@Nanxing0
“First of all, if you are storing your stuff in the property, then you are officially "using " the property. It doesn't matter whether you are physically there or not, but it's a service provided to you with the property to store your stuff. So in that sense, you need to make a formal agreement with the host. Usually hosts would charge you something, maybe with a discounted rate, so you can use it legally as storage. Simply holding the key doesn't grant you the right to use the host's property as storage.”
Agree with the above. The complication with my booking was that airbnb backdated my cancelation to the time when I first mentioned booking suspension / cancellation to them. As it took airbnb something like 3 weeks to cancel the booking, when the host tried to charge me for this period full daily rate, to me it sounded unreasonable (and I suggested amount close to that of commercial storage fee) and that’s why I wanted airbnb to arbitrate as they were the ones who in full awareness of me still having my belongings and keys to the property went ahead and cancelled the reservation.
“From legal perspect of view, if your reservation is cancelled and you don't have a current reservation with the host, then you don't have any right to use the host's property for any purpose including storage. In that case you will need to make a formal agreement with the host to use it as storage, rather than simply holding the key in your hand. As a matter of fact holding the key of other people's property is illegal anywhere in this world without proper consent.”
Agree. Immediately following the cancellation I was trying to communicate with the host to arrange a friend to remove my belongings from the property ASAP, but by then the host refused to communicate with me.
“Here's another example. We run small units in central city Philadelphia and most of time we have same day turnover so we need to clear out ANYTHING the previous guest left over. Most of time it's small stuffs like clothes, phone charger, watch, etc. We usually keep the stuff for a couple days and/or ask the guest for intention, but if the item is too big and the guest doesn't respond we would of course trash them. When there's guest's stuff in the room, we certainly cannot rent the unit to anyone else.”
Sounds like you are a seasoned, reasonable and professional host, unfortunately for me I was my host’s first airbnb tenant… throw in a few of her personal and cultural idiosyncrasies and here we are.
