.
It's about time that Airbnb were made to abide by the rules. Long overdue.
Isn't this basically requiring that people rat on their neighbors? Who would do such a thing?
Many landlords in spain do whatever they want legal or illegally, if you have the cash you can hire cops to also do the same to them, i have heard of death threats, breaking and entering, neighbors picking locks, police harassing sub tenants legally in premises and so on.
If you have spare capacity in your property then renting them out on sites like that can be a serious money spinner, so it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that some estimates suggest of Airbnb listings.
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I am in the process of ratting everyone out here in amsterdam.
Because of rent increases caused by government decisions i am effectively forced out of my appartement and have no choice but to buy a property here.
So i have been trying to find a decent appartment in amsterdam for a year now and one speculator after another snitches the appartments away from me to turn them in airbnb hotels.
There is a huge housing bubble going on in amsterdam and airbnb plays a major part in it.
Airbnb is totally illegal because the mortgage banks don't allow it and most owner association don't allow it either.
If i would buy an appartment now i would be forced to do airbnb as well to make ends meet, effectively forcing me into illegal airbnb activities.