A letting agent that by chance discovered a tenant sub-letting through Airbnb is to be featured on a prime time TV programme tonight.
The agent, Base Property Specialists, then found that the property had received more than 70 reviews on Airbnb since the tenancy had commenced.
Neither the landlord nor the agent had any idea that the tenant had been ‘professionally’ sub-letting the property, in Bloomsbury, London, and the agent ended up £10,000 out of pocket.
The tenants had a 22-month AST arranged through Base Property Specialists.
During a periodic inspection, consented to by the tenants, the agent arrived early to witness the tenants checking a family into the property. On returning to the office, the agent viewed Airbnb to find the property listed both as a single dwelling and as two separate bedroom rooms.
Airbnb had more than 70 booking reviews for the property, with the first being the same month that the tenants’ tenancy commenced, showing they had been sub-letting it from the beginning.
Base Property contacted the tenants informing them that they were breaching a number of licensing laws and instructing them to remove all listings from Airbnb (and any other sites they may have used), cancel all bookings, remove the key safe they had installed and make good any damage that had been caused.
The tenants were offered two courses of action: to re-occupy the property themselves or surrender under the contractual early termination agreement, which at that point totalled £4,295.
Despite the tenants requesting to stay and subsequently removing the key safe and repairing the damage, Base Property continued to receive reports from neighbours of people coming and going. When the agent arranged for a plumber to fix a maintenance issue, he was told by the occupants, a Russian family, that they did not speak English and were renting the property.
Commenting on the case, Kristjan Byfield of Base Property said: “One thing I found extremely disappointing was Airbnb’s refusal to take any action whatsoever.
“When we contacted them and provided evidence that the ‘hosts’ were not the legal owners of the property and were in breach of the landlord’s mortgage and buildings insurance terms, local licensing laws, and both short-term let and HMO licensing, their response was ‘take it up with the tenants’.”
By this point, the tenants were refusing to engage with the agent. They continued to host on Airbnb despite denying it, even using a professional laundry service to prepare the beds.
They refused access to contractors who were due to fix a leak, causing further damage to the property.
Byfield called in the help of Paul Shamplina of Landlord Action who served the tenants with a Section 8 notice and subsequently issued possession proceedings.
Shamplina said: “Kristjan and his team had done everything correctly. They had obtained thorough references, carried out regular property inspections and even given the tenants the opportunity to put the situation right when they were caught out.
“Unfortunately, unauthorised use for short lets is a growing problem, and councils are struggling to cope with the volume of cases. At Landlord Action, we always have a number of sub-letting cases at any one time, particularly from landlords whose tenants have sub-let via Airbnb without consent.”
Byfield called on Airbnb to do more to prevent unauthorised hosts using its site.
He said: “We have had a number of cases where the landlords agree for the tenants to sub-let, and with proper communication and agreements, it can work very well.
“However, 95% of issues such as this case could be eradicated if Airbnb invested in some simple technology to cross-reference the name of the host with the owners name, via the Land Registry, and then simply obtained proof of consent to sub-let if those names do not match.”
The case is featured in Inside Out on BBC1 London region this evening at 7.30pm. Viewers outside London can see it on Freesat 950 or Sky 954.
Comments (15)
I personally believe this to be a great example for other agents experiencing similar issues with Airbnb sublets (though shame on you, Airbnb!). To all who are criticising the agent – you need to remember that even the most thorough of referencing & periodic inspections cannot prevent OR detect every ‘bad’ or ‘deceptive’ tenant. What you can do in these instances, is act swiftly with the landlords best interest at heart. We all know unauthorised subletting is a grey area which needs some work on.
the agent sounds responsible and I like their continued involvement so try and make amends but they do not know the local market so my view is that the landlord made an error instructing an agent that does not know the local market. I know Bloomsbury well and the tenants are very straightforward to deal with and 90% of them are international students that pay rents higher than professionals because the area is so close to UCL. Good agents can spot when something is not right so I suspect with hindslight there were still referencing failings on the part of the agent
Hi Henry- we have marketed properties in Bloomsbury for years and have, in fact, let and managed this particular unit for nearly 10 years without a single issue. Over that time we have had a mixture of professional tenants and student lets from wealthy international families. We have secured higher rents on each new tenancy placed there and recently oversaw a mid-sized refurbishment of the property too. We take our referencing very seriously and not only use a thorough 3rd party to facilitate this but also verify landlord references with land registry records as well as investigating anything we feel is ‘suspicious’. I personally met the tenants at the property for the viewing and usually have a good nose for these things after nearly 20 years of letting property in the capital but they played it very well completely making me believe they intended to live there. Even in the early stages of their tenancy (when they were already sub-letting but we were unaware) they still did well at maintaining this pretense. As agents, as you will know, we can only act on a matter once we become aware and that is exactly what we did. Must say, it is a bit sad to see a fellow agent cast aspersions on our agency when you don’t know us or our operations at all- I can hand on heart state that we did not make even the slightest failing or mistake in the processing of the application and saw the issue through to resolution without a single penny charged for our time and effort which included numerous property visits.
We had something similar, one of my colleagues in another office called to see if I thought what they planned to do was ok (basically serve S8 and S21 citing breach of contract) and I said to go ahead but I also called Airbnb to let them know, and I was basically told that they trust the person who says they own it actually does, and that the ‘Landlord’ has to tick a box to say if they are the owner or a tenant, and if a tenant then they have to provide proof that the Landlord has agreed to it!
Well, that system certainly isn’t open to abuse is it…
Good Lord, I wonder how that happened!
I don’t know how Airbnb reviews work – but could the agent have added something to the reviews to the effect that it was an illegal let?
I think you need to have stayed at the property to be able to leave a review.
one idea, would have been for the landlord/agent to have booked on Airbnb, and not leave (that would have been Karma) Changed the locks, and knocked up a an AST in someones elses name. Maybe the original tenant would have just given up.
As Darrel advises- only guests can leave reviews. Amazingly, they did take the listings down within about 48 hours of our instruction- the problem was it didn’t matter as they had already secured lets at the property throughout the next 2-3 months so no longer needed the listing to be live anyway. This is where Airbnb’s complicity in such behaviour was revealed- to ours and our client’s amazement. They could have easily cancelled all future bookings on report of illegal sub-letting but they refused to do anything responding that it wasn’t their problem and that we should contact the host!
Very shoddy of AirBnB. You’d have thought it would have contravened their user agreement and public liability at the very least.
Well done Kristjan shows how important it is to use a letting agent so everything is set up right and how important mid-term inspections are.
They used an agent and it went wrong?
How does the agent end up £10k out of pocket, unless it was a rent to rent.
Yes it went wrong but it was spotted and set up correctly meaning section 8 was compliant.
No agent has 100% perfect tenants.
Agent did a great job even helping get possession of the property back when many would have left to the LL to sort.
You could argue it was no longer an AST, as it was not the tenants main or principle residence if they were no longer residing.
Hi Darrel- indeed, this would have been the approach we would have LIKED to have taken. However, as you will see on the show tonight, even when caught red-handed they continued to insist they were living there as their primary home. As I am sure you are aware, possible charges of harassment or trespass are no small thing and we therefore had to tred lightly both for our sakes and our clients and follow the law based on the contract that was entered into not our perception of what it had become.
Hi Darrel- it wasn’t our agency out of pocket, it is the landlord (at least for now). Initially, there were the legal fees for the actions overseen & undertaken by Landlord Action, once we started litigation the tenants also withheld the rent, they refused access for viewings & maintenance (resulting in additional damage to the property due to a substantial leak) which now means the property is vacant and mst remain like this until works are completed before we can return to market to seek new tenants. Of course, our client intends to pursue these tenants through the courts to gather as many of these costs back as possible but that will take a while to get there and will likely result (if successful in court) with a slow payment plan from the parties concerned.