Neighbours come and go all the time in London. There is a regular turnover of faces but nothing much changes and life goes on quite happily. That is until your neighbours decide they hate you, everyone else in the area and probably themselves, so they take the dreaded step that ever Londoner hates to see. They turn their house or flat into an… Airbnb.
The dreaded short-let holiday rental site is the popular alternative to taking on a contract-bound tenant. We’re all for finding alternative ways to make money from the space you own but the reality of Airbnb life is a far cry from their carefree, fun-loving ads.
Airbnb is an online tool that allows house or flat owners to advertise all or part of their properties for short lets to people who are on holiday or travelling for business. It allows people from all over the world to view said properties and book them as they please. It was reported on TechWorld by Airbnb’s general manager for the UK and Ireland that London is “the third biggest city in terms of places to stay, there is a little over 40,000 places to stay and that is growing 75% year on year so we are very happy with how that growth is.” So, London is popular, there is a soaring demand for Airbnb places to stay and the number of said B&B’s in London is growing.
That is bad news if your local Airbnb venue is driving you to distraction. Gone are the days that the local pub kept you up at night: the modern equivalent is a noisy stag or hen party kicking off at 2am in the next-door Airbnb. Parties, celebrations, crying children and messy arguments are all part of these new pop-up, short-let B&B’s. Several Airbnb homes in London have been completely trashed and they are known to cause disruption to their surrounding neighbours.
Whilst many Airbnb residences are wonderfully quiet there is an obvious danger of having a heavy traffic of fast-turnover visitors who know they can make a racket without being punished for years by furious neighbours.
In November Airbnb made a major concession after complaints from London officials that landlords were exacerbating the city’s housing shortage by opting to turn homes into unofficial hotels rather than making them available to full-time tenants. The San Francisco-based website announced that it would no longer let property owners rent out a whole home for more than 90 days a year. It was already against planning regulations for a home to be let for more than 90 days without the owner first winning council permission for a “change of use” but Westminster’s spending cuts mean few councils have the resources to enforce those rules.
Airbnb will not enforce the 90-day limit on people renting out rooms in their home rather than the whole place but one has to assume that such guests are much less likely to upset their hosts and neighbours.
The 90-day limit means many Londoners will still have nights of music pumping out from the next-door Airbnb, Victims can always contact their local council to report a disturbance, and they should keep in mind the 90-day limit that is still part of town-planning rules. The local council may argue that it doesn’t have the money to monitor every home on its books but angry complaints from neighbours will dramatically increase the chances of getting those rules enforced. And the next time you get a notice saying that a neighbour has applied for a change of use, be prepared to go to battle straight away, rather than having future fights at 2am
The post Great! Your Neighbour Just Went Airbnb appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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