My partner and I live in a rural, wooded gated community that must have decided to look the other way as far as regulating short term rental houses. When neighbors complain about short term rentals, the Airbnb hosts (who are homeowners in the gated community) probably just get small fines or warnings, which makes us believe they haven’t got any tickets; the same problems occur over and over with the same rentals: loud music, and other kinds of loud noises (guns, fireworks, parties) all day and night, burning fires without a fire pit (a rule in our community), garbage and littering, speeding, overusing our amenities, like the pool showers.
We think the community management doesn’t want to make waves with these homeowners because the community charges them fees to allow short term rentals. So it’s screw the homeowner who just lives here, because the Airbnb hosts are giving “revenue” to the community. At what expense? If the community doesn’t regulate them, the homeowners who live here will just move out.
Call us conspiracy theorists, but maybe that’s the management plan: make it so miserable for the full time homeowners that they move out, and turn this place into a rental community, where nobody lives here; it’s just a community of rentals. Another big problem is that they allow more people in the house than is permitted. For example, they have a four-bedroom house, but they advertise that it sleeps 24. Our so-called police safety crew will come if you call them, but they don’t do anything. State police won’t help because we are in a gated community. Bottom line: our serenity and peace and quiet and safety is regularly disturbed and we are stuck here until someone starts to regulate the short term rentals.
To answer your question about communities being ruined: airbnb couldn’t care less about your community. They are a for-profit entity and will only act in ways that promote profit. lawbreaking is not their concern. your sleep, serenity, property value, etc are meaningless to everyone who participates in this venture. they pride themselves on lawlessness and have “communities” online to offer each other tips on how to foil neighbors.
if you want to preserve your community, you will have to fight for it, and spend money on a lawyer. If you are cannot get other neighbors to join you, you might want to look for another place to live, one that explicitly forbids STVR and takes action against violators. The problem is international. I wish you luck.
Get a lawyer. Threatening letters to the AirBnB “host” can be helpful
I am in complete sympathy. I live next door to a house that was an Airbnb party house all summer of 2017. We constantly complained to both the owner and to Airbnb.