Anyone here have this issue?

NYTimes: New Worry for Home Buyers: A Party House Next
Door

AUSTIN, TEX. — The houses are often among the nicest on
the block, or at least the biggest. They may be new construction where a
smaller structure once stood, or an extensively renovated home with cheery paint
in shades of yellow or blue.

But then the telltale signs appear, including an
electronic touch pad on the door that makes it easy for people to get in
without a key. The ads on HomeAway or Airbnb eventually confirm it: A party
house has come to the neighborhood.

Some neighbors have warmed in recent years to travelers
dragging suitcases through their residential neighborhoods, and they are happy
that the visitors spread their money around. But when profit-seeking
entrepreneurs furnish homes they do not live in to make them attractive to big
groups and then rent out those houses as much as possible, parties and noise
are nearly inevitable.

And so it goes here in Austin, where a group of enraged
and occasionally sleepless residents have taken their complaints to the city.
Austin made rules in 2012 that were meant to keep short-term rentals under
control, but the neighbors argue that many of the rules are unenforceable.

This week, I rented one of the most notorious party
houses in Austin and invited some of the neighbors over for a chat to ask a few
questions. Where do the rights of property owners to rent out their homes end,
and where do those of quiet-loving neighbors begin? Do all home shoppers now
need to be on the lookout for nearby problem properties? And if so, what might
happen to home values when revelers can bunk up next door on any given night?

These are not new questions. In resort areas in
particular, people have been renting out investment properties for ages. What’s
new is how easy it has become for people to make money by listing rooms or
homes and for visitors to save money by staying there. This is particularly
true in good-time destinations like Austin, Nashville, New Orleans and other
bigger cities.

When Austin tried to bring some order to the proceedings
three years ago, it limited the number of unrelated people who could stay in
one place at one time to six. (It also capped the number of certain listings in
many neighborhoods, albeit with a loophole that has allowed many unregistered
properties to hit the market.) Nevertheless, listings began appearing all over
the city advertising beds for 10 or 15 people, or more. Austin has become a
popular bachelor party destination, and the website Thrillist described one Airbnb listing as “the perfect place to
bed down for a bonkers bachelor party, as it’s a short bike ride from downtown,
just the right blend of weird & huge, and not at all unaccustomed to rowdy
entertainment.”

Emmy Jodoin lives next door to that house with her
family. “It is loud, and there is live music and karaoke stuff, and it’s all
done outside because of the pool,” she said. “They’re out in front at 4 in the
afternoon waiting for their Uber to come, drunk on the front lawn.”

Homeowners had other complaints about guests, including
trash bins overflowing with beer cans, public urination, catcalling, foul
language, racist remarks, companies throwing events and the appearance of a
rainbow-colored painted pony. “Sometimes, when they are outside, they’re
playing beer pong just wearing their underwear,” said Hazel Oldt, age 11, who
can see them next door from the third-floor rooftop garden of her house.

Many of the complaints result when there are well over
six people staying at these houses. So how do owners get away with renting to
more people than city rules allow? “Determining how many are occupying versus
just visiting is almost impossible,” Carl Smart, who is the director of
Austin’s code department, said, chuckling as he did so.

What was so funny? Had some of the guests been coached to
say that they were related? “I think so,” he said. “There is no way for us to
disprove or to prove it. We could ask them to, but they don’t have to, so we
have to take their word for it.” KVUE, a local television station, tagged along
with code enforcement officers who heard from guests at one house that there
were triplets inside and that someone else was related to a fifth guest by
marriage.

The neighbors would prefer that the city simply cap
guests at six people — or, better yet, stop allowing what they describe as
rogue hotels to operate in residential neighborhoods. (They have no problem
with people renting out their entire homes occasionally or renting rooms more
frequently, while the owners themselves are in residence.) At HomeAway, which
is based in Austin and also owns Vrbo.com, executives did not want a ban and
said that renting out one’s home on a short-term basis was a fundamental right.
Nor do they think that it is a commercial activity. “It’s a residential use of
the property,” said Matt Curtis, who runs its governmental relations efforts.
“It’s no more a business than someone renting it out long-term would be a
business.”

Even if no one, in this instance, is doing any actual
residing? HomeAway’s contention is that the visitors coming for the weekend are
the residents in this context.

Mr. Curtis questioned how widespread the problem was.
Airbnb provided some statistics about its customers, noting that from Oct. 1,
2014, to Oct. 1 this year, 87 percent of trips to Austin involved four or fewer
people and 97 percent involved eight or fewer. The average age of Airbnb guests
in Austin is 36. According to the research company Airdna, of the 1,414 Airbnb
listings in Austin as of Aug. 31 with three or more bedrooms, 33 offer lodging
for four or more people per bedroom while 618 sleep over two per bedroom.

Airbnb offers a hotline for neighbors having problems
with hosts anywhere it operates and is building tools that will try to
recognize parties before they happen, say when someone books a large house and
that listing is immediately viewed by many other site visitors.

Since October 2012, Austin has received 266 complaints
about the type of registered properties where the homeowner is generally not
present. Twenty percent of the properties have at least one complaint, with an
average of 2.4 complaints among those. Seventeen percent of the complaints were
about over-occupancy.

The house where I stayed has received 15 complaints, and
the city has suspended its license once. The walls have “Dumb and Dumber” and
“Anchorman” movie posters, and the three bedrooms are full of bunk beds and
futons. “Our neighbors understand that your group is here to have a good time,”
the listing says.

But not too good a time. Each door to the outside has a
framed copy of Austin’s noise ordinance nearby, and Jason Martin, a limited
partner with partial ownership in the property, sends an extensive list of
house rules to guests urging them not to disturb the neighbors. “It is
extremely professionally run,” he said. “Any word of a bachelor party or
fraternities is an immediate no-go.”

In fact, house parties and “organized social events” are
not allowed on the premises, a rule I thought I was not breaking when I invited
the neighbors over. There’s another rule noting that “all persons entering the
premises are counted as chargeable guests.” I should have reread the rules and
reviewed my original communications with Mr. Martin once I decided to hold the
gathering in the days after I made the booking.

Those visitors were especially concerned about their
property values. For many of them, their homes are their largest asset. Jessie
Neufeld, who bought her home right before the local rules changed in 2012 and
now has a 2-year-old child, put it most bluntly. “We did not buy our house to
be living next to a hotel,” she said. “Would you buy a home if you knew a hotel
like this was operating next door, if you wanted to set your life up and raise
a family?”

I put the question to two real estate professionals whose
names I saw on for-sale signs for homes that were next to or close to some of
the party houses. Were the properties going to sell for less because of the
problem properties nearby, and did they have a duty to disclose these houses to
any and all buyers?

Katie Brigmon of Dash Realty did not want to answer many
questions about her listing, a house that is very close to one problem
property, and my call to her quickly went dead.

Jeff Grant from Saddle Realty said that he wasn’t aware
of the short-term rental several homes down from the house he’s trying to sell
on Hidalgo Street. “But my philosophy has always been disclose, disclose,
disclose,” he said. “I don’t think it affects property value in the least.”

It probably won’t if the buyer simply wants to rent out
the home every weekend. But every other home buyer ought to be searching
Airbnb, HomeAway and similar sites for listings that are close to a home that
they’re considering buying.

Ms. Neufeld said she resented the fact that people making
a living from renting out homes for the weekend have put her own home’s value
at risk. “They are leveraging our neighborhood for their profit, telling people
to come stay in this beautiful place where you would like to pretend that you
live,” she said. “And they are making people miserable

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/your-money/new-worry-for-home-buyers-a-party-house-next-door.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad