Many apartment dwellers have wondered whether they can rent out their own apartment for the week or weekend through a site like Airbnb.
You can Airbnb your apartment only if your lease agreement allows you to AND the state and local laws don’t prohibit a landlord or tenant from doing so.
Renting out your apartment on a short-term rental site may seem like a no-brainer. You are going to be gone for a week visiting family or maybe going on vacation and think that renting out your apartment like a hotel for a couple of days will be an easy way to make some money on your apartment while you are gone.
However, there are tons of things you need to think about before just taking some pictures and listing your site. Not only can you be evicted by your landlord by doing this, but you could also be doing something that is illegal according to your local laws.
Let’s take a look at some of the pros, cons and legal risks a tenant has with renting out their apartment on Airbnb.
Is It Illegal To Airbnb Your Apartment?
So, when we are looking at the laws regarding short term rentals, it isn’t just the tenant that has to be concerned about it, these laws cover the landlord in just the same way.
Say the landlord is thinking about setting up some of their units for short-term rentals instead of doing a longer lease, which is typically harder to get. The landlord sees that they can make much more money on rental income, and have tenants be occupying the apartment for a lesser amount of time if they list and rent with a place like Airbnb. It seems like a great way to make more money faster, right?
City laws in places such as San Francisco, New York City, New Orleans, and Vancouver all have laws that prohibit the renting out of properties for less than 30 days unless you are living in the apartment yourself. These laws are designed to protect the continually struggling housing markets of these major metropolitan areas, and regardless if they have a positive effect on this problem or not, you can receive some hefty fines if you are caught doing this.
And because the more active you are on these rental sites, the higher the profile you get, it is not going to take long before a fellow competitor, someone from the city or just a nosy neighbor will report you and you will be looking at steep fines on top of eviction.
Many people have now started to do this on the sly, using sites like Craig’sList to more discretely post their site for rent, hoping to avoid detection. But the problem for tenants trying to do this usually isn’t with the publicity on the sites, it’s with their own neighbors in their apartment complex. Nobody appreciates their neighbor’s apartment being a revolving door for strangers all month long.
Can I Be Evicted For Renting Out My Apartment On Airbnb?
I have written an article on subletting, and what are the risks and concerns of wanting to do so, and who has to be on a lease in an apartment. Why these two things matter is due to legal concerns and liability for both you and the landlord for who is staying and residing in the apartment building at any given time.
Renting out through an Airbnb-type site is essentially the same as subletting. If you start subletting your apartment out, whether it is on a short-term or long-term basis, and your lease doesn’t allow that, more than likely you are going to be evicted. Essentially, you are breaking the lease for subletting when the apartment doesn’t allow for it.
If your neighbors see that you have 6 different groups of people all saying at different times during the month, you can be guaranteed that they are going to say something to your landlord. They are living in an apartment, not a hotel, and don’t want it to be a hotel. Your neighbors may be the nicest people in the world, but when their lives are disturbed with you trying to make a bit of extra cash on your apartment, they are going to say something.
If your lease allows for subletting, the best thing to do is check with your landlord to MAKE SURE that they allow people to come in and rent short-term like Airbnb. Some apartment complexes will allow subletting and some won’t. But the last thing you want to have happen is getting an eviction notice when you were trying to scrape together a few hundred bucks to help pay the rent.
The Pro’s And Con’s Of Working With Airbnb
As I mentioned in my article about subletting, there are pros and cons to renting out your apartment to someone else.
If your apartment complex allows it, realize you are transitioning from the tenant to the landlord. You are going to now have all the risks the landlord has with you when you are renting.
How do you know that these people are going to be good renters? What if something happens to your apartment and it gets damaged while they are staying at your place? What if the renters steal something of yours? Do you have insurance to cover yourself if something happens during the rental term? How much am I actually going to get for renting out my apartment?
These are all questions you are going to have to ask yourself and get the answers before lending your apartment out for the weekend. But there isn’t just downside though.
If you travel a lot for work, perhaps you are not physically staying in your apartment 100% of the time, and it makes sense to subsidize some of your rental cost with some people who are willing to stay at your place for a few days at a time. Or maybe you have moved out of the apartment altogether but still, have a few months left on your lease. Renting your apartment out to several groups of people can be a great way to cover the cost of the rent you still owe.
The number one benefit people get for renting out their apartment to an Airbnb is the money. Some people will tell you “Oh, I just met some fabulous people and I am expanding my horizon…..etc”. This is just a justification to rent out their apartment and make some money, simple as that. There is essentially no other benefit to doing it, especially when you consider the risks involved.
The con’s of renting out your apartment online is a list as long as owning an apartment complex yourself…
You have to worry about the renters and what kind of people they are. When you applied to your apartment, you no doubt had to go through a pretty thorough process of having your background and credit check, along with references and proof of income and job security. The only thing the renters had to do on Airbnb is to provide their credit card information. You have no idea who is going to show up, how many of them are actually going to be there for the duration, and what condition they are going to leave your place in at the end. There is a reason all hotels hold your credit card for “incidentals”.
How they treat your place is going to be another concern. We all know people who rent a hotel room for the weekend just to party in it and end up leaving the entire place destroyed. The same goes for rental cars as well. How many times have we rented a car that has only a few miles on it and smells and feels like your grandparent’s house from the ’70s?
Once you rent your apartment out on Airbnb, you are going to understand exactly what the landlord is concerned about when he asks for your security deposit.
What Does Your Lease Say About Subletting?
The last thing you want to have happen to you is that you are evicted for renting out your apartment to someone else without permission. This means that the first thing you need to do is check with your lease, and your landlord, to see if what you are thinking about doing is allowed by the complex.
If it isn’t and the landlord or other tenants catch you doing it, you are going to be evicted. And if the laws of your city prohibit you from renting out your apartment on a short-term basis, you could get a hefty fine on top of it as well. And trust me, people watch for stuff like this!! If they can’t do it, neither can you, and they will make sure someone knows about it!
The easiest thing to do is just read a copy of your lease. If it does allow subletting, see what the restrictions are, if there are time limits, or if the people that sublet need to be on the lease. If they don’t need to be on the lease if they are there for less than 14 days, then you could be 100% in the clear to renting out your own apartment.
Also, check the local laws to make sure you don’t have any legal restrictions that would prevent you from doing this as well.
Is Being An Airbnb Host Worth It?
So, in the end, is it worth it to rent out your apartment on Airbnb?
That depends entirely on your situation, the local laws in your area, and what your lease agreement says.
If you are someone who travels a lot for work and is gone much of the time, or have an apartment that you may not want to live in anymore but want to cover the lease payments, or are just a bit cash-strapped and want to maximize the potential of your unit, then renting out through Airbnb can be worth it.
However, don’t forget that there are some significant risks to doing this as well. A single carpet cleaning because there was an “accident” is going to set you back more than whatever you received in the rental cost, no matter if there is a provision in the Airbnb agreement or not.
Additionally, you are not going to know the people who are staying there, they are going to be amongst your things without you being there for a period of time, and you have no idea how they are going to behave with regards to your permanent neighbors in the building as well. These are all things that you should consider before listing your apartment on Airbnb.
