[jonnathanson]

Airbnb makes it easier for naive or unsophisticated "landlords" to rent out their properties. Yes, those would-be landlords should educate themselves about what they are getting into. But you could argue that Airbnb, by dint of its existence and its success, is lowering the barriers to entry for the would-be landlords of the world -- and thus bears a social and ethical, if not necessarily a legal, responsibility to educate or protect those people from common mistakes. And besides, it's just good business to watch out for your customers.

The woman in question was not aware of the problems involved in 30+-day leases. We can fall back on the idea that she was ignorant, and that she got what was coming to her. True. But that's victim-blaming, and it's only half satisfactory. She is the kind of person who would not have invested in, and rented out, a property without the existence of a hand-holding site like Airbnb. Accordingly, Airbnb should do its part to ensure that people like her -- people entering the market because of Airbnb, and who are presumably unsophisticated -- are reasonably protected from rookie mistakes.

I don't think Airbnb is to blame here. I don't think Airbnb owes her any money. But I do think it should be thinking very carefully about how to retool its process, so that situations like these don't pop up again. Not for legal reasons, but for UX reasons. Airbnb operates a two-sided marketplace, and maintaining that two-sided marketplace means balancing the needs of both sides of the market.

It seems that Airbnb is offering to assist her with her legal expenses, and I applaud them for that. No, they probably don't have to do that. But "We don't have to" is a pretty lousy excuse to fall back on. Customer service matters, even if it means protecting your customers from their own mistakes (within reason).

[7Figures2Commas]

If you read some of my previous comments[1] on AirBnB, you'll see that I question many of the company's practices. AirBnB has constructive knowledge that some of its "hosts" are violating the law in certain cities where it is well-publicized that short-term rentals are illegal. And it has constructive knowledge that there are virtually no apartment leases that permit renters to turn their apartments into hotel rooms through short-term sublets.

But this story doesn't fall into those categories and your line of reasoning is not convincing. From what has been published, the so-called "victim" purchased a condo hundreds of miles away from her actual residence as an investment with the intention of producing income through vacation rentals. She was marketing its availability on multiple sites, not just AirBnB. AirBnB and the current crop of sites like it didn't create the vacation rental market. This market existed well before the advent of the internet. Before AirBnB emerged, there was no shortage of unsophisticated individuals trying their hand at real estate.

Making the landlord a particularly unsympathetic character here is the fact that, in the original article about this situation, she admitted to seeing warning signs early on. Instead of terminating the rental well before 30 days had elapsed when her gut told her that there was something off about her "guest", she decided to let the guest stay.

There's a saying, "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered." I have absolutely no doubt that AirBnB could "retool its process" as you suggest and it still wouldn't prevent situations like this because no "process" is going eliminate greed.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896538

[jonnathanson]

Fair enough critique of the woman in this story. Let's temporarily put aside the nature of her failings. I'd still describe them as naiveté more than greed, per se, but regardless, we can agree she has failings. She's not a very sympathetic protagonist. But let's talk about others like her.

Do you not agree that Airbnb is probably attracting a fair number of would-be landlords to the market who would not be in the market otherwise? Yes, the vacation rental market existed long before Airbnb. No, I don't buy the implication that Airbnb is only attracting people who would have operated in the pre-Airbnb vacation market. Clearly Airbnb has expanded the supply side of this market, at least somewhat by enticing new entrants into it, many of whom are probably unversed in the laws and regulations they should be versed in. That's not Airbnb's fault, but it is Airbnb's headache.

Regardless of our sympathies toward this woman in this particular case, she might be a canary in a coal mine. There are plenty of theoretical Airbnb hosts, and perhaps actual hosts, who could very easily take the plunge on Airbnb without coming to grips with the ins and outs of rental laws. They would assume, furthermore, that because Airbnb exists and thrives, then surely it must have sorted out the fine print.

Airbnb can take actions to prevent this situation from happening again. That doesn't necessarily mean blocking 30+-day rentals, or cutting back on the range of options one can undertake on Airbnb. But it probably means providing more information, at the very least, triggered by certain actions taken when posting a listing. Not because they have to, but because they know that their business model creates an "easy button" for a lot of unsophisticated users. That's a fine business model. But if you're going to do that, then you need to design prophylactic solutions to protect people from their own stupidity [greed/arrogance/naiveté/haste/whatever we want to call it in any given case]. You can't protect them from everything, but at the very least, you can learn and adapt as you go.

Not every PR hiccup deserves a complete redesign of the UX flow, of course. And no solution fixes every potentiality. So you evaluate the problems on a case-by-case basis as they emerge, estimating the likelihood that they'll happen again, and weighing the costs of a fix against the benefits. I'm not a fan of preemptively freaking out about possible edge cases. But when something like this happens, at the very least, you need to analyze whether it's a ridiculous edge case, or whether it's likely to happen again.

And who knows? Maybe this woman's mistake serves a sorting function, and the problem solves itself. Nobody will make her mistake again. Or so we'd hope.

[7Figures2Commas]

The internet has created and expanded many markets. I am sure there are folks who considered the availability of services like AirBnB when making a decision to invest in a rental property, just as I'm sure there are folks who started a new business in part because they believed internet advertising would make it easy to reach potential customers. Should Google inform unsophisticated advertisers that they might lose tens of thousands of dollars on AdWords campaigns if they don't know what they're doing or overestimate response rates?

At the end of the day, you refuse to believe the simple fact that even if AirBnB goes out of its way to inform its "hosts" that their use of its service might subject them to certain laws, risks, etc., folks like the landlord in question will continue to click on your so-called "easy button" because whether greedy or naive, many people simply don't consider the possibility that anything bad can happen to them. Until it actually happens of course.

As I pointed out, the landlord here is on record stating that she ignored her own gut feeling about her tenant from hell after there were early indications he'd be trouble. If an individual presented with clear and specific warning signs that trigger an instinctual unease is willing to ignore such signals, why do you believe such an individual would make a better decision when presented with, say, a popup containing abstract warnings?

As for the idea that this story will prevent other such stories, the landlord in question is hardly the first landlord to have to deal with a rental gone bad and she won't be the last. Situations like these are not uncommon, and today's crop of real estate newbies makes the same mistakes that real estate newbies were making 20 years ago. The only reason this got any attention at all was that the so-called victim played up the AirBnB angle, which many people correctly recognized as being a red herring.