re-anon

In "small business" you sometimes end up having to cut corners. The reason is there simply isn't enough profit unless you wing it yourself and learn as you go along. Taking chances.

The owner says she bought a property in Palm Springs because she couldn't afford one in the bay area. Her biggerpockets profile says "Newbie investor, current focus on vacation rental condo in Palm Springs."

Some of her leasing activity probably violated her HOA's CCRs and she didn't research the laws. This isn't cutting a few corners to maximize profit. This is choosing to be 100% ignorant.

The owner is an entirely unsympathetic character. I've been in real estate 20 years. People like this who think they can make money as absentee landlords and are too lazy to understand the business and laws lose their shirts 99.9999% of the time.

Its not an agent's job to provide advice about tenant laws. A buyers agent is there to help a buyer find the right property, negotiate a deal and handle the paperwork.

This is a property management issue. If the owner hired a local property manager instead of trying to make money as an absentee landlord she would have known the risks of 30+ day rentals and wouldn't have rented the condo so casually through a place like AirBNB.

I don't think AirBNB should allow apartment rentals because statistically they know that basically all of the hosts are breaking their lease but this is a condo owned by a host, not an apartment. A lot of CCRs have use restrictions that make AirBNB rentals problematic but not all do.

You don't get it. The squatter has been in the home for 30 days. On that 30th day he has tenants rights and the owner has to go through the process. If the owner knew what she was doing or hired somebody competent to manage her property she wouldn't be in this situation. AirBNB isn't a property manager. If you don't know what you're doing you shouldn't be renting out your home as a business.

I'm in real estate and was able to locate the owner's condo. It's part of a HOA. The HOA's CCRs forbids leases for "transient or hotel purposes." The typical meaning of this is leases of under 30 days. The CCRs also require that permitted leases be in writing.

The sfgate article says that the owner was renting this out for $450/week to help cover her mortgage and expenses so it is probable that some of her activity was in violation of the CCRs. It also sounds like she didn't actually have a written lease with the squatter tenant who booked a 44 day reservation and therefore has tenants rights.

I am not a fan of AirBNB but AirBNB doesn't deserve blame for this. This owner thought it would be cool to become a real estate investor and she didn't know what she was doing. Now shes paying the price...