Any tips for busting residents who illegally AirBNB their apartments?

Any tips for busting residents who illegally AirBNB their apartments (short of booking them yourself)? It's a lease violation with us as it is at most communities. We have a few active listings at my property and I want to bust them stat. Most of them are using our model photos.

They don't even have pictures of their own apartment WTH.

Jose Maciel No. One does. The other four just snagged our model and amenity photos from our website.

Alex Mann those could be scammers. Lot if that going on.

Mike Powers Even more important that we find out who they are

Alex Mann hold on you have 5 tenants doing it??? You must be in a good ABNB spot. Your company may want to consider doingbit themselves.So when someone actually rents the ABNB they are going to walk in to something completely different SMH. Issues like this is why I've considered only writing M2M contracts.

Alex Mann to piggyback on Mike's answer, contact them and act as if they must be fake and find out if they need help reporting a fraudulent listing.

Brooke Frederickson I need to know who the resident is first, which I can't tell based on the listing as they all have the building address but not the unit #. And the photos don't help.

Alex Mann oh yeah that is a problem. I think you can still report the listing though although I admit I'm not sure how that process works.

Alex Mann they should list a name as a host on the listing. Cross check that to your leases and screen shot listing. Send lease violation notices. Document heavy

Heather Taylor No such luck. I think they're all partnered with a 3rd party entity. No host names match a resident's name.

Alex Mann you can message a host without booking. Perhaps create a fake airbnb account and message with questions about unit that might help. Such as are these actual pictures of unit, does it allow smoking, what type of view, is it close to pool., etc

Heather Taylor I'm going to do that. I also reported the listings to AirBNB and told them about our community's policies on AirBNBing and the negative guest experience that will be had when someone who books shows up to find out they can't check in.

Alex Mann contact them through airbnb..ask for info.

Mike Powers Don't you think they'd be spooked by questions clearly aimed at determining the unit #? We know they're at our property. We just need the apartment #s.

Alex Mann booking info....their email contact info shows up....phone # for issues etc.

Is it listed in your lease that they can’t rent the units out on any platform? We had to add that clause. If you have it, go after them for a lease violation.

Which I just might do, but hoping there's another way

Unfortunately you have to reach out to those listings. Screenshot and use as proof when you issue violations. Frequently check in on those units. Then report to Airbnb. Leave bad reviews on their listings.We had a guy who kept airbnbing. We usually caught it because his guests would come to the lobby. Made it easy on us cause it was his guests getting him caught. Then just get their details of their stay if they are willing to help you.

Allie Gartside I just had one guest come to the lobby yesterday for keys, that made that bust easy. But most of them here are pretty slick. Can I leave a bad review if I haven't booked their listing?

Alex Mann It’s been a while so it may have changed but if you had an account you could log in. Also reach out to Airbnb directly. Have your legal team prepare something or write something up. Cause when I called and was just like “Hey this is against our lease” they didn’t do anything.

In my experience, Airbnb has done nothing to take the listings down. Even when explaining that we’re the landlord and it’s a lease violation. And you can’t leave a review on Airbnb unless you have an account. I personally didn’t want to go that route. We ended up terminating their lease early due to the lease violation. One of ours kept renting her apartment out right up until the writ was posted!

Emily Munson How did you bust them?

Alex Mann I sent an email asking for them to take the post down, which was ignored. That’s when we went the legal route. I did have screenshots everything and saved the link just in case. Also saved the emails with Airbnb.

AirBnB is considered sublease the apartment which is a major lease violation, make sure you have all your information. Lease violations and documents before sending it to the attorney for eviction process

Jerry Davis Yep that's why I'm trying to bust them

We have seen an uptick in "corporate lease" inquiries. During your "ask the best questions" phase of leasing, it is so important to really drill down into what they are using the apartment for. We have been able to shut down 3 in the prospect phase. We had 1 in particular that stated it was for a Traveling nurse company. Everything seemed to be checking out but the company was too new. Our corporate office made the decision for the owner of the company to personally take responsibility for the lease. The owner had a melt down. As we pressed further he was also upset that I would not allow him to hang a lockbox for his "clients" on our drive gate. Then it all came out. We are also getting scammers applying on line and paying the fees. Then they cancel within the 72 hours and think we are going to refund the fees before the fees they paid clear the bank. We are in crazy times folks.

Sherry Tompkins we have certain wait time for fee refunds because of this problem. We want the money to clear the bank or credit card before we refund.

Grace Law exactly

A lot of times you can message the host with questions and they will have their name in the response.

We had a couple people doing it and not doing a great job either so we went into two vacant units, completely remodeled them, furnished them, and put them on Airbnb ourselves. Made just under $70k in 2022 from those two airbnbs alone.

Evict them

Check for key boxes, that require combo codes to open, that are attached to your gates or side entrances. That's always a sure sign of an airbnb. Then use a label maker to print "See office before opening" on it. The Airbnb guests have no idea that your property doesn't allow it. So they will walk right on into your office and tell you which apartment they are checking in to.

Best solution: Utilizing digital parking permits with an enforcement company is crucial. I have been suggesting Parkeaz for resident and guest registrations and Parkmobile for communities that want to monitize their parking in retail and visitor sections.

I spent 15 years in the property management field before finally starting Citywide Parking Services LLC. We currently handle the parking enforcement side of things and find ourselves booting 2-10 airbnbs a day from the 30+ luxury gated apartments we monitor in Atlanta, GA.

I have found that it's a very time consuming task for office managers to try and take on. Our service was created to take on the challenge free of charge to the property and then charge the Airbnb hosts $75 to remove the boots from their guests cars when they park without a permit or if not properly registered.


Chris Haseltine
404-664-8543

I would ask them for an actual picture of the view from the patio door or whatnot. Just tell them it look like stock pictures and you want to be sure of what you are renting. Good luck! That has to be SO frustrating!

For the past 4-5 years, Local county governments use services for monitoring short term rental violations and non-payment of rental tax.

That said, I’ve noticed a huge uptick in the last 2 years in the multifamily space where residents are listing out their unit on AirBNB/VRBO. I’ve seen residents get very creative when creating listings to avoid detection.

It became such an issue for a few of our larger complexes (300+ units), it was effecting our lease renewal rate and of course, residents leaving 1 star reviews.

With my past experience in local gov rental compliance monitoring, we felt it was worth creating a system specifically for multifamily.

Like others said, it’s extremely time consuming. And difficult to detect in more serious cases. All you can do is go through the hassle of scouring rental apps/sites as a secret shopper.

The system we created to automate a lot of this is in-house, I’d be interested to know if any larger property management firms are running into similar issues.