Is it possible to transfer a listing to a co-host?

[Joe2091]

The story behind this question is a bit unique, I think. I'll try to keep the explanation as brief as possible.

I am the admin on two properties; one is in Canada (my home country) and the other is in Brazil (my wife's home country).  We have been hosting our Brazilian property smoothly since 2018, but in December we had an issue with a payout. Airbnb sent the payment but it couldn't be delivered to my wife's Brazilian account so it was sent back (we have used the same Brazilian bank account since 2018 with no previous issues).

After many discussions with Airbnb support we learned that rules had changed for Brazilian hosts and that Brazilian property owners could only receive payments in a Brazilian account if their Country of Residence (COR) was in Brazil. This is apparently due to foreign exchange regulations in Brazil. We never received any notice from Airbnb about this change, which was very disappointing and has caused a lot of headaches for us. 

So our options for receiving our Brazil property payments were to send them to my Canadian bank, change my COR to Brazil to keep the payouts in Brazil, or somehow transfer the account to my wife, making her the admin.     

We pay the bills for our property in Brazil so we want to keep all money in Brazil for the income for this property. Also, we are worried about tax complications with the money getting sent to Canada. 

Unfortunately, if I change my COR to Brazil it would effect my Canadian property payouts, since Airbnb also told me that changing a COR to Brazil will require all Airbnb account payments to go to Brazil. 

The best solution seems to be to transfer the Brazil listing to my wife, who has been a co-host since 2018. I recently made her the primary host with the hope that it would allow her to receive the payments, but that didn't work. All payments go to the admin of the property and there doesn't appear to be anyway to transfer payments to a co-host. 

Vital to our rental property is our reputation and reviews; therefore, we do not want to lose these and we're hoping we can transfer the account, along with the reviews, to my wife.

Has anyone had any success transferring a property with reviews to a co-host's account?

Any other ideas that could solve this problem are much welcome! Thank you! 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Joe2091 Airbnb does not allow accounts to be transferred. Its mad but those are the rules.

Just one other thought - Does Canada not want to know about foreign property earnings irrespective of where the money is kept? If it was the USA or the UK they definitely would so you may be evading taxes at present.

[Helen3]

I don't agree with @Mike-And-Jane0  that it's 'mad' that hosts doesn't allow accounts to be moved between hosts.

If they allowed you would have hosts who booked in good faith with one host based on their approach and reviews sometimes ending up staying in a property managed by a completely different host who doesn't have the same standard.

@Joe2091  is there a reason why you can't allocate all of the payment to your wife as the cohost - rather than just the cohost fee

[Joe2091]

Hi Helen,

Thanks for your input. I see your point in Airbnb's policy to not allow accounts to be transferred, but I think there is a way Airbnb could do this while making guests aware of host/owner changes.

VRBO allows reviews to be transferred if the original host makes the request and how they handle it is to list this statement beside each review that was under the past host: "During this stay the property was under previous owner or management." I think this is a fair way of doing it. 

Our rental business is much like other business' where reputation plays a vital part. If some other business is sold, such as a convenience store for example, the new owner is allowed to keep the reputation that was built by the previous owner even though it's not guaranteed that they will keep the same standards. 

As for your last question on payment, I was able to allocate payments in the past to my wife's Brazil account but now Airbnb won't allow me to keep her Brazilian account or add a new one unless I change my Country of Residence to Brazil. 

[Helen3]

When you are buying a business it can include buying the goodwill BUT when you buy a property that has been used for an STR with a listing company like Airbnb you are not buying the STR business you simply buy the property so a completely different scenario @Joe2091 

Is there a reason you didn't take up their offer to send the money to your Canadian account. Or set up a joint Canadian account and get them to send payments there.?

that sounds like your simplest solution

[Joe2091]

I disagree and the different approaches between Airbnb and VRBO is proof that this is a debatable issue. STR owners have much to gain if they take the stance that their STR property is a business where goodwill/reviews can be transferred when considering a sale. Protecting renters can still be achieved in other ways. 

In my case I don't even plan to sell the property. I just want to transfer it to my wife, who has been a co-host for 3-years, because of a technical change on Airbnb's platform that is now causing us a big problem because we have properties in different countries. Switching it over to her and losing the reviews would be a huge loss.  

Currently I am sending all the payments to my Canadian account and it looks like I will have to keep doing this; however, it would be much better if we could just keep our money in Brazil as we have always done. Now we have to transfer the money to Brazil, which costs money and adds an extra step.  

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Helen3 I think there is a huge difference between home share hosts and entire place hosts when it comes to allowing accounts to transfer. My simple solution would be to allow entire place hosts to transfer but that the listing would be flagged as having transferred on such and such a date.

Interestingly we recently listed on Cottages.com. They then advertise properties on Airbnb which means if we sold our property and the new owners continued with Cottages.com then the listing would transfer without anyone noticing. It won't apply to us as Cottages was a disastrous experience where they made multiple pricing errors so we have left them.

[Joe2091]

Thanks for the response. I agree that Airbnb should have a mechanism for allowing property accounts to be transferred, or at least the reviews. VRBO allows reviews to be transferred as long as the original host agrees and makes the request. 

Canada does want to know about foreign property earning, but it was my wife who was paying the taxes on the income in Brazil since all the earnings were going to her account. Now I'm not sure how that is going to work since we've been forced to send all payments to Canada.