Get a Good Set of Headphones for your Airbnb Neighbors

I’ve lived in my house for almost 20 years now. One by one, all of the neighboring properties were purchased by the same owner. All of them became Airbnb rentals, and because of the same owner and close proximity, frat parties are a frequent happening.

This has reliably happened for over two years now. They’ll bounce from house to house, the traveling jamboree. Trash scattered all out across the lawns, sometimes 12 cars rammed into the lawn, street, wherever they fit, other times a Greyhound-sized bus drops them off. The stereos blast well into the next morning, sometimes until 3:00 AM. Not just having fun loud: it’s rattle-the-toilet-seats-in-my-house loud.

The local community gets a $100 per night fee from the owners for any Airbnb in the town, so they’ll do nothing to stop it. The police will get things to stop for the night if they are called, usually when there’s illegal fireworks or some drunk guests start inconveniencing the golfers. It’s a neighborhood that is built around a golf course, and because each player pays over $10,000/year in membership fees, they actually have some sort of pull with the town’s “safety patrol,” but that’s about the only control there is.

Multiple times I’ve been late to work because overloaded driveways across the street would cause them to park across mine and block my car in. In addition to my daily driver, I have an old V-8 project car that has open exhaust, which happened to be the car that they didn’t block in. I retaliated by driving that to work instead of driving over my own lawn or pounding on a door for 20 minutes until someone answered. I gave it a few revs for the enjoyment of the sleeping hungover partiers. This was a 6:00 AM Saturday shift.

Sunday morning I woke up to find it pelted with eggs and my lawn had the night’s beer bottles thrown onto it. Lesson learned: I blame myself for that one and am glad that I wasn’t greeted by 24+ big angry guys half my age. The only way to combat this is to sit tight with a solid set of noise cancelling headphones. I’m really hoping the government decides that it could make money putting taxes and fees into this, that’ll hurt the profitability enough to discourage hosting six houses at once.

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5 Comments

  1. The world is only getting more wicked. The politicians and multi-millionaires are supporting holiday home rentals here in Australia and it is all about the money for everyone except for the poor ordinary resident in the community who have to suffer next to holiday rentals.
    Get out of the cities and go to the country as it only going to get worse. End time is near.

  2. I have had a similar issue with the Airbnb hotline – complete and utter joke. Try to run you off and purposefully confuse the situation. They opened and closed my case about loud noise and a party next door. Then they opened it after I filed a BBB complaint.

  3. Airbnb has a neighborhood support phone number & website. I can’t promise they will help but this is exact the type of situation it is designed for. You may wish to keep it simple: multiple loud rowdy parties booking several houses and damaging the neighborhood

    From the Airbnb website:
    Is there a party or disturbance nearby?
    Request a call from the Neighborhood Support team.
    Call the Neighborhood Support team directly at +1 (855) 635-7754.

    • Unfortunately the neighbor support is just a PR exercise. The staff are so unhelpful it must be deliberate. We have a similar situation to the above post in our neighborhood and almost all surrounding residents have used the “support service’ at some time. Waste of time. Police and local government is your best option in the first instance. What’s needed is a law change to prevent this kind of rental.

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