Tag Archives: airbnb neighbors

Airbnb Neighbors Make Nightmare of a Summer in Palomares

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I bought a house on a very quiet street in Palomares, Almeria, Spain. I was told the house right next to me was empty because the owner lived in Barcelona. I should have asked more questions.

My first night in the new house was a nightmare. Eight young men were staying in the house next door as an Airbnb for three days and were determined to create their own “Dream Beach” (a yearly electronic music festival in the neighborhood) with loud music, constant screaming and of course much drinking. I had to flee to a hotel.

The owner of the house responded and promised to “talk to them,” yet this made no difference. This nightmare continued throughout the summer, with some reasonable guests in between. The problem is that the house is very big — it sleeps nine. The noise goes through the entire street because the main terrace of the house is on the frontside.

This Airbnb next door has made my house uninhabitable. You cannot have any guests overnight. The worst thing is the uncertainty. Every time a new group arrives, you are worrying how they will be: would the weekend be bearable, or would it be a nightmare? You typically know in the first few minutes.

The owner tried to prevent me from filing a “denuncia” and appeased me by saying that the house was already sold and that September would be the last month of renting. This turned out to be not true and the house continues to list on Airbnb as a “Superhost” property.

I don’t know now to end this nightmare. I have started a petition with signatures of all affected neighbors but I don’t know where to go with it. The house has a license. I am trying to have that license taken away. I am trying everything. I am desperate.

Pending Birth + COVID-19 + Airbnb = Stress

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My wife and I have been living in an apartment inside a six-unit villa for 12 years now. Everyone else that lives here is an owner, except for the couple who bought the unit above us a couple of months ago.

The place was vacant and on the market for almost a year, which was great for us, but in saying that, we were delighted to meet the couple who bought the place, as we’re all friendly neighbours in the villa and look out for one another. Upon introducing myself, I kindly asked if they would be renting it out, or staying there themselves, to which they blatantly lied to my face saying it will be for them or family as they were yet to decide.

A couple of months went by. They frequent the place, often quite late to furnish the apartment, many times around midnight. It is around this time when the COVID-19 outbreak kicks into high gear and our state puts in strict rules and guidelines regarding isolation, interstate travel and social gatherings.

We didn’t even know it was an Airbnb until their very first guests mentioned it whilst on one of many loudspeaker calls on the balcony. The language these guys use would make a sailor weep. Every second word was either f*ck or c*nt.

It was during one of these loud and obnoxious phone calls that we overheard him say he had traveled from interstate and had to self-isolate for 14 days. We found this odd, as we had seen him out visiting the liquor store and take out restaurant around the corner just a few days earlier.

My wife is expecting our first child in under a week and we have been completely cut off from our friends, from our family and from our support network. Yet this asshole strolls about risking everyone in the community, laughing at the threat of a $1000 on the spot fine for breach of quarantine.

To top it off, this prick had two guests over last night, which is also against the rules that are needed to curb the spread of this virus. The blaring of Eminem and System of a Down at 11:00 PM is the least of my worries right now. The fact that this is the first “guest” is a worrying sign of things to come.

It’s not the dream we had when starting a new family. We now feel alienated in our own home. Screw the owner for lying to our face and not providing a phone number to contact her. Screw the asshole guests who aren’t taking this pandemic seriously and screw Airbnb. I shouldn’t have to feel petty about this.

Anti-Social Behaviour from Guests Escaping Pandemic

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We had a family move into our village Poulton Gloucestershire Airbnb. They have been here since Friday before the lockdown and are still here. Their anti-social behaviour is getting worse.

Their rubbish piled high at the property will be too much for the district council to remove. They are loud, unruly, and acting as if they are on holiday and not compliant with a pandemic and lockdown. They are flouting every social rule that we are all trying to respect as this unprecedented time. They are raucous and have no respect for social distancing.

I am sure they believe that now that they are in Gloucesterhire, they are immune to COVID-19. We have an elderly community and I feel that Airbnb has been irresponsible to allow people to circumnavigate the government guidelines. My next step is to lodge a complaint with Cotswold District Council and then my MP.

Monster Airbnb Next Door Ruining my Family’s Life

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Seven years ago my husband and I built our dream home in a nice neighborhood in Austin. When two large homes began construction on a single lot next door, we were bummed by how huge and close to us they were, but looked forward to having new neighbors in any case.

Once the homes were finished, we realized with horror that both were being used illegally as Airbnbs. Each home is nearly 3,000 square feet, five bedrooms, and hosts up to 14 people. Each unit has a hot tub that sits directly under our windows, less than twenty feet away from our home.

As soon as they began operating in October 2019, our lives were shattered. Groups of party goers began rotating through both units every weekend. Music, laughter, shouting and cursing came from both hot tubs at least once a week, usually more. A bachelor party brought prostitutes over and took turns having sex in the hot tub until 7:00 AM. Another group casually chatted at full volume about buying some cocaine for their party.

One of the units has two giant second-floor windows that directly overlook our property, including our outdoor spaces, and guests like to stand at those windows and watch us like we’re animals in a pen. If I were to list every instance of a disturbance, this post would be longer than the Old Testament.

Since October, we’ve filed 17 Code complaints, and called the police on five different occasions (though our police department is so understaffed, and noise complaints are so low-priority, they responded only once). We’ve written to our council member, neighborhood association, and exchanged several dozen emails with the Code Department.

After receiving multiple violations for operating illegally, and having their guests confronted by code officers, the investors applied for a license granted only to owner-occupied STRs, by claiming the units as their “primary residence”, and actually received them (for one). The Code Department admitted in an in-person meeting that they did not want to grant the license to these operators, and tried to find a way to deny it, but were forced to issue it according to regulations.

Today our nightmare continues. We can’t sleep in peace. Our privacy, comfort, health, and safety are completely compromised. I’m suffering anxiety-related health effects. We are at a point where either they stop hosting, or we will need to move. It’s terrifying to consider that we might actually lose our home over this, but the stress of living next to this nightmare is just not worth it.

I’ve been carpet-bombing Airbnb “neighbors” with complaints for months, but have received zero support. This week Airbnb actually “temporarily suspended” the listing, but the host just turned it back on immediately. When I asked Airbnb how this can qualify as a suspension, they said they can’t release details due to privacy reasons. We finally filed a case at the municipal court, and hope whatever comes of that succeeds in finally bringing us some relief.

Respect your Neighbors: Take Your Business Elsewhere

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We moved into our neighborhood two years ago. We have dogs that bark, who we have always worked with and who we continue to work with. We always stand up and stop their aggression.

Our neighbors, who have never talked to us, let us have it tonight because they want to run an Airbnb in our neighborhood. They have let us know that they will call the cops, even with intermittent barking (which we address each and every time) because our daily lives disturb their guests.

We will not abuse or give up our dogs. We feel that they choose to run a business in a neighborhood. Therefore it is not our responsibility as neighbors to accommodate their business. Full disclosure: We run an Airbnb in another local neighborhood. We tell our guests that our neighbors live here and they don’t. This is not a hotel district.

Semiautomatic Shots Fired: Sounded Like A War Zone

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Shots rang out in very close proximity to my home at approximately 10:35 PM, on the evening of January 31st. My wife and I heard a series of around fifteen rapid-fire gun reports that sounded like semiautomatic weapons discharge occurring just outside of my home. These reports occurred in rapid succession and extremely loud.

Shortly after the shots were fired, we heard a vehicle drive off to the south. We immediately called 911 to report the incident and were placed on hold for approximately three to five minutes until an operator answered. We described the sound of the gunshots and relayed our location to the operator.

We remained inside our home for approximately ten minutes, and when we heard no more activity outside we went out to look for any evidence of the gunshots. We noticed that there were some young people loitering on the sidewalk opposite a house. We also saw several other people leaving the house and driving off.

The street had over thirty cars parked up and down from the house when it occurred; it appeared that a large party had been going on. A neighbor said she saw over fifty underage teens at that party, and that they were drinking liquor.

After about twenty to thirty minutes, police subsequently responded to the incident and determined that multiple shots were fired across the street from the party house. This home has a history of loud, disruptive parties.

Around ten armed police officers responded to the scene. Numerous young adults were observed leaving the house after the shots were fired. These people drove away from the neighborhood, but we also observed numerous cars and trucks driving by the house, for about another hour.

We spoke with the drivers of a few of the cars and asked them if they were staying as rental guests at the house. All of them replied that they were not. Altogether, we estimate that around fifty cars drove by or were parked in the immediate vicinity of the party house immediately following the gunfire.

I was able to take photographs of several of the passing vehicles’ license plates and all of the vehicles parked on the street. The line of cars ranged around a third of the way down the block from the house in both directions.

One of the drivers who stopped in front of the house said he was looking for “Derik”. He had a heavy accent and he kept pointing to his cell phone, which had the name Derik and what looked like a GPS map displayed with the local neighborhood and the house.

I spoke with several of the people exiting the house and asked them if they were staying at that house. Not a single person I spoke with was actually staying there as a rental guest. They were all apparently there for a party.

Shell casings were found on the ground and the police requested that everyone remain in their homes. The police officers discovered shell casings at the foot of the driveway of my next-door neighbor, whose home sits directly across from the party house. By the shape of these casings, they appeared to have come from an AR-15 or a similar sized rifle.

My wife and I were very disturbed that this type of activity was occurring so close to our home, literally next door. This house has been a source of continually occurring disruption in the neighborhood.

Back on Friday, October 25th, I had heard loud noises coming from the vicinity east of my home. After going outside to investigate on that October night after midnight, I discovered that the noise was coming from the backyard of the home. I had noticed earlier that day that there were numerous cars parked outside of the home, so many that they had impeded traffic on the same street.

After receiving a message from the neighborhood watch block captain whose home sits across from the home, we continued in a discussion that lasted several days, gathering information about the disruptions occurring at that home we dubbed the “party house” due to ongoing unsupervised parties. I had a meeting with officials from the City of Albuquerque following the incident on October 25th but no action was taken because the city coordinator said there were too few police reports.

After the gunshot incident, my wife and I spoke with the neighbors across the street and also with the neighbors further east of them. I telephoned the next-door neighbor of the party house who also hosts an Airbnb rental and asked him if he knew what was going on or if he had heard the shots, but he told me that he was currently out of town.

One of the residents close to the party house captured the weapons report on their doorbell camera. Apparently the sound was close enough and loud enough to activate the ring recorder in the doorbell of the resident who was across the street from where the incident occurred. There were about fifteen shots fired.

The report was extremely loud, rapid-fire shots from what sounded like a semiautomatic weapon. Several neighbors have confirmed this. My wife was in the kitchen of our home only about 30 feet away from where those shots were fired and she was terrified about it. It sounded like a war zone in our neighborhood.

After the police arrived, we found shell casings on the ground which looked like possibly AR-15 or AK-47 casings. The police told us that they would be taking photographs and making an official report about the casings found. We were also concerned that the police took nearly a half an hour to respond to this situation, which was also the case at the Orinda Airbnb slaughter.

As concerned residents of this Albuquerque neighborhood, we believe that the Albuquerque Police Department should have a plan in place to rapidly investigate and contain active shooter incidents more quickly, before many people can be harmed. Also, of additional concern to us as neighborhood residents is the fact that an online police report cannot be made regarding noise complaints or other serious disruptions of peace in the neighborhood or community.

We request that the Albuquerque Police Department create an additional category for online police reports that include incidents such as this. This house where the party was taking place is known as an Airbnb rental that has been a continuing source of irritation for our neighborhood with loud, unsupervised parties.

Despite complaints directly to Airbnb, this home is still listed as an Airbnb rental as of January 31st. We have been in contact with the City of Albuquerque regarding past noise complaints. But this situation is now much more severe. We are only grateful nobody got hurt, but the entire neighborhood got a wake-up call about the party house.

This gunfire incident is extremely disruptive to the peace and safety of our neighborhood, my wife and I request that the city terminate all rentals of the property, which has been the host for these kinds of disruptive parties. The owner of the home is not present to supervise such parties, and our concern is that such parties could get out of hand, as has occurred at other Airbnb parties that were unsupervised, resulting in fatalities.

There are some other neighbors who host guests in their homes as members of Airbnb, but their conduct is respectful, considerate, and non-disruptive. I believe that the party house needs to be closed down and no more rentals allowed.

Drunk Airbnb Guest Wandering the Neighborhood

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Last night, at 10:30 PM, a truck drove down the driveway, past my bedroom, and into my backyard where I have my collection of older Mercedes Benz automobiles. The passenger hopped out of the truck, peed, and began asking direction to his Airbnb which, I just discovered, is next door. He, and his truck, had to be chased out of my yard with an electric baton (taser device). He left swearing and I called 911.

The funny thing is that I am one of the rare people in this exceptionally rural area who does not keep a gun at my bed. The guests were lucky to have gone down my driveway instead of another’s. Now, because I am unhappy about a drunk peeing in my back yard in the middle of the night, I get to become the neighbor from hell.

Airbnb is Not Safe for Neighborhoods

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In April 2019 I purchased and moved into a brand new neighborhood of luxury town homes within a five-minute walk to the metro and nearby shopping and restaurants. It seemed like a nice and quiet neighborhood of families and young professionals who want to live close to the city, but want to avoid the high costs of living and crime in our nation’s capital: Washington, DC.

Once my neighbor moved in, she and her husband started listing rooms in their brand new home as Airbnb hosts. This is where my nightmare began. I started getting Airbnb guests ringing my door bell at all hours of the day and night thinking my private home was an Airbnb. I even have Airbnb guests trying to put in a code and access my keyless doorpad. My dogs bark from the disturbance. It seems like a constant flow.

Since Airbnb does not conduct background checks on guests, this has caused a huge safety concern for myself. I’ve had to install cameras and a security system on the perimeter of my home and put up a sign on my door stating, “private home, not Airbnb.”

I have contacted my neighbor and Airbnb with no resolution. Airbnb put me on hold and said they would send me a link to file a complaint. Some of her guests even seemed like they were on drugs when they were ringing my doorbell and trying to get into my private home. This has caused me huge concern about the safety of the neighborhood and the safety of the homeowners in the neighborhood; some random person could walk into our place if we were not constantly monitoring that our door is locked and our alarm systems are always active.

Living Beneath an Airbnb for Three Long Years Sucks

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We live beneath an Airbnb in our condo building. While some of the guests are actually okay, the ones that are not ruin it. After almost four years I have had enough. The owner of the condo lives in a totally different city and is never there, so they don’t have to put up with the parties, the toddlers running laps for hours on end, and who the hell knows what else is going up there.

Does anyone have any tips on how to handle this crap? I have gone up, banged on doors and told them to keep the noise down, and put notes on the outside of the door so that not only they see them, but everyone on that floor knows what’s going on. I’ve texted the owner and her reply is “call the cops.” I’ve just looked on Airbnb and she is booked up for December, so Christmas hell is just beginning.

Why Are Airbnb Services Even Allowed?

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I just don’t understand why this type of service is even allowed. I moved into my neighborhood several years ago as a young family with plans to provide my son a happy and loving childhood. Now, because of the Airbnb that recently “opened” next door, that dream has been shattered.

I wanted my son to grow up in a community where everyone knows one another and neighbors watch out for the kids as they play. Instead, every few days, we have strangers living next door that have absolutely no respect or concern for our community. They are loud, disrespectful, and inconsiderate.

Last night, one of them parked in my driveway and attempted to enter my home while we were sitting in the living room watching TV. Do you know how terrifying it is for a four-year-old to have a couple of strangers attempt to walk inside your home? Neighborhoods should be focused on building a sense of trust and community, not utilized as a way to make money while jeopardized your neighbors.

These uncaring “guests” trash our local park, park in front of my driveway so we can’t get out, leave trash in my yard, and stay up causing commotion at all hours of the night. In a time where you can’t even feel safe going to the store, now I can’t even feel comfortable in my own home. This sense of entitlement to doing whatever you want with “your” house is ridiculous and completely defeats the purpose of living in a neighborhood.

If you want a short term stay, go to a motel or hotel; that is for what they were made. A house should be reserved for preserving a sense of community within those that live in the neighborhood and providing a sense of peace and comfort to raise a family. Thank you Airbnb for robbing people of this American dream.

This is a horrible concept and I hope cities crack down hard on how these services are managed. What a complete disappointment in those that have no respect for their neighbors (mostly because they don’t actually live there) and exposing us to a constant set of inconsiderate strangers that destroy our sense of community for a few extra bucks. What a shame that this is what has become more important to people.