how do you stop subletting?

[Fangyuan0]

Hi Guys

I recently had nightmare tenant he pretend to rent out my house on assured shorthold tenancy and claim he is single parent with one child. What I discovered back in March is in fact he is subletting since August 2023 on Airbnb and is running this as full time business opportunity and possibly never lived there for a day.

And now he has stopped paying rent since March 2024 and I finally manage to get the possession order from the court back in September 2024.

then he refused to 'move out' on the date of the possession order, meaning I will now need to get warrant from the court and then bailiff to take possession of the property that he is not even lived in. Because of the slow court system in the UK, it will take at least 20 weeks for this process. In the meantime I can see on Airbnb he is happily generating revenues and taking guests while I need to pay mortgages to my bank.

I have contact the Airbnb support to try to take down the listing with my possession order from the court, however Airbnb is refusing to help, I am not even asking Airbnb to be an arbitrator or verify private contract terms, I have present them with the orders from the court clearly stating that this tenant has to go by x date and the x date has passed.

I am running out of idea now, so this tenant gets to make one year worth of Airbnb listing revenue and not paying a penny to the landlord, and the landlord is subject to mortgage payment at the bank. how can this be fair? what's to stop him from doing the same tactics by just massively ramping up this loophole and exploit more landlords?

Airbnb is not going to do anything, he can simply earns crazy amount of money just by keep sign up to lots of properties and just simply don't pay any rent while keep earning from the platform. this is free money no?

[Helen3]

Hi @Barri66 

I am sorry you have a tenant who is subletting on Airbnb for short term rentals. If you have provided evidence to Airbnb that he is subletting they should remove the listing but unfortunately they are sometimes slow to do this.

i presume you have served the tenant an eviction notice under their tenancy. I believe you can also seek to recover the profits they have made from the STR but speak to your solicitor. 

[Barri66]

Thanks for the reply Helen (I should have done a bit more searching of the forum before posting. I can see you are very active in responding and always offer great advice.)

We are have engaged with a solicitor and are preparing a section 8 notice (we have already contacted the tenant via our letting agent explaining that they are in breach)

They're trying to be clever and have photos on the listing that are duplicate of their other listing which I would have thought would also be a a no go for AirBNB.

I have to admit I'm really disappointed by the process, I understand that they cannot vet every property on registration, I understand they need to take time with investigations to prevent spurious claims by disgruntled guests, but when handed empirical evidence in the form of a owner ship documentation in the name of the complainant, a tenancy agreement in the name of the owner and the host and highlighted sections of that agreement that prohibit subletting, they still tried to say they were not responsible. 

[Fangyuan0]

Update from our side, the best way to get this listing removed is by attending multiple times when there are actual booking, and explain the situation to the guests. And let the guest report to the Airbnb. This is how we get our listing removed. This is way more effective than 8 month email exchanges to the Airbnb customer support, and submitted so many documents that they simply refuse to act

[Helen3]

Thank you @Barri66  i am a landlord as well as doing short term rentals .

what checks and references did your estate agents do on the tenant before offering a tenancy ? 

did the tenant agree to take down the listing? 

please take screen shots of the listing and the calendar to show bookings and ask your solicitor about asking for the tenant to pay for income generated through STR as well as evicting them. 

have you reported the actual listing as well as contacting Airbnb to get it removed . 

Airbnb do ask hosts whether they have permission to do STR but it’s not practical for STR marketing platforms like Airbnb to actually check documents to ensure those registering have permission to do so.