Hi Everybody -
Yesterday we received a surprise long term-instant booking for 4 months.
I say surprise, because our settings have never allowed long term bookings. Our house is in NY state and we are afraid of scammers who claim renters rights after 30 days.
Also, we have turned our Instant booking off a long time ago after many guests without reviews were booking our place.
At first we thought our account was hacked, but Airbnb found no security breach.
The guest who booked seems legitimate and has 10 excellent reviews, but it is hard to tell if her prior stays on Airbnb were short or long term stays.
Could someone with long term rental experience help answer a few questions?
- should we ask the guests to sign a short term lease along with proof of identity? In our long term rental properties we vet renters through their SSN on a dedicated landlord website. Should we do that in this case, because we don’t feel Airbnb will have our back if something goes wrong
- How do we deal with the lack of a security deposit from Airbnb?
- the booking is for 2 people, but how do we deal with the extra guests for a long stay? We don’t want to tell the renters not to have any guests for 4 months but we are not comfortable with a constant stream of unvented guests coming through either.
- the cancelation setting was a “1 day prior - no penalty” when this was booked which is a problem should the guests change their mind the day before. They booked the most popular time in our area which is August to Dec.
Thank you in advance for your input. Any advice would be much appreciated.
