HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - September 17, 2021
Published: Fri, 09/17/21
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HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - September 17, 2021
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The massive short-term rental business—think of Airbnb and VRBO, just to name a few sites—is evidence of how hard it is for condos/HOAs to catch rental violators.
In this week's tip, we offer a really great tip for proving your case against an owner repeatedly violating your rental rules.
The issue arises in response to an HOAleader.com reader, who asks: "In our Florida condo community, we have a rule that states all rentals must be for a minimum of 30 days and require a rental application and small application fee. We have at least one owner who always has 'guests' staying at their unit for a week at a time. He says they're friends (which is allowed in our rules).
"However, we've also seen his ads on Airbnb, and we're relatively sure these are short-term renters. We're perplexed as to how we can prove these are renters and not friends and how we can stop this practice of owners violating our minimum 30-day rental policy by falsely claiming residents are friends."
Here's one new idea for proving that owners are full of baloney when they falsely claim they have frequent "friends" in their unit:
1. Rent the unit yourself. "We had a private investigator rent a unit for the weekend, and that took care the problem," reports Joan Lewis-Heard, a senior associate at SwedelsonGottlieb in Los Angeles, who at any given time represents hundreds of condos and HOAs throughout California. "There you have your evidence and the answer to the problem.
"This was a case someone else in my firm was handling, but when I heard about it, I thought that was a really creative way to handle the issue," she adds. "In that situation, the owner went ballistic when they found out what the association had done to prove the violation. But the surefire way to get the proof is to have someone rent the unit."
As a former police officer, Alana Ashby, CEO and owner of Association Management Inc. in Meridian, Idaho, which manages about 160 community associations in the state, agrees that there's a lot of investigation condo and HOA communities can do to prove the rental breaches.
"We've had short-term rentals where people advertise their property even though they're not allowed to," she explains. "You can figure it out pretty quickly and then answer their advertising. If they grant a rental to a third party who's not a friend, there's a lot of evidence you can collect that way."
Get all 3 Ways to Outsmart Condo/HOA Owners Who Insist: "They're Not Short-Term Renters, They're Guests" in our new article: https://www.hoaleader.com/members/4388.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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