All Forum Posts by: Ariel O.

@Kevin Dickson

I actually agree with you. OWNERS should be able to do what ever they want. The issues comes with renters subleasing to people who have not been vetted. You can call them "guests" but they basically turn your rental into a transient hotel.

Huge difference between you doing it as the owner of the property vs if you're the tenant. Agree?

@Azita S. 

There are a few issues and misconceptions here. 

The vast majority of AirBNB in 2015 are whole houses/apartments, and not "guests". AirBNB is simply a more successful version of VRBO , HomeAway etc.

I've stayed at plenty of AirBNB places and will continue to do so. The issue has to do with units that are violating contracts or sublets. Do other tenants in a building want comers and goers at all times of day and night? Because that's EXACTLY what happens. Go to Brooklyn, ask any of the tenants how they feel about it in their building, and they'll tell you it SUCKS. No one signed up to live in a hotel.

Family/Friends and AirBNB are not the same thing. Do you really want your tenant, whom you've screened, to have a constant turnover of new people [who he doesn't know?] in your property, when he's not there? If that's ok with you, then go for it. A lot of landlords don't like it though, and that's where the problem is.  (Also, AirBNB verifications are a joke. There's no background check on people checking in to YOUR apartment, and creating new profiles is trivial)

To recap: AirBNB is fine, as long as it's ok in your lease. I guarantee, though, that it's not ok within the leases most people sign.

Evict Evict Evict. 

Also, I am not sure if this makes you an accessory if you don't report. Consult a lawyer.

 There are lots of issues here:

1. 1. You as the property owner want to know exactly who you're renting to. 
2. 2. You have a legal contract specifying no subletting, which the tenant signed, enough said.
3. 3. If your property is rent controlled/rent stabilized, then the renters are illegally taking government subsidies and making money off of the difference. If you evict them, you can bring rents to market.
4. 4. As to this: "For those who are saying evict the current renters and do the airbnb yourself": you bought your property to get the most cash flow you can out of it, no?

The big elephant in the room here is the credit score/report. If you're submitting written applications that you have, make sure you are getting FULL access to the credit reports, not just a decision.

The reason SmartMove requires tenant authorization via email is that TransUnion doesn't want to credential every small landlord out there. Credentialing is the process required by the credit bureaus whenever you're given access to fill credit data and score, and almost always requires a site inspection. This is also the same process you see with Experian backed reports on sites like cozy.co.

If you want full access to credit reports including score without tenant authorization, whoever sells them to you needs to do a site inspection. If they don't, there's a 99% chance you're not getting the full credit data, so call up and ask.

Hope that helps

Ari

 That's just Credit with a little background check info thrown in for good measure, and requires your tenant to enter his own SSN.

For the small landlord I think you're better off doing it yourself. We have it as a service we offer to Property Managers but it's a whole call center and can get quite expensive pretty quickly.

If he's not going to pay the app fee, run like the wind. The great thing about even having the application is it filters out all the people who wouldn't pass.

The big thing about DUI for landlords is actually financial: Can your tenant still get to work if they take their driver's license away? Not a lot of people think about that one.

North Carolina specifically sells its court data to a whole bunch of companies but it cannot be accessed directly AFAIK.

Ari

 SmartMove etc are good for what they are, but not everyone has internet. You'd be surprised how many property managers don't want online applications, especially when you're not talking Class A properties.