Evicting renter from a vacation rental property

[Cory T.]

Hello All,

I have a one-bedroom vacation rental condo in Palm Springs that has been listed on AirBnB for about a year now. I have my first stressful problem: a vacation renter with a 44 day reservation who will NOT leave now that the reservation has expired. (Payment was received for first 30 days, but not for the remaining 14 days). This is all new, to me, and I believe I have a professional scammer on my hands.

Unfortunately Airbnb has not provided support, and is only helping me via email responses every 48 hours or so. The information from Airbnb has been confusing, convoluded and contradictory at best. The summary is that somehow Airbnb collected payment for the first 30 days rental, and was unable to collect payment for the remaining 14 days. The renter has been there 14 days without paying. Today is the date that this reservation expires. (Original reservation May 25-July 8th.)

The tenant is refusing to leave, and sent me a text message this morning that borders on blackmail. I believe he is a professional scammer, and I now need to hire an attorney.

Has anyone had to deal with a similiar situation, or have advice to offer? Does anyone have a landlord-tenant attorney recommendation for the Palm Springs area?

Thanks for reading, and thanks for potential suggestions/solutions. 

Sincerely,

Cory

[Cory T.]

@Michaela G. Yes, while slow to help in the beginning, airbnb did come through in the end.
The substitute service (as scammers evaded process server) for the UD delayed things, but ultimately August 19th I got the place back. Maksym and Denys Pashanin had vacated sometime before that as a direct result of the media attention. As crazy as the press attention was, it certainly moved the timeline forward. This was my closure discussion with Emily Chang and Cory Johnson at Bloomberg West: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/airbnb-how-do-they-...

If any vacation rental owners have specific questions about this whole saga, feel free to direct message me.

Thanks again to all BP members for your support throughout this crazy ordeal.

Sincerely,

Cory

[Charlie Miller]

Glad this is over for you!  Hopefully these two wankers get jailed.  

[Account Closed]

Ya coulda turned the tables on them..

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/uknews/airbnb-flat-owner-jailed-for-raping-us-tourists/ar-BBh0WYb?ocid=DELLDHP

[Aaron Crow]

Wow, that is incredible.  What a crazy ordeal, but amazing learning experience for us.  Thank you for sharing and I am glad that you are through the other side of this experience.  

[Pete Peterson]

I spoke to a lawyer on the phone today who says that it's the same California legal process to evict someone whether they are less than 30-days or over 30-days.  Serve them notice, then they have 5 days to respond, then 20 days until the court hearing. 

[Justin Ericsson]

I'm thinking about making one of my houses an Airbnb rental... Anyone have any positive experience or advice? It's located in cook county illinois. I'm very familiar with rental laws but not sure about vacation rentals. 

[Alan Sparks]

Evicting a rental from a residential home or a vacation house, the procedure is the same and that is to follow a notice. In case of vacational house, there are many aspects that you can use to evict a tenant and in this concern it will be always fruitful to get a support from expert eviction professionals. Thanks for the conversation.

[Michaela G.]

Originally posted by @Alan Sparks:

Evicting a rental from a residential home or a vacation house, the procedure is the same and that is to follow a notice. In case of vacational house, there are many aspects that you can use to evict a tenant and in this concern it will be always fruitful to get a support from expert eviction professionals. Thanks for the conversation.

 You didn't read the thread, did you?

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Pete Peterson:

I spoke to a lawyer on the phone today who says that it's the same California legal process to evict someone whether they are less than 30-days or over 30-days.  Serve them notice, then they have 5 days to respond, then 20 days until the court hearing. 

This thread weirdly focused on and advised that CA vacation rental owners rent for less than 30 days, as if that would somehow avoid eviction proceedings.  If someone says they have rights to occupy the property, doesn't matter if they've been there 2 days or 2 years.  The police aren't coming to remove the occupant that says they have rights to stay.  It's a civil matter with civil due process.  The OP lost a few weeks of possession by not serving notice immediately.  This is common, as people want to try a workout and not pay an attorney and the $435 filing fee.  I do lots of cash for keys as I buy with a lot of bad holdover tenants.  Took me years to learn to serve notice and file the UD immediately, even while negotiating cash for keys.  It's about 50/50 who leaves without going all the way to a writ and sheriff lockout,  So I waste $500 on half of them but waste no possession time.  

[Paula Derie]

Even better than a biker is a really big cop. I would pay one a couple of hundred bucks to show up at the condo. People selling drugs can be evicted immediately. No slime ball con man wants to be arrested as a drug dealer.

[Andrew Yip]

Hi Cory, I'm kinda new with bigger pockets and airbnb. I would like to know how was this scammer end up?  were you able to kick him out after 3 days notice?

Also just curious do you need to apply for city permit /business license when you do airbnb?  Thank you

[Michaela G.]

Originally posted by @Andrew Yip:

Hi Cory, I'm kinda new with bigger pockets and airbnb. I would like to know how was this scammer end up?  were you able to kick him out after 3 days notice?

Also just curious do you need to apply for city permit /business license when you do airbnb?  Thank you

 If you read the thread, then you'll know how it ended

[Andrew Yip]

Thanks Michaela... I replied after the first page.. ughh.. .. should have scrolled to next page.. wow 11 pages long

[Kenneth LaVoie]

Do you have 2-3 guys you trust who are extremely old fashioned and conservative and own certain baseball acceleration tools??? (yeah, not helpful, but we all go there once in a while, don't we?)

[Diane Spangler]

@Cory T.  Hi Cory, I'm currently wanting to purchase a vacation rental in the desert area and came across your unfortunate incident.  It would traumatizing to deal with, so I was curious how you resolved it, if you would be so kind to share.  I know there are risks involved in vacation rentals, but learning from experienced owners tips to prevent possible risks is beneficial.  Also, do you still own the unit and if so, what are your thoughts about vacation rentals in general (are the profits worth the headaches) and what do you think the best areas in the desert markets are to consider since Palm Springs is placing strict ordinances on vacation rentals?   Thanks— Diane

[Michael Mueller]

I read this thread with interest. I have a question. If the same thing happened with a 30 day vacation rental stay in Los Angeles (rent controlled area), would I run the risk of never being able to kick them out for the rest of my life? (Slight variation of the scheme - vacation renter pays rent, but falls under L.A. rent control laws.)

[Carlos Carbajal]

x

[Carlos Carbajal]

@Michael Mueller yes but what rent control means is that your guest would be locked into whatever the original rate is they booked for their 30-day stay.  So lets say they paid you $5000 for 30 days then yes they could just decide to squat and not leave but they would be on the hook legally for that $5000 every 30 day period after that.  Rent control just means that $5000 can only go up a certain amount indexed to inflation every year.  The rate you get for your vacation rental is much higher than what you could get as a normal unfurnished rental so I am going to assume you would be OK with that in the unlikely event that happens :)

[John Pate]

You may not be able to turn off the electricity but what about the cable, broadband, and phone? I'd consult the lawyer but try to make less pleasant for the deadbeat.

[Michaela G.]

John Pate, you only read the initial post, didn't you?

[Tyson James]

Hi Cory, 

I've had a similar issue before, with the exception that I've always been paid in full. When a guest tries to over-stay, I simply let myself in and start cleaning.  I tell them the next guest will arrive very soon, so they need to go.  If they give me any trouble, I let them know I'll call the police for trespassing.  You would need to check with a lawyer to be certain, but I believe they don't have the right to stay without a lease.  If you're intimidated, you could also hire a security guard for an hour to do the talking for you.  

[Paul Sandhu]

Had a problem with some of my renters.  3 guys had been splitting $400/week for about 46 weeks.  One guy left.  The two remaining guys thought they just had to pay $133 each, and that's all they would pay.

So I had their electric and water meter removed on a Monday morning.  I even found them someone else's furnished house to move in to and gave them the number.  I go by Wednesday and see that they had used 2 heavy duty scissors wrapped in electrical tape to make jumpers across the terminals of the meter box. 

Called the city and they cut the line at the pole, police took pictures.

Turns out the person that they are now renting from is the city engineer.  The city engineers father used to be the plant manager at the refinery where the 2 guys I kicked out work at.

[Dominic Metzger]

I run a corporate/business rental from my home and luckily I haven't had any issues with guests becoming such a problem.  The only time where a guest did stay over their limit was using AirBnB to fill a gap, when they forgot to ask for an extension, which resulted in me charging them an emergency booking fee (which I completely made up on the spot).   

When renting for longer than 1 month I make sure to put in writing that while they have right to use the property on a temporary basis, I have full rights to retain use of the property with 30 day notice.  However, this IS My primary residence as well so perhaps that makes it easier to resolve.  I also only give month to month leases that have to be renewed frequently with money up front.  Unlike a normal long-term lease I never include passive language such as a lease being assumed to be renewed if no one terminates it. 

I'd probably just cycle the alarm system off and on every 10 minutes until they left

[Jeremy Z.]

Originally posted by @Michaela G.:

Did you read this comment?

"If the Airbnb screenpic of the renter since removed by SFGate was correct the "tenant" is a software engineer from Austin TX whose experience includes "Global platform for web applications that allows to manage bookings for property owners and supports online-booking by travelers"(indeed.com) . Interesting since he presumably works for SoftServe (linkedin.com) the Ukranian company who handled the web development of Airbnb's competitor HomeAway. "

There may be more to this than just a squatter, if the above is correct

 Just discovered this fascinating thread and I when I got to the above comment I did a bit of a double-take when I saw HomeAway mentioned. A few comments prior I tried visiting the OP's blog (www.myairbnbsquatter.com) and was disappointed to see it now redirects to HomeAway's website. Dun dun duuuuun!

[Adam Harper]

@Jeremy Z. Just discovered this thread. Engrossing! Read through 12 pages in couple of hours. This could be a movie—I'm speaking as a screenwriter.