Township changed ordinance rules for Airbnb, HELP!

[James Lauer]

Hello all,

I wanted to ask for everyone's help for a fairly large problem I am having for a rental I purchased. I purchased a duplex at a shore town in NJ. My township has changed the ordinance to 30 day MINIMUM for rentals. Although I can still get rentals for 1 month at a decent premium, it is not anywhere close to how much I can make through STR like airbnb/vrbo etc. Essentially my bottom line will likely be effected nearly 30-40% because of discounts I will have to give for longer stays.

I guess my questions are the following:

1. Has this happened to you? What did you do ? Did you sell, did you just continue to rent and accept fines/penalties, did you shift to mid term or long term rental?

2. Does anyone know if there is a way to remove public reviews on the Airbnb app, essentially the township zoning officer looks for properties in the town with more than a few reviews and that is how she determines if people are still renting the property out on a short term basis. I know this because I own another duplex and have ignored the rules the previous summer.

3. Has anyone hired attorneys or legal counsel to determine if what these towns are doing is actually legal, when it comes to enforcing STR rules?

This whole thing is very upsetting and silly as I see it to be a completely nonsensical rule change and not well thought out by my township.

Sorry if I rambled a bit, ANY HELP, is greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much

James

[Jay Hinrichs]

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

You will have to bring this up to legislators and try to change the law. Good luck with that.

Hawaii did the same thing. They restricted short-term rentals to one guest per month, then they said only one guest every 90 days. A group of STR owners fought it and I believe they won, but only after a couple years and a lot of money. And the new rule only applies to legacy STR owners, not new investors.

Your best bet is to comply with the law and see if your investment still works. If not, sell it and move to another investment/market.

I was in Honolulu last week and it was all over the news further tightening of Air bnb. part of the issues is the 9000 homeless after the Maui fire and owners not wanting to rent to those displaced..

Bottom line STR restrictions are just going to get tougher over the years so one needs to choose very carefully up front and also if your buying based on cash flow I would think you need to make sure your OK at long term market rent and base your buy on that.. if you get STR added revenue thats a Bonus.. there are areas of the country were STR will probably never get attacked like we are seeing in many markets.