Totally agree. A blanket ban is a complete over-reaction since there are reasonable regulations that can address the biggest concerns, as you mentioned.
And it’s worth repeating what Leo posted earlier in this thread that the council created a task force two years ago specifically to study short-term rentals and, after months of their work, just completely ignored the group’s recommendations.
It’s become apparent that certain councilors want to listen only to the negative viewpoints on any topic and then vote accordingly.
I tried to figure out how the districts are set up for the 5 council members. Does anyone know if it’s population based? Also, the way it’s drawn seems to break up downtown. This means that no councilor seems to have a majority of their constituents downtown, so they likely won’t feel pressure to focus as much on Urban development. Maybe I’m off base with my assessment, but it seems like a potential redistricting could be in order.
Sadly, I don’t think people pay attention to these elections and our councilpersons’ (?) voting records. Maybe with no incumbent mayor on the ticket people will come out. Someone with a somewhat familiar name (eg. Crowder) gets the vote.
Bringing this back up to see how the conversation has changed. Is anyone else seeing this being taken advantage of in their area? My neighbor sold his house to someone who is solely AirBNBing it. The new owner did remodel, and it appears to be a nice interior. This is Transfer Co. area, older house. I was questioning (in my head) if it would be rented often enough to be profitable, but based on what I see it’s consistently full 80-90% of the month. I believe he started renting it out mid-summer 2022, so not too much to base that on. According to the AirBNB profile the owner has 3 other downtown properties.
Personally I don’t really care. I guess on the anti side, maybe I’d have a cool neighbor if it was a traditional residence, but with it being AirBNB I don’t have to worry about neighbor complaints.
My nextdoor neighbor did the same thing. Bought the house and is renovating it to turn into an Airbnb. Neighbor two doors down is also turning their house into a full time Airbnb. I’m excited because if they are successful I’m going to buy a new house,move, and Airbnb my current house.
I’d look at how other cities’ rules are in regards to this. Fortunately Raleigh is not a huge tourist city so I would think that we are not as affected as other major tourist cities. My only major concern is that having an entire house solely for AirBnb is eating into the limited residential zoned areas. I would have less of an issue with it if we had citywide higher zoning densities. In either case, I think this needs to be regulated so a proper count of short-rental vs higher rental units is kept. We want to make sure that people do have a place to live.
We live in the area as well and our neighbor did the same thing, it’s incredible how often it gets rented out. When he originally mentioned they would Airbnb their home, I assumed it would be a couple weekends a month, I was extremely mistaken. It’s rented nearly everyday of the month, bachelorette parties, wedding parties, weekday work travelers, it’s everything.
I will say 99 times out of 100 it’s been a non issue. But one time this girl decided to throw her 18th or 21st birthday party where over 100 people showed up. Which brought over a bunch of shitheads who didn’t care who or where they were. Parked cars in the neighbors yard, burnouts in the street, beer cans purposely thrown in the surrounding properties, then a fight broke out. That alone would make me vote against allowing anyone to do the same if it was on the ballot. Because no one can be held accountable, the next day the renters disappear and the owners have no answer.
We had an Airbnb next door which has since gotten more long-term tenants because our neighbor listened to our feedback (we’re lucky). Before that though, there were parties every weekend, sometimes going on till 5 am. One time they had thrown chicken wing bones into our backyard, and we have dogs. FWIW - many of the parties seemed like local people looking for a place to party, not tourists.
I’m all for Airbnb, but believe we do need more regulations around people using them to throw parties all the time, and noise ordinances should be taken more seriously. Asheville requires a permit for Airbnb, maybe Raleigh should consider the same to hold owners more accountable, and the permit could be revoked with multiple complaints and inaction.
Idk how the property owner feels about this but I’m sure they arent intending to rent to folks with a high likelyhood of tearing their place up. Know someone who’s place near Asheville got used for a 200+ person party and did tens of thousands of dollars in damage.
I know of owners who put an age limit of 25 on their rentals and have significantly less issues. My knowledge is of Asheville area though. Not sure if a permit would help by making property owners more diligent. Or, in my opinion, just screw them over when one bad apple slips through screening, trashes their place, and also causes them to lose their permit.
