

Tenants run risks in renting rooms - taylorbuley
http://www.metro.us/newyork/local/article/1047895--tenants-run-risks-in-renting-rooms

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tomkarlo
Basically, people renting out rooms for short stays via AirBnB to strangers,
for money, are running single-room hotels. They shouldn't be surprised that
they might be subject to the same rules as hotels - either be a licensed
lodging house, with all the regulations, inspections and requirements that
entails, or don't go into this business.

Folks can shirk the rules or say they don't like them, but there are real
reasons why hotels have to adhere to higher standards than private homes
around fire regulations, etc. If cities don't enforce these kinds of rules, a
landlord could just take an entire building, list it on AirBnB and completely
sidestep the local regulations and taxes related to offering lodging. (And I
suspect it's the lost taxes that city government are most concerned about
right now.)

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subpixel
Interesting. My sister pulled in almost $30k renting her awesome house in
downtown Charleston last year, but then the city contacted every host (through
AirBnB) threatening massive fines and even jail, and now there's barely a
place to be found downtown (where tourists want to go, natch).

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goodweeds
Another case of the 1% (hoteliers) colluding to keep the 99% (people looking
to monetize on their underutilized resources) down .

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loceng
I wonder how much lobbying hotels did to push this through.

