If your summer travel plans involve an Airbnb stay, your vacation can get more complicated (and expensive) than you expected—if you don’t check the local Airbnb laws. It’s nothing new that certain cities have been pushing Airbnbs out of their jurisdictions. Miami Beach started cracking down on Airbnb back in 2019. It’s not uncommon to hear about city officials crashing vacation homes and knocking on doors to find Airbnb (and other short-term rental) guests in illegally rented properties.
If this happens to you, you might be told to contact your hosts and request help relocating. Some guests are forced to leave, some are allowed to complete their stays, and some receive assistance from the city in finding new accommodations. Many are simply out of the cost of their Airbnb, and forced to relocate to a hotel at the last minute.
This can be annoying at best and contentious (and expensive) at worst, especially if your host refuses to cooperate. And since 2019, the list of cities where you might encounter pushback from neighbors, landlords, or city officials has only grown larger.
Airbnb puts the responsibility on hosts to follow the rules and regulations specific to their cities—as well as their property managers, landlords, and HOAs. But many still list their homes or apartments in hopes they’ll stay under the radar. Here’s how to research ahead of your stay to minimize the chance of nasty last-minute surprises.
How to handle an illegal vacation rental
While it isn’t your job as a guest to make sure your Airbnb is legal, you can do some research on your own before you book. Airbnb outlines local city regulations for many of its U.S. locations in its hosting guidelines.
New York City, for example, has a “multiple dwelling” law that permits some stays if the host is present but prohibits renting out properties for less than 30 days if they are not.
Of course, you may not know before you arrive that your short-term rental is illegal or forbidden by a landlord or condo association. But if your host messages you beforehand or tells you when you check in to stay under the radar or say you are a family member, it’s a good indication that it’s not fully above board.
If you do find yourself in an illegal short-term rental, you can request help rebooking and/or a refund from Airbnb. Contact customer service by phone or messenger as soon as an issue arises. The company requires you to attempt to resolve concerns with your host first, though.
Look out for short-term rental taxes
Another thing that might surprise you when you go to book your Airbnb: sky-high taxes. Voters in Kansas City approved a short-term rental tax back in April of 7.5%, as did Sevier County in Tennessee by changing the tax classification from residential to commercial and increasing the tax from 25% to 40%. New Jersey was one of the first major states to implement the idea back in 2019, when they passed an 11.6% tax on short-term rentals, including Airbnbs.
Airbnb also collects various accommodations and occupancy taxes for short-term rental hosts in many other states—those fees are generally passed on to guests.
Airbnb stays already come with cleaning and service fees, which cause prices to jump significantly from what you see in search results to how much it actually costs to book. Increasingly, though, you’ll also see occupancy taxes factored into your total.
There’s not much you can do about this additional cost other than to be aware of it—and to know that you may have to adjust your expectations to stay within your budget.