With the development of peer-to-peer rental possibilities, the reputation of subletting popularity by means of locations like Airbnb has surged intensely in latest years. Though homeowners can lease rooms or even their entire households to short-term occupants if they decide on, the whole thing varies if one of your own “residents” begins subletting your Jamaica Plain rental home.
Majority of leases do not permit subletting minus the landlord’s approval, so a resident involved in short-term rentals of your property has by that time disregarded the provisions of the lease and in some circumstances, local statute or rules of the community. However, certain people will do it in any case, pretending to be the primary resident of a rental household just to utilize the property as part of a bigger Airbnb business, wherein they lease several independent properties and then sublet those for income.
If you find out subletting schemes in one of your properties, you should put a halt to it urgently. A resident subletting your property sets you in jeopardy of added liability, property damage, and legal consequences, just to mention a few.
For instance, if a person were to sublet a room in your rental home from your resident and then fall and break their ankle in the shower, not only will your insurance not provide for the mishap, but as the landlord, you could be sued for their medical bills and other expenses. That is the concern with subletting – the owner carries the burden of any legal or personal liability entailed.
A property owner in New York learned this the hard way. In 2017, he found out that his residence had been operating his rental home as an Airbnb rental for months when the neighbors reported several complaints about the noise and the regular stream of outsiders going in and out. When the city probed, they discovered that not only had the resident violated occupancy laws and created a public nuisance (a criminal offense in New York) but also that the resident had not paid the proper local taxes on the short-term rental income. However, it was the owner, and not the ‘resident’, who was sued by the city and ordered to wage thousands of dollars in penalties. As stated by the law, the owner was accountable for the whole thing that occurred within his property.
Cases like these show why the appropriate auditing of your rental homes is so critical. The best approach to defend yourself and your property is to have a property managing firm conducting notes on your properties for you. At Real Property Management Boston, we provide a property maintenance system intended to check for unauthorized use of a rental home, and we have the capability to deal with any essential arrangements if such use is exposed. Please contact us online or call us at 617-996-0708 for more information.
We are pledged to the letter and spirit of U.S. policy for the achievement of equal housing opportunity throughout the Nation. See Equal Housing Opportunity Statement for more information.