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'My Airbnb Guests Threw a New Year's Party For 300 People' (theguardian.com)
"What's the worst that can happen?" thought Nicko Feinberg last December when he listed his house on Airbnb.
The listing explicitly said no parties. Then a request came through to book the house for one night on New Year's Day. It was from a young man, probably in his early 20s. He had one review but it was terrific.... I picked up my boys and we stayed down the road at my mother's apartment... When I got back [the next day] I saw three or four cars in the driveway. I threw my food down and knew I was screwed. Inside there were about 12 young adults, all trying to clean.
The floors looked like someone had poured Jagermeister and champagne everywhere and then danced on them. Everything seemed wrong: my artwork was not on the walls; there was furniture missing; the glass panel on my staircase was shattered; even the floor didn't seem level any more. Then I noticed they were using my best sheets and towels as mops....I told them no one was leaving and I called the police and Airbnb. When a police officer turned up, he said it was a civil matter, before adding: "We were here last night...."
Ultimately, it was just stuff and I knew it would be OK. But I felt a massive disappointment in humanity. That night, it wasn't hard for me and my boys to find Instagram pictures and videos of the party. It was horrifying to see so many people in the house, jumping up and down on the furniture and windowsills. They broke my hot tub and tiles in the bathroom; when I looked in the rubbish bags, I saw all my drinks bottles empty, as well as broken glasses and towels. I found an image online of the invite that said, "Mansion Party" with my address. There had been 300 people there. Boys were charged to enter; girls got in free.
While he won't disclose what Airbnb paid him for the damage, "a year later repairs are continuing. The floor is still uneven." But he told one local news channel that the damage was over $100,000, adding "There's footprints on my bathroom walls."
At one point more than 100 cars had been parked outside, according to a police report, and the 23-year-old was ultimately charged with "disorderly conduct". He also was banned permanently from Airbnb -- which said in a statement that "negative incidents are incredibly rare."
The floors looked like someone had poured Jagermeister and champagne everywhere and then danced on them. Everything seemed wrong: my artwork was not on the walls; there was furniture missing; the glass panel on my staircase was shattered; even the floor didn't seem level any more. Then I noticed they were using my best sheets and towels as mops....I told them no one was leaving and I called the police and Airbnb. When a police officer turned up, he said it was a civil matter, before adding: "We were here last night...."
Ultimately, it was just stuff and I knew it would be OK. But I felt a massive disappointment in humanity. That night, it wasn't hard for me and my boys to find Instagram pictures and videos of the party. It was horrifying to see so many people in the house, jumping up and down on the furniture and windowsills. They broke my hot tub and tiles in the bathroom; when I looked in the rubbish bags, I saw all my drinks bottles empty, as well as broken glasses and towels. I found an image online of the invite that said, "Mansion Party" with my address. There had been 300 people there. Boys were charged to enter; girls got in free.
While he won't disclose what Airbnb paid him for the damage, "a year later repairs are continuing. The floor is still uneven." But he told one local news channel that the damage was over $100,000, adding "There's footprints on my bathroom walls."
At one point more than 100 cars had been parked outside, according to a police report, and the 23-year-old was ultimately charged with "disorderly conduct". He also was banned permanently from Airbnb -- which said in a statement that "negative incidents are incredibly rare."
I felt a massive disappointment in humanity.
You played a stupid game with your personal property, and it looks like you won some pretty stupid prizes. Hopefully this was a learning experience.
You rent your home full of your stuff to a total stranger. What do you expect?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
In a world where everyone reviews everyone, airbnb type places are a lot less likely to have negative reviews. It's not worth giving a negative review and getting negative effects in the future. So you start getting reviews like this:
"It was a great experience. I enjoyed looking at the interesting patterns the mold made on the bathroom tiles. Five stars."
Another thing: for a while, Agoda would ask you to rate a place, and if you didn't put five stars, would ask, "What was wrong with this place?" As a result, it was easier to just not review, unless you wanted to give them five stars.
Lately I've stopped looking at hotel reviews at all, and just sorting by cleanliness rating. If it doesn't get a top clean rating, it's probably not worth visiting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Stupid person did a stupid thing and what everyone who is not an idiot expected after the first line happened.
Seriously. A 20-something rents a house for one night on New Years Eve. If that didn't raise every red flag within 20 miles, I have no idea what it takes to telegraph you "something just might be a bit wrong here".
I have a hard time believing this story is real. If it were told to me as the plot of a movie I would say it stretches the suspension of disbelief quite a lot.
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A couple of wifi-enabled cameras in front of the house could be used to mitigate renter abuse.
Reading this earlier, it appears he received an undisclosed sum from Airbnb for damages.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
A 23 year-old male with 1 review? On New Year's Eve?
How about using some common sense. You would have to expect some problems with a 1 night rental on New Year's Eve, although I'm not suggesting that the homeowner deserved what happened.
I grew up in a different time. I'm sure things like this occurred infrequently. Nowadays people film bad behavior for laughs and share with their friends, each trying to be more outrageous. There seems to be little morality anymore, it's all selfishness and laughing at someone whom you've screwed over.
It really makes me depressed thinking about the future. It's like Clockwork Orange is being mimicked by the mainstream. How incredibly sad.
I was a little surprised the guy did not have a neighbor that called him up, if I were renting a place out I'd let the houses on either side know and give them my number to let me know if anything seems strange...
As you say, some kind of precautions would have been warranted, especially around NYE.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
change him like an rent a car place say the full cost of the house (best list price of an smaller one in your area - the sell it now income) + lost of use say $300-$400 a day (to cover meals + a high end hotel)
Do you know how to tell if someone doesn't give a shit about their place or their neighbours? It's on Airbnb.
You spelt bogan wrong.
Disappointing comment Michael, but far worse is being given a "score 3" on this site.
I moved to Melbourne more than 50 years and there's been a great tradition of vilifying each new wave of immigrants
However, it usually reflects more on the family of those doing the denigrating - in my experience at least.
(I was born from English dad & "Aussie" mum whose family was hugely racist against Australian aboriginals - I never worked out why.)
... though not as bad as in the linked article.
Never rent out for a "model shoot", etc.
It was supposed to be some sort of a photo shoot for some MMA personality.
It turned out to be a big party and porno shoot. There was a rape reported by the neighbors.
They ruined the pool table felt.
At least the Roomba captured about a pound of weed.
"I let random strangers that I didn't know stay in my house unaccompanied and unsupervised and it got trashed".
News at 11.
Honestly, no matter WHAT the rules for Airbnb may or may not be, why on earth would you be stupid enough to do that? If someone "random" asked to borrow your car for one night, would you let them? Would you let them if it was a sportscar? But you'll let them do it with a house worth what? 10 times as much?
20-something pays a minimal fee to use your house for one night over New Year's... bad enough. With a single review? Just what the hell were you thinking?
This is nothing to do with Airbnb per se, it's just bog-standard stupidity. And I bet it's not covered under any of your home insurance policies - for good reason. Airbnb probably aren't even obliged to do anything either... they just choose to do so to as a goodwill gesture to limit the bad press.
Honestly, some people are so stupid it defies belief.
The whole idea of Airbnb is a stupid concept in the first place, though I'm sure profitable when it does work. When it goes wrong, seriously, what did you expect?
If nothing else, a ten second Google will show you things like people Airbnb'ing and turning places into brothels and drug-dens, by comparison a party is the low-end of the scale. Not to mention that they have access to your address for the period of time they are Airbnb'ing... they could be doing all sorts with that kind of access - I could destroy your credit rating in a week in my country by getting access to things addressed to me at your mail address.
I wouldn't even trust a 20-something who might be my own son to have a place "just for New Year's" without making sure they couldn't have a party without my knowledge. Let alone a random stranger.
You learned a lesson that most people never have to learn because they're just not that thick.
Either rent out your place, with a full rental agreement, deposit, month's-rent-in-advance, insurance and all the legal trimmings that come with that, or don't. Short-term rental based on an app EULA is the most ridiculous thing ever and you only need one bad incident to wipe out an entire lifetime's profit doing it.
It was from a young man, probably in his early 20s. He had one review but it was terrific....
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The summary says the owner "stayed down the road at my mother's apartment". If I were renting out my house on New Year's Eve, and I was just down the road, I would probably drive by once or twice myself.
People become prejudiced against groups of immigrants because they see the clash between how said immigrants behave in reality vs. the idealised image that has been drilled into them by misguided educators who feel morally superior to everyone else.
Though I agree in principle, there are a reason for (most) such rules.
Your park one - the alternative is that even when you provide tons of homeless shelters at great expense, people still seek places away from authority. Fuck using a bathroom in a park late at night on my own when it's being used by homeless and those thrown out of the shelters.
Most countries have "the pedestrian has right-of-way" because pedestrians can't avoid a 60mph car, but a 60mph car can avoid a pedestrian. Daylight savings - agree, it's a nonsense. New Year's - no idea if that's the rule but if so it seems likely there's a reason for that. Catering bathrooms for 1,000,000 people on a one-off event is a big deal. Try it. Honestly. It's hard even for 1000 people, especially if there's an "event" where they all want the bathroom at the same time - seriously, marshal even a small-town event and see what happens. Just handling 1,000,000 people ANYWHERE doing ANYTHING is a nightmare. That's why there are rules about how and when that number of people can meet and organise such events.
It's nothing to do with people wanting to make up stupid rules. It's to do with people all wanting to do something "quite simple" for themselves, that actually has a huge number of serious knock-on consequences that they never have to consider, and they care only about the self.
Don't know that many houses that can hold 300 people or was this a mansion?
Roads are for cars only, to drive at or near the speed limit,
We get it. You don't like to live by rules. Neither do I. Particularly the one against running over drunks wandering in the middle of the street. But hey, we all have to compromise to sustain social order.
Have gnu, will travel.
OK, that's not quite the word I was searching for..., ph, right, PREDICTABLE.
Of course this is what they did, they got it because they could trash it an walk away. Don't want you stuff to get broken? Then don't rent it to strangers.
For nights like New Year's Eve, the deposit will be like in the "rent a helicopter" scene in the film "Clear and Present Danger":
Jack Ryan: I’m here to rent the Huey.
Helicopter owner: We don’t rent it anymore, but it is for sale.
Jack Ryan: How much?
Helicopter owner: Two million dollars.
Jack Ryan: Uh, my pilot and I will have to take it for a test drive.
Helicopter owner: Of course, you just have to leave a deposit.
Jack Ryan: How much is that?
Helicopter owner: Two million dollars.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
At least AirBnB stood behind the homeowner is making good on what its idiot customer did. I would have expected AirBnB to hide behind some nebulous legal language and walk away from this scot-free. I guess I am jaded towards corporations and impressed that AirBnB took actions to try and make the entire situation right. Still, I never would use AirBnB offering accomodations.
I wonder... Did this person report their AirBnB income on their tax return...
No, people become prejudiced against immigrants because of social in-grouping and out-grouping. When someone of your own race commits a crime, you put them in a different category; "oh, that was one of the bad ones." When an immigrant commits a crime; "oh, they're all like that." People fail to realize there are assholes in both groups.
The listing explicitly said no parties.
Here's my wallet. No running off with it, now. *dust cloud heads off toward sunset*
He'll be back aaaaany minute now...
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
That's a good example for my point: on the one hand you have certain groups that commit relatively more crimes and on the other hand you have "moral authorities" who try their best to hide and downplay this (e.g. journalists deciding to no longer mention the identity of the perpetrator if they belong to said group). So people fill in the gaps with experience from their daily lives.
This doesn't affect all immigrants. Many groups of immigrants have no such negative stereotypes. It's the ones where reality and fiction clash.
Drunk skulls make dents as well as sober skulls. The rules are there to protect everybody.
Sounds like this guy asked for it by opening an Air BnB. He's lucky if his neighbors didn't sue him.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Nearby and do not even swing by. Hook up a remote camera to watch who comes in and out. Watch the movie Prospect Heights ( Michael Keaton - renter). Get new toothbrushes.
Sounds like a good argument not to rent to anyone who doesn't have a reasonable minimum number of positive reviews.
If it makes you feel better, the rest of us still think ya'll are a bunch of prisoners. No big deal, it's why you're there.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Worse, if you leave a negative review, future homeowners could see them and decide not to rent with you because you are the type that leaves negative reviews. And that is an entirely rational thing for them to do.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It may sound racist but it is actually true. Melbourne has a serious problem with Sudanese youths at the moment.
I can see where she went and what she did based on the credit card receipts. She's a total milktoast. More than once she's remarked that it's only old folks where she goes, and I know she ain't lying because, again, I can see the admission fees and souvenirs on my credit card. I didn't even raise her this way. Doesn't help that she hasn't got much to rebel against (I'm kind of a loser, so the only "rebelling" she can do is not being a failure in life, also I'm pretty into death metal so there's not a whole hell of a lot of music she can "shock" me with. )
Anyway, Not every 20 year old is a party animal. This one was pretty clearly running a professional party for money. Anyone could do that, not just a 20 year old. The real problem is that you put 300 folks in a building meant for 20 tops it warps the floors.
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Australians need to go back to England??
For a country founded as a penal colony, they sure managed to import a lot of English classism with them.
I think people are becoming less racist in general, but the holdouts seem to be so bitter and vile about it.
"immigrants" aren't a homogenous group and aren't perceived as such.
For example traditional Asian immigrants in Europe are generally well liked and there's no "oh they're all like that" generalization. That's exactly why British journalists try to rebrand criminals from the middle east as "Asian".
Weren't there two movies with this plot?
One was called "Risky Business", and can anyone answer the name of the other one?
Bueller? Bueller?
Q: "What's the worst that can happen?"
A: Not thinking through the question of what's the worst that can happen.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I get the logic of "of course this could happen", but why would someone with a mansion go stay at their mother's apartment to rent it out? If they need the extra money, why don't they sell the damn house and buy something smaller? I figured most people who rented out mansions on there had multiple homes or an apartment in another part of the city for whatever reason, but it seems rather inconvenient to oneself to do this, and clearly quite costly if it goes wrong.
In this particular case, by the numbers alone, the Sudanese commit substantially more violent crime per capita than any other cultural group in Australia. To the point where other minority cultural groups, like Vietnamese, are now forming up to fight back. The racism will continue to grow until this problem is resolved.
Instead on one cartridge in a 6-shot revolver, let's offer a single cartridge in a Glock 17 with a 17 round magazine!
Like Georgia you mean ?
To be fair to Australia the British did need somewhere to send the rest of their convicts once they realized they couldn't send them to America anymore, after the revolutionary war.
You did know the British sent just as many convicts to America as Australia, right ?
Look at them now. Australia was founded as convict settlements and now is the envy of the world, constantly in the top two or three best places in the world to live. America was founded by religious fanatics expelled from Europe and is now a morass of drugs, crime and poverty.
Australia for the win !
because pedestrians can't avoid a 60mph car, but a 60mph car can avoid a pedestrian
You've got that backwards. A pedestrian can stop in one step, about 2 feet. A 60 MPH car stops in about 120 feet. If that doesn't make sense, compare the stopping distance of a car and a train. Probably a similar disparity. Who gets the right of way?
Have gnu, will travel.
Thats what you get, dumbass. You want to make a few extra bucks renting out your mansion in pure greed. Anyone who rents their actual house is an utter moron. I can maybe see if you owned a rental. But even then, no. Also, I would run some bleach through that hot tub for a while.
Your mistake is thinking humans are rational actors.
explain why any hotel would accept a reservation without ID and credit card
Pretty much any hotel I've stayed at does that, but then I don't stay at the places that are hourly and bill more for discretion than anything else...
and a pre-auth on the credit card of say 1,000 to 10,000 to cover damages
Sadly such a large pre-auth would lose probably about half of all hotel customers. Yes, even at $1k. Not to mention it's really pad PR as it panics most people to see such a large charge on the CC, they don't necessarily understand it will not actually go through.
I would have thought it was more like, the guest used a fake ID and also one of those temporary CC numbers you can't charge above a certain amount to (though how you'd go about using that in conjunction with a fake ID I'm not quite sure).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is your goal to get people to treat your property well, or to get good reviews? It depends on how the system is set up.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sadly 100% true and not a troll. Mods please undo the bad moderation.
Because of this, anyone of African appearance would terrify an AirBnB host.
But if they heard your American or British accent, they would relax. Nigerian too, if they know the difference between Nigerian and Sudanese.
Its not about "race", but about all the recent violent crime from a particular refugee group.
I live in Vietnam as an expat. The day a foreigner starts causing problems and attacking Vietnamese people, is the day there is one fewer foreigner in Vietnam. The only question would be whether the (generally very laid back) cops beat him up on the way to the airport for deportation.
That's one reason old ladies can walk alone at night in a city of 13 million.
I moved to Melbourne more than 50 years and there's been a great tradition of vilifying each new wave of immigrants
Really? That simple? Most of the current immigrants are from China, India and UK. ...
Sure there are a few grumbles about minor matters, but who is vilifying them?
I do remember a backlash against some groups, and maybe all if you go back far enough.
Vietnamese drug importation, high crime rate among Islanders who came via NZ, fraud from Greeks, the Griffith Mafia,
But not every group, and not recently. The Chinese are working hard, not on welfare, and not committing crime. Not "vilified" .
There was never a huge problem with any of those groups. Not so many violent attacks on random strangers.
But the tiny percentage of immigrants from Sudan are causing a wave of of crimes that were previously rare in Melbourne.
All by mobs of male youths, around 15 to 25. Carjackings and home invasions, as well as swarms of youth snatching phones and handbags at public events and beaches. Not all immigrant groups are the same. To suggest so would be a bit racist, no?
https://www.google.com/search?...
Found Peter Duttons media advisor who lives 3000kms from Melbourne.
Politicians like Peter Dutton shamelessly exaggerate and exploit problems.
But this does not mean there is no basis in fact.
If you stick "airbnb trashed melbourne" into google you might notice a theme starts to develop...
I've got an apartment in Flemington (Melbourne) as well as one in Elizabeth Bay (Sydney), so when I'm in Melbourne, I'm in African immigrant central. There's almost no trouble here. In fact, most of the trouble involving Africans is vandalism targeting businesses owned by Africans in the main street. A few years back, they had to sack most of the local cops because they were targeting African kids for no reason. The trouble is, when you have to cops unfairly targeting a group, they'll think, "Well, I get treated like a criminal even when I'm clean - I may as well just be a criminal."
If you haven't noticed that every group of immigrants in Australia is racist to the next group, you've had your eyes shut. The western Europeans/Brits hated the Greek and Italian "wogs", then the "wogs" hated the Chinese/Vietnamese, and the Chinese/Vietnamese feel entitled to hate the Indians and Africans.
Now there have been issues with groups, but you get that with kids that grew up in a war zone - they're going to have trouble adjusting to a "normal" society. Do you remember the 4T gang in western Sydney? They'd shoot people for looking at their girlfriends wrong. They imploded when their charismatic leader was killed. But what would've happened if instead of targeting the problematic behaviour, we'd alienated the entire Vietnamese community? We'd have a permanent underclass at odds with the rest of society. What about the MERCS (middle-eastern raping cunts)? Do you remember the outrage over that? When the other Lebanese people found out who was responsible for this, they started sending death threats to their parents, like, "Your fucking kids are giving the entire Lebanese community a bad name! We're gonna kill you!" But it was the same thing - kids from a war zone not knowing any different.
Wait a decade or so, and Sudanese will be the same - the Sudanese community will be an integral part of Australia's multicultural society, everyone will look back on the initial issues through the lens of hindsight, and they'll join in with everyone else in hating on whoever the latest round of refugees or economic migrants are.
wtf does this have to do with Australians. Was this a bogan throwing a party or something?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Wait a decade or so, and Sudanese will be the same - the Sudanese community will be an integral part of Australia's multicultural society,
Wishful thinking at best. How are the Aboriginals doing? Living in Melbourne, you probably don't meet any, but come to WA or Queensland.
These social divides can last centuries with no solution in sight. Yes there are big differences in the two groups, but also similarities. And overseas experience with sub-Saharans has not been good. Look at London or the US. Or visit sub-Saharan Africa - it is nothing like Eurasia.
I fear there is no factual basis for your optimism, but I do hope it proves correct.
They're already integrating. When the Sudanese arrived, they started opening gender-segregated coffee shops etc. - you'd have these places where just Sudanese men hung out, no women or other nationalities. Now most of them have closed, and when you walk past the ones that haven't, you see women and white Aussies sitting down there as well. There are three Somali restaurants on up the street, and there are Vietnamese people working alongside the Somalis in the kitchens. I bet there are gonna be a hell of a lot of half Asian, half African babies in Melbourne's next generation, because the local schools (St Brendan's, Mount Alexander College, St Aloysius, etc.) are full of African and Asian kids mingling.
The media loves horror stories. They've blown up a few incidents in Melbourne out of all proportion, because it gets them eyeballs. A few years back it was drug gangs and home invasions they were making a big song and dance about, and most of the perpetrators were white or Vietnamese. There's still some of that going on, particularly around St Albans (western suburbs of Melbourne, poor working class), but the media's moved on to the next thing to get people worked up about.
You mention the Aborigines, but I think that makes my point about disenfranchising an entire community. The Aboriginal community as a whole has been disenfranchised, and that's led to this rift that we can't bridge. If we target the entire Sudanese community rather than just the problematic people/behaviours, we'll create another disenfranchised group. But I think in a way it's already too late for that to happen. Walk up the main street of Flemington some time - the Sudanese Australians are already Australians.
I'm sure she goes a few places with cash she doesn't want me to know about. But the fact is she still spent an awful lot of that trip time going to museums and tourist traps.
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You rent your home full of your stuff to a total stranger. What do you expect?
Most of the shit rich people have in their mansion ends up going for pennies on the dollar, if they have to liquidate it. Get someone to trash your house/steal your stuff and insurance picks up the tab. This whole thing smells exactly like when people stage a car accident (for the insurance money).
I can't imagine their finances were that stable to begin with, if they were having to rent the place out.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Yeah, when I was an expat in Africa, I was turned criminal because I felt "excluded" and "targeted". Utter PC rubbish.
Well, Australians aren't replacing themselves. Australian birth rate is well below replacement. Even Australian muslim birth rate is now below replacement. Capitalism is predicated on perpetual growth, so if the population doesn't grow organically, you need to add more people another way. But white Australians aren't being replaced, unless you want to redefine "white" - the biggest immigrant groups each year are still from white countries.
You're full of shit. My neighbours in Melbourne are a mix of different nationalities, and no-one gives a fuck. Well there's this one Rasta guy on this floor who has these loser "friends" who hang around him just because they know he always shares the herb, and they can be a pain, but it's just that he's too damn nice and won't tell them to piss off even though they're clearly leeching off him - nothing to do with race. Step into any finance industry shop and you'll find best and and brightest of all nationalities. No-one makes a big deal about it, because it just isn't a bit deal.
You get enclaves when a new group of immigrants arrive, but once they spread out into the community, the enclaves dissolve. Where are the Greek, Italian and Maltese enclaves now? They don't exist any more. Once they spread out into the community, they help new arrivals find their feet. The Vietnamese enclaves are diluting as well. Relatively speaking, there aren't that many Vietnamese businesses in Footscray any more (and remember that was a Greek enclave before it became a Vietnamese enclave).
I've been in this country long enough to hear the same arguments about every wave of immigrants. Greeks and Italians were going to be the end of Australia. Vietnamese were going to be the end of Australia. Lebanese were going to be the end of Australia. Africans are going to be the end of Australia. I'm still waiting for it to happen.
You can't win this argument. I know it makes you feel better to try logic, but it's like trying to convince a rutabaga that it should buy life insurance.
It just ain't happening...