Arson, parties, and a sex offender – Short-term rental troubles in Adelaide
This story is the perfect storm of a problem holiday rental. Three cars set on fire at a notorious party house in Adelaide rented through Airbnb.
The worst part: The host is a registered sex offender and had his original listing removed because of it. But he reposted it under a different name and Airbnb was none the wiser.
If the council was using BnbGuard we would have caught him no sweat…
Verifying host and guest identity is a big problem for all sites. Running a business at scale means it’s impossible to get it 100% right. Unfortunately the economic incentives for short-term rental sites favour getting it wrong more than they should. They’ll crack down pretty quickly when a guest may be in danger, but if a host is violated local council rules most do tend to drag their feet. In New Orleans for example, the owner of Homeaway (quite a popular site in Australia too) is refusing to cooperate with the council to punish hosts breaking the law restricting short-term rentals to 90 days per year.
Why? Cutting through the blather, it’s hard to ignore that sites benefit directly from flouting the rules when they know Airbnb is complying. With cut-throat competition it pulls the whole market away from compliance towards playing hardball with local councils. And as the number of STR sites continues to grow and audience to fragment, the incentive to not cooperate is going to grow. Expect this to happen slowly this year and then accelerate quickly over the next two years. The problem is going to get a lot harder to solve for councils in future.
The good news is that we can help with advice, statistics or monitoring & enforcement. Contact us for a chat.
