I’ve heard people say that airbnb and the like are disrupting the hotel industry by letting anyone rent out his or her residence. This may seem like a great idea until you’re the person living next door to one of these rentals. Instead of having a neighbor that you know by name, you have random people staying for 1 night, 3 nights, a week. This can bring more crime, noise, and reduce property values. San Francisco just passed an ordinance regulating short term rentals putting a cap on the number of days a place can be rented a year. This number is capped at 90 days, but that is still far too many, in my opinion.
My neighbor decided earlier this year to kick out the family that had been renting his house for a few years and turn it into a vacation rental. He claims that he is a “family man”, but the only motivation for doing this is greed. He “fixed up” the house by putting in a hot tub, redoing his deck and planting grass. His vacation rental doesn’t fit into our neighborhood as all the houses in the immediate area are single family houses that are either owner occupied or long term rentals (I’ll ignore the mini-dorm across the street owned by another greedy person). So now we’re going to get random people staying at the house and have to deal with potential noise and the feeling that we may not be safe because we have no idea who is supposed to be next door.
The city of San Diego is too chicken to pass regulations on short term rentals because that would affect beach rentals and other rental properties that bring the city money via the transient occupancy tax (provided people collect and report it). Zoning laws are supposed to separate different uses for properties, i.e. commercial and residential. A short term rental is definitely commercial as a residence is where someone lives. Shouldn’t short term rentals fall under commercial zoning regulations?
People could have similar arguments against bed and breakfasts, but they are more regulated (one we stayed in said that they could only serve breakfast and not any other meal) and have a host/manager on site.
The rise of short term rentals anywhere someone wants may be good for the property owners, but in my opinion, is not wanted by many residents of neighborhoods.
We’ve enjoyed staying in rentals through Airbnb and VBRO and have always been courteous to neighbors and other building tenants. I think cities will eventually catch up and enact ordinances and/or regulations. Have you had specific issues with renters at your neighbor’s house? I am sending a message to a friend who works with the City’s Development Services Dept to see how they are handling it. There is also some information on the Airbnb webpage, with a subset of info on San Diego. Go to this link and scroll down to San Diego: https://www.airbnb.com/help/responsible-hosting
While we haven’t had any problems, yet, short term renters are transient by nature and having people come and go just doesn’t make us feel safe. Putting random people in the middle of neighborhoods devalues the neighborhoods and doesn’t encourage “neighbors”. It’s kind of nice getting to know your neighbors, but if there is someone different there each week, we can’t get to know the people who share our fence.
Renting out a place in a condo building is a lot different than a whole house on a quiet street. It’s hard to look out for your neighbor when you have no idea who is supposed to be there and who shouldn’t.
I can only hope that the city does something at least in the same idea of San Francisco, but I doubt it unless they have different regulations per area as anything that applies to my neighborhood would apply to the beach areas and there are a lot of houses down there that are strictly vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods.
You raise a good point here: “It’s hard to look out for your neighbor when you have no idea who is supposed to be there and who shouldn’t.”
My friend at the City of San Diego confirmed there is nothing on the books at this time and issues stemming from this type of use would be a job for Code Compliance.
Where we are, the houses on both sides of us are short term vacation rentals, and are occupied about 75% of the time in the busy/holiday season and maybe 10% of the time in slow season. It IS different than having permanent neighbors. Since we are in a second-home community, we knew it was likely we would have vacation rentals, in fact, our HOA specifically allows it. Of course, all of this is different than your situation.
Maybe next time we come to San Diego for vacation we can rent your neighbor’s house. Hah! I know it’s a nice neighborhood with great views. The hot tub sounds pretty awesome too.