Air BnB Neighbour

Lollipops23

We bought and renovated a 2 bed apartment in Smithfield in the last 18 months. We're renting the spare room and all getting on great. The building is mainly young families or young professionals sharing and there's been no anti social behaviour at all, totally peaceful.

However, our next door neighbour (a middle aged man) seems to have bought his place purely for the purpose of Air B and B-ing. We met him in the hall the day we moved in, as he was moving in too and we exchanged pleasantries. He led us to believe he would be there full time (none of our business either way).

Fast forward 9 months and it's been a non-stop parade of tourists, gangs of young friends etc in and out for a night or two at a time. Thankfully there hasn't been too many chaotic parties, but they have woken us on several occasions falling in drunk in the wee hours (last night it was a gang of lads from the UK whooping and messing at 1.45am). On another occasion there was a massive pile of vomit in the lift, although I accept that we can't know for certain that was the work of guests.

We looked at AirBnB and it looks like the place is booked almost solidly through the summer.

I've looked on Dublincity.ie and it doesn't appear that the owner applied for planning permission, as required for AirBnBs.

I'm not sure how we should proceed tbh; I don't want to go in all guns blazing, but I don't want a summer of broken sleep. The building doesn't lend itself well to this sort of operation, it's otherwise very quiet and everyone seems civilised.

Advice very much appreciated!

Michael D Not Higgins

Firstly, is he still living there and renting out spare rooms or the whole apartment? He may not need planning permission for the former.

Do you have any details for the neighbour if he doesn't live there? You should contact him and complain to him in the first instance. If that doesn't work, complain to the OMC as it's likely against the block rules. Finally, you could make a complaint to the council about the apartment not having the proper planning permission.

Lollipops23

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

Firstly, is he still living there and renting out spare rooms or the whole apartment?

We haven't seen site nor sound of him since that first day, so I strongly suspect he is not there at all.

We don't have any details for him, as I say, we only met him in passing when we introduced ourselves. I don't think there's anything explicitly banning it in the block rules, but I think they just haven't quite caught up with the AirBnB phenomenon yet!

Fian

Lollipops23 wrote: »

We haven't seen site nor sound of him since that first day, so I strongly suspect he is not there at all.

We don't have any details for him, as I say, we only met him in passing when we introduced ourselves. I don't think there's anything explicitly banning it in the block rules, but I think they just haven't quite caught up with the AirBnB phenomenon yet!

Can't you contact him through air bnb?

Lollipops23

Fian wrote: »

Can't you contact him through air bnb?

I'm not even sure how to approach him about it; tbh I don't want the place being rented to different strangers every weekend at all (the building is quite secure given its city centre location), so having a load of randomers trouncing through doesn't appeal to me.

Doubt us contacting him directly will do much good!

Ashbx

Lollipops23 wrote: »

Doubt us contacting him directly will do much good!

Well you dont know until you try!

Tell him that you are having issues with the people he is renting his house to and if the problems persist, you will have no choice but to lodge a complaint with the management company.

But talking to him is your first port of call.

Sierra Oscar

The OMC will most likely take a very dim view of this practice. It's one thing putting a spare room on AirBnB every now and then but it's an entirely different matter renting out an apartment continuously on it. I'd contact the OMC and make it known that you are worried for the security of the development.

There was a similar issue in our development last year and there ended up being an incident which lead to a common room area being damaged. The AirBnB was being used by a party crowd. The OMC contracted the planning section in DCC, the Revenue Commissioners and made direct contact with AirBnB and made it be known that their customers would be barred from entering the development. AirBnB blacklisted the apartment from then on.

Michael D Not Higgins

What do the house rules say? You may want to make a complaint to the OMC anyway (under noise maybe). You'll never get it enforced if they don't know of any issue.

Michael D Not Higgins

The other thing to consider is this guy is renting the place and subletting to AirBnB customers. Can you check if it's rented on the RTB register? If so, you can make a third party complaint to the RTB against the landlord who will then have to force the tenant to stop renting on AirBnB.

shenanagans

If the property is being let on Airbnb then someone must be coming in cleaning etc on a daily basis or every few days.....you must see someone coming and going??? Approach the cleaner if there is one, give them your contact info and ask for the landlord to get in contact.

If people/guests are coming and going every couple of days as you claim, you can't seriously claim you never see anyone (landlord, cleaner etc), how do guests book in. Is there a key box at door for self booking in? Is someone meeting guests???

Lollipops23

shenanagans wrote: »

If the property is being let on Airbnb then someone must be coming in cleaning etc on a daily basis or every few days.....you must see someone coming and going??? Approach the cleaner if there is one, give them your contact info and ask for the landlord to get in contact.

If people/guests are coming and going every couple of days as you claim, you can't seriously claim you never see anyone (landlord, cleaner etc), how do guests book in. Is there a key box at door for self booking in? Is someone meeting guests???

We don't see the comings and goings, as it's usually midweek and all of us work. We also wouldn't necessarily hear them coming and going as the hall door is away from the main living space. I don't particularly want to sit at the front door waiting on cleaners to come and go, especially if they're a 3rd party who know nothing.

Last night was awful; a fairly rough sounding group of English lads were making a racket arriving home at 3am.

We decided to contact the landlord directly on Air BnB before involving the management company.