The Internet’s New Favorite Hobby Is Shutting Down Illegal Airbnbs
And boy, are there a lot of them.
Published 18 minutes ago in Funny
Airbnb’s website advertises that you can make money by renting out your home. What they leave in the fine print is that, in many places, it’s actually illegal to do so without a proper license — and now, some Redditors have made a hobby of shutting down these illegal Airbnbs.
While guides to the practice have been floating around the internet for some time, a recent post on Reddit’s r/REBubble, which discusses the current state of the real estate market, describes how one user has begun to singlehandedly shut down the Airbnb market in the Las Vegas area.
“Most [short-term rentals] in unincorporated Clark County are unlicensed and therefore illegal. The city could easily find the location of all Airbnbs by subpoenaing Airbnb’s records, yet they don’t do that often enough,” Redditor musicman702 writes. “And that’s where I come in. I hand-feed the city addresses, and they take it from there.”
According to musicman702, this successfully keeps the houses off of Airbnb — and when they get relisted, he just starts the process over again. “Most of the homes I find are owned by out-of-state investors, whom I strongly despise because many Vegas residents struggle to afford housing here. So I’m doing my part to return supply to the market, and it’s so much fun,” he added.
As the post started to pick up steam, others on the internet claimed to have begun doing the same. So, if you have an Airbnb nearby that’s bothering you, or a few Airbnbs around you are jacking up local rent prices, you might want to look into your city, county and state’s rules around short-term rentals, and then begin filing reports.
At the very least, you’re going to annoy some people who deserve to be bothered!