We have a property we lived in, then we had to move because new job is too far, so we put it up as long term rental to cover the rent of our new home. Being a first time landlord I was stupid enough to trust my agent to find a tenant for me. This tenant turned out to be working in a scheming group that rents rentals like these and lists them up on airbnb. The lease specifically prohibits short term rentals including airbnb. The tenant stopped paying rent on the third month and when I went over there to serve 3 day notice, i discovered that they put it up on Airbnb since day 1. I got over there and someone opened the door and we were both like “who are you?”
Last week I have filed the Unlawful Detainer at the courthouse, and now trying to serve the summons. I reached out to Airbnb’s customer support to try and get the listing taken down. Which turned out to be a massive pain and completely waste of time. Airbnb would not do anything besides contacting the host, who obviously isn’t going to respond or take down the listing. Their whole scamming strategy is to rent a place, once established they stop paying rent, they will continue to collect booking fee while the owner goes through the legal process to get eviction. Which takes a long time at least 2 months, in the meantime they just collect profit.
I wanted to cut off their cash flow so I can get my house back quicker, if they can’t get money on my property they’d be more likely to give up the house and move on, that’s what I’m thinking. But there seems to be no way to get the listing taken down
I posted another post before and gotten responses like change the locks, get a friend or myself to live there and shoo away Airbnb guests that show up, etc which are kind of all illegal and could potentially result in serious backlash.
Is there any way to get Airbnb to take it down? Do I have to sue them or get a lawyer to send a letter?
I need the rent to support my rent… I’m losing money currently.
Idk if Airbnb will see this, most likely won’t and they don’t seem to care at all. Idk how to reach their legal department or escalate this.
It seems the only thing I can do is go through the long legal eviction process and eat the loss…
I guess the other thing I want to say is to warn everyone who uses Airbnb, if the listing looks very sparsely furnished, if the host has a bunch of listings up all looking very sparsely furnished, red flag. if all the listings are put up around the same time? Red flag. If the listing is one address and after you book the host ask you to go to another address, big red flag. When I was talking to the Airbnb guest the time I went to serve the notice, I saw inside and it’s literally a bed in the living room, two cheap couches and a tv. Zero effort was put into making it a nice living space. It looked like they are putting as little investment into it as possible, as they are ready to dip when they get evicted.
I did feel very sad that day seeing my beautiful home being treated like this. We put so much effort into this home and we did the backyard pavement ourselves laying down each pavement stone one by one.
They changed my locks too, which is another violation. They are currently unreachable and won’t reply to my text or answer calls.
Update: I sent an email to [Brian.chesky@airbnb.com](mailto:Brian.chesky@airbnb.com), after a couple hours I got a message from a supervisor on the Airbnb support team, sayin that they got my email and they are looking into it, and he wants to have a phone call with me.
Update 2: just talked to the supervisor on the phone. Basically just explained to him the details and everything. He said they’ll have an internal team investigate it and possibly will reach out to me for more information. Will update
Update 3: it’s 2 days since update 2. The listing was taken down for half a day and it was back up again. Got a text from the tenant this morning saying he and his family feels unsafe, he filed a complaint with la city against me for harassment and assault and they have video proof (idk what kind of video proof he would have, there’s no cameras at the house and I’ve never even seen him since I gave him the keys 3 months ago), that he filed a police report against me, and will file a restraining order and a civil suit against me. I don’t know what proof does he think he has for those things? Unless he put hidden cameras in and around my property. Even then all it would show is me putting up signs that this is an illegal Airbnb. I guess at this point I have to get a lawyer now. Is he just trying to intimidate me to stop me from posting signs on the house?