Do you have planning permission YGH? Are you are registered landlord?
Neither required in Scotland for short term holiday let's from day 1 - planning permission only required once you go over 90 days in a year let and air BnB won't let you rent after your 90 days is up till you show your planning.
Again easy to fake but the control is there and you'd have to actively.circumvent it.
My favourite air BnB was someone's caravan in their back garden in central Vancouver.
Have also stayed in a basement studio under a 3 story house in mission San Francisco
And a studio under someone's garage in Tahoe with the most awesome deck which basically looked out over the lake due to the house /garage being built into the side of the steepest hill ever....
I thought that had been changed in Edinburgh?
Well the news yesterday seems to think they are pushing hard for it. Although they have been for a fair while have they not
Lots of illogical hysteria about Air BnB on this thread. They are no better or worse than the other platforms (Booking.com, TripAdvisor, VRBO etc).
You don’t need planning permission for a holiday let. Edinburgh council is proposing this but it’s still at the consultation phase. The Scottish government is looking at bringing out a registration/ licensing scheme akin to the landlords system in Scotland. That tome would be a good thing it’s currently at the consultation phase.
Commercial rates are required if you rent your house/flat out as a holiday let. This is actually a saving as you get the small business supports scheme 100% discount if you only have a few holiday let’s.
Air BnB is just an online platform like any other. They have safeguards but ultimately it’s the unscrupulous owners who are gaming the system. All the holiday let’s I have stayed at were excellent but maybe I have just been lucky.
Air BnB is just an online platform like any other.
it really is not. Its much easier to "game the system" using air b&B and there are less checks and balances - and an extremely unscrupulous management
its designed to make it easy for landlords to circumvent legal restrictions - deliberately so
it really is not. Its much easier to “game the system” using air b&B and there are less checks and balances – and an extremely unscrupulous management
its designed to make it easy for landlords to circumvent legal restrictions – deliberately so
I signed up with booking.com and homeaway.com when I set our place up.
There was no need to provide any documentation for any of them.
Re legal restrictions - AirBnB were shit hot to prevent bookings except for key workers during the recent lock downs; even taking into account local differences (e.g Scotland vs England).
Sure it's an enabler, but IME they don't promote any form of rule breaking.
it really is not. Its much easier to “game the system” using air b&B and there are less checks and balances – and an extremely unscrupulous management
its designed to make it easy for landlords to circumvent legal restrictions – deliberately so
Have you actually tried to do it. That's simply not true. They are all very similar. Not one of them looked for the municipal mayor's approval (legal requirement at my folks) neither did they require any evidence for fire safety or otherwise........
And that's with my folks NOT using air BnB....
yes I did look into it and from the information I got air B&B were never going to be used by me and will never be so
I was looking at going thru and agent so may be muddled because of what the agent wanted and what the booking companies wanted but it was clear to me other booking sites were much better to the point the agent strongly advised against using them
Sounds alot like your agent wasn't getting a big enough cut from.air BnB....
Yes they are all the same. My wife has a little holiday let on four platforms including Air BnB. There is no real difference.
The issue here is unscrupulous owners gaming the system and also unscrupulous holidaymakers who don’t have any consideration for neighbours.
OP best thing you can do is rent the place for 2 nights, hold a huge party, invite some hells Angel's along, trash the joint so the landlord decides to take it off Airbnb.
Another point I just remembered. Air BnB is actually better than some of the others as it allows you to screen visitors. You can then avoid renting to people likely to party all night. It also has a feedback system allowing you to review guests so folk won’t want to get a bad rep. Others like Booking.com don’t have this it’s all instant booking.
I live in a fairly touristy city on the north coast of Spain, there are 1200 AirBnBs in the city so about one for every 150 residents if my maths is right. Every other block has one.
Net result is there are no affordable long term lets for the thousands of low paid people employed in the service industry.
The flat next door is AirBnB and the majority of guests are ok (last nights came home noisily at 12:30am but whatever) - then you get a group of Americans only one of whom has the key and has gone home drunk and fallen asleep. Cue the others pressing all the buzzers at 4am trying to get in. That’s just one example of many, don’t mean to pick on Americans - similar stories all summer; the couple living above that flat work hospital shifts and given the pressure on hospitals now, I doubt they appreciate the disturbance.
Same story is playing out in Barcelona, Lisbon, all over Europe…
You can then avoid renting to people likely to party all night. It also has a feedback system allowing you to review guests so folk won’t want to get a bad rep.
It’s nice that some owners are scrupulous. My neighbour doesn’t care one sunflower seed for his clients are noisy. I’ve lived here ten years, it’s been AirBnB for half that and a brothel for the other half.
Neither required in Scotland for short term holiday let’s from day 1 – planning permission only required once you go over 90 days in a year let and air BnB won’t let you rent after your 90 days is up till you show your planning.
Technically in Edinburgh a change of use is required, but there is a lack of council resource to proactively enforce this so it is only done if and when complaints are made, and even then the council really struggle with capacity to enforce, however where they do investigate there is many many examples of properties being shut down on this basis. I guess arguably the same planning requirements would apply elsewhere but I don't know how other local interpret them, I just have experience in Edinburgh.
https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2021/5/airbnb-short-lets-require-planning-change-of-use-appeal-process-decides?source=newsticker
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/edinburgh-airbnb-ban-on-absentee-landlord-who-lives-in-derbyshire-3230799
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/business/ban-slapped-on-eight-airbnb-landlords-letting-flats-in-the-same-edinburgh-new-town-street-3293422
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/edinburgh-airbnb-ban-on-absentee-landlord-who-lives-in-derbyshire-3230799
The proposed changes to the regulations are in order to make it easier to manage registration and enforcement than the current system allows.
I say this is an ex-Airbnb owner who spent quite a bit of time researching this, including trying to change use of my own property (without success) and having insightful but ultimately unsuccessful conversations with the planning department trying to understand how the current system could be made to work for responsible holiday let owners.
thank you for that doug - I was sure i was right that you need permissions in Edinburgh hence the thousands of illegal short term rentals
thank you for that doug – I was sure i was right that you need permissions in Edinburgh hence the thousands of illegal short term rentals
It should also be said that whatever side of the fence you sit on the current means of regulating is not fit for purpose. Use of planning regulations is too blunt a tool and not easily enforced by the council, and as we found out to our own detriment the view of the planner I spoke to was that they could essentially not accept any change of use requests for holiday lets in shared stairwells as they would always breach the current guidance, which for Edinburgh means almost all would be rejected.
I'm sure some folk would say that's fine but there's no doubt in my mind that holiday rentals need to be part of guest accommodation provision in cities (not in the volume currently in central Edinburgh, but a healthy mix), and that's impossible in many places without including property with communal entrances. There's also got to be an opportunity for responsible, properly regulated holiday let owners to run their rentals in harmony with residents, in our case the planning officer I spoke to was actually very positive about how ours was run and the evidence presented in our planning case was pretty impeccable in my opinion, but the regulations were so blunt that none of those things mattered.
The issue here is unscrupulous owners gaming the system and also unscrupulous holidaymakers who don’t have any consideration for neighbours.
This x1000
Airbnb give the information and tools you need to do it properly, and there's plenty of other stuff that can be done outside the platform to help do it safely and responsibly, there's nothing better or worse really that Airbnb did versus any other platform I used. But these things all take time and effort to implement and too often I think home owners just see it as a quick and easy buck compared to long term renting........ the income is greater and certainly in my experience the checks and measures in place by the authorities are vastly inferior, it would be pretty hard to do a long term rent in Edinburgh without having to adhere to rules and regulations, landlord registration, insurance, mortgage, all sorts. It is pretty easy to stick it up as a short term rental and have no requirement to do any of these things.
