90 day limit

[Daniel5]

How strict is San Francisco about monitoring the 90 day limit? I'm just starting as a host and I'm not sure how many days I will want or be able to host.

[Eric6]

The 90-day limit is only for entire homes, not homeshares.

The Department of Short Term Rentals just doled out $400,000+ in fines. Do not break the law.

[Peter0]

@Eric, I'm not from your area but we have a very similar thing going in London - a 90 day rule too.  Loads of people are ignoring it (myself included) on the basis that the authorities would need to be very clever to find out about the infringement.  The biggest risk is being shopped by neighbors.  How is SF going about monitoring the situation - and how have they gotten the evidence to make the fines you refer to?

[Cari0]

The 90 day limit is for entire homes AND unhosted homeshares. I renting a room in one's primary residence, one must be present in order to be considered hosted. See the comment made by Keith which directly quotes the law.

I terms of how SF is tracking this, it is necessary to file a quarterly report listing each and every stay. https://shorttermrentals.sfgov.org/reporting

[Keith1]

@Eric6 is incorrect.

There is a lot of misconception about the "90 day limit".

The law states that you may ONLY share a home that is your FULL-TIME Permanent residence.   It defines this as a place you occupy (i.e. sleep) 275 days a year.   Since you're required to be home 275 days a year in order to legally do short-term-rentals this leaves a maximum of 90 days (91 in leap-year) in which you can host while you're not present.

As written in the current law, if you are NOT present in your home at least 275 days a year, you may NOT engage in short term rentals AT ALL since that home would not be considered your primary residence for the purpose of the short-term-rental legislation.

You can read more here: http://www.sfbos.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/ordinances14/o0218-14.pdf
Administrative code 41A.5.(g).1.(a) reads as follows (page 17 in the link above):
The Permanent Resident occupies the Residential Unit for no less than 275 days out of the calendar year in which the Residential Unit is rented as a Short-Term Residential Rental.

I hope this clears things up regarding the 90 day limit,

Keith

[Majid1]

Apprecaite all the info that is posted on the thread. 

A) Does anyone know how ACTIVE the SF Board is in searching for violators? 

B) Does anyone know HOW they are finding the violators?  (eg. does airbnb tell them? )

C) I am aware that you have to file your hosted and unhosted stays in your qtrly report. If someone is just entering false information, then how does SF Board find out? 

Thanks.

[Keith1]

I thought I replied about this already but I don't see my response here so here I go again.

There are lots of ways they can find you.

Your neighbors may be video taping your front door and counting days you go through it and reporting this information to the OSTR.

They also can scrape the web and get information just like airdna has.

If they see your calendar has open nights and then they become unavailable, they may assume it's a booking and not that you "took it off the market" that night.

If this doesn't match up with your quarterly filing, this may trigger an audit.

As I understand it, currently it's almost all complaint driven, but they are collecting various bits of data.

They're also in talks with AirBnB to provide data .. if airbnb decides to provide data then it'll make it much easier for the city to catch you.

In cases like these, the burden of proof is always on the accused.. if the city thinks you're doing something wrong, you'll have to prove to them you aren't.

The quarterly reports are filed under penalty of perjury ... are you willing to risk jail time in hopes you don't get caught lying on those forms?

My advice is for people to host within the bounds of the law and report accurately your hosted and unhosted nights.

The consequences could be quite high.

Keith

[Anelya0]

My property just got a violation notice and the reason is that one of the neighbors reported it. What they did not realize that we have  a TIC hence the penalty is split between all of us. 

City looked into that pretty quick. I started hosting in January and sometime between then and end of February they were able to investigate and assess a $484 fine per day

I really hate how our municipality is meddling with my property rights as an owner.