Guest had to be evicted today. Local police were very helpful. Airbnb was not.

[Joan2055]

I am a brand new host. I've been at this about a month but I'm getting bookings and good reviews. On my way to superhost status I hope! After five perfect bookings, I got my first bad one. Guest lied about why she was coming and where she was from. She had a brand new account and no reviews so that was a red flag (but I understand everyone has to get their first review). Long story short: she and two guests hung blankets over all the windows and were clearly using illicit drugs. Neighbors called with concerns about their behavior. My husband and I intervened and ultimately decided to ask them to leave after consulting our local police department, which were super professional and helpful. Airbnb staff were of absolutely no help. I made multiple phone calls and, despite promising they were escalating my call and someone would call me back, they never did. Once evicted, I learned the guest stole several items from my home. The police intervened and the guest returned some but not all of the items over two days. All in all, we think we got out easy. The guests were messy and dirty and stained some items and moved furniture around and stole items, but did not trash the house. And because of good neighbors, we intervened early and got them out before -- we think -- they were planning to cook meth. My point is -- you have to trust your instincts and take matters into your own hands. My husband and I did enough research during the ordeal to learn the cell phone the guest used was registered in a false name (we searched for, found, and spoke to the person whose name the phone was in and there was no association). We researched the guest on our statewide Casenet (registry of legal action) and found a history of drug offenses. Moving forward, I will be requiring a car tag number and driver's license number of the guest who books.

Any other tips or advice?

[Joan2055]

By the way, I left an honest review noting the guest broke house rules, was asked to leave, removed items from the house, but ultimately brought some of them back.

[Anonymous]

@Joan2055    I think you summed it up very well here:  "My point is -- you have to trust your instincts and take matters into your own hands."

This is absolutely true. You took all the right steps here: getting police involved, removing the guest from your property, posting an honest review, and updating your policy. The most Airbnb could have done for you is advised you to do these very things.

I hope you'll never find yourself in this situation again, though unfortunately with an unsupervised whole-house listing, there's always going to be the risk of unauthorized parties, smoking, drugs, and other illegal activity. Exterior cameras can be effective in preventing parties, but I think the best filter you have against guests with bad intentions is to leave off Instant Book and screen based on the quality of communication. 

[Mariam160]

@Anonymous  I have been in a few of these situations and not having a photo of the guest during booking, I purely went by the quality of the conversation and man, was I wrong. They are super polite and sound very considerate and it turned out to be far from the truth. Their listing said they were from out of town and their phone numbers came through from same city I’m in. They reserved for 5 and brought 10, If I leave off instant booking, What questions do you advise I should ask to filter out sketchy people from booking. 

[Anonymous]

@Mariam160  I'm not sure what kind of "sketchy" you're most concerned about here, but if a guest booked for 5 and brought 10, that might have something to do with the wording in your House Rules:

"No more than 5 people are allowed to visit in addition to guests reported to occupy the property. Visiting hours are until 12am."

So...10 people are allowed as long as 5 of them leave by midnight? OK, at least that's a clear and specific rule. But how do you enforce it as such? Are you checking the surveillance records at 12 AM to see how many people have left?  

I would think that if you didn't want guests to feel they were allowed to have a larger group than booked, you'd close the loophole and insist that no unregistered guests enter the property at any time, overnight or otherwise. 

[Mariam160]

@Anonymous  I have a camera as stated in my profile above the stairs and I see three people sleeping on my couch and one on the floor. At any given time there have been 10-12 people in the house. And although I have non smoking signs they have been smoking. The tear and wear by 10 people and water usage is not the same for 10 as it is for 5.  My question is if this happened next time, how do I go about asking them to leave. If a host asks the guest to leave, do they accept the risk of their place being trashed or is there a process of escorting them out? Do I go there myself or asks the police to go? I’m a petite person and not intimidating.
I thought my verbiage was clear on my listing but I will add more notes as suggested. Thank you for that. These people are in my house now and can’t wait to have them gone. 

[Mariam160]

@Anonymous  I responded to your message earlier but for some reason it’s not showing on this page. By sketchy, I mean people who have their pants literally under their butts with the entire underwear fully showing.  By sketchy I mean people who are registered to be coming out of town and their call came from Compton, in Los Angeles which is not a good area if anyone is familiar with LA.  I clearly stated in my profile that the guests of the guest can visit but need to leave by midnight. As stated in my profile I have a security camera above my interior stairs. I see that 4 people slept on my couch and one on the floor. They are not even using sheets. I have to fully wash that sofa after four days of four men sleeping on it. If someone lies about the number of guests, they are sketchy. They triggered the FA three times and called the fire truck to my house because according to them they ran the shower to create steam and it caused the smoke detector to go off. I live in that house and fire alarm has never been triggered by the shower steam. I can’t imagine how much water they are letting it run to cause that much steam. I’m dreading the water bill already. 
My question was merely about the process,  how to evict people from the property. Is that something I’d have to do or send the police to do it. These guests are leaving tomorrow and my heart is in my chest just to see what damages they have done. I’d like to know what questions to ask for to better weed out Bad people. my property is in a quiet area in the hills and it seems that it attracts people who want to party and smoke pot. I was hopping to get more families but it hasn’t worked out that way.  i don’t want my neighbors to be subjected to these type of people but with the profile photos not showing at the booking time, I don’t see how I can avoid problems. I saw the profile pic after the booking and my heart sank because I knew this guy was a problem but I didn’t know how I could resent my authorization and not get penalize for it. 

[Anonymous]

@Mariam160   Your question above was "how to filter out sketchy people from booking," not how to remove them from the property. As the owner of the property you are the person responsible for evicting guests if that becomes necessary. You can hire private security to act on your behalf if you don't feel comfortable doing so.  Of course you can call the police if someone is breaking a law or refusing to leave the property, but they're not interested in enforcing House Rules for Airbnb hosts.  

Your definition of "sketchy" sounds an awful lot like racial profiling and more than a little bit BBQ Becky. If a guest is not acceptable to you based on the fact that they come from a working-class neighborhood or choose to wear black street fashion, renting short-term to strangers off the internet is not for you, and nor is Airbnb's anti-discrimination policy. Tell them you want to cancel a booking when you see what your guest looks like, and of course you'll be deservedly penalized or delisted. If what you meant by "sketchy" was lying, bringing unregistered guests, smoking (legal) pot, and partying, you're at risk of these things whether your guests are young men from Compton, blond girls from Norway, or retirees from Kansas. You can set parameters that narrow down your market more, such as a longer minimum stay or higher room rate, if you don't mind having a less competitive listing, but even so - your security features and rules are worthless unless you're willing to step up and enforce your rules when you see them being broken.

There's also the option of changing your marketing strategy. You could try a non-Airbnb platform that caters to a more specialized clientele and allows you to charge an actual security deposit. You could also add more amenities that appeal to families, if they're your preferred guests - your listing currently doesn't scream "family friendly" with its steep stairs, sharp corners, and minimalist aesthetic, but I'm sure some parents will have insight into what features matter most to them when traveling with kids. (Though at the moment families are canceling their travel plans in droves due to current events, so I wouldn't expect you to get many such bookings for awhile anyway).

[Mariam160]

@Anonymous  your comment is so irrelevant and off base that I’m not going to bother reading the second part of your message. You guys sometimes lose perspective that the intent of this community is to help out other hosts not to make personal attacks which you did from your first message. Give me a break! 

[Anonymous]

You can't really speak to the content of a comment if you refuse to actually read it. It's earnest advice, but it's your choice whether you want to take it in. 

If you happen to know any African-American people personally, perhaps you should show them what you wrote and ask how it comes across. I'm sure you don't want to hear from a stranger that your choice of words came off very racist, but perhaps someone whose feelings you actually value can better explain this to you.

[Carol5493]

Hi Andrew, I really appreciate your straight forward, reasonable and honest answers here so I would like to ask a question along the same genre of this thread.  I am very new at hosting.  My first guest cancelled due to work issues and I am expecting my second guest in a few weeks, lets call him Bob.  Bob was an instant booking for 10 days and is booked for himself and a guest.  My concern is that Bob has no profile information other than he has a verified Gov't ID and phone #.  There's no picture, no background, no reviews or person information other than he lives in a town about 45 minutes away and joined Airbnb in 2019.  My space is an In-law Suite attached to my home.  How would you suggest I go about finding more about this person?  I realize that any information I ask for could be either true or false, but I am the kind of person who believes that MOST people in this world are good, truthful and kind.  On the other hand, my gut is not comfortable with this situation.

[Anonymous]

@Carol5493 Thank you for the kind compliment!

It's not at all unusual for user profiles to feature no personal text or photos since Airbnb does not require them. The fact that "Bob" uploaded ID is at least some sign that he's not just mocked up a phony profile for nefarious reasons. But still, you can change your instant Book settings so that only users with positive reviews and/or profile photo can book, or you can turn that feature off altogether so that guests have to correspond before you accept.

What do you feel you would need to know about a guest in order to feel at ease with a booking? The typical things one might ask are what is the purpose of the visit, what made you choose this particular listing, what's your scheduled arrival time, and have you read through the full listing and house rules. Usually you'd want to cover that stuff before accepting, but perhaps you didn't know about the instant Book settings before, so now you can present a few questions as a way of customizing Bob's experience. You can also take the opportunity to reiterate anything that's important to know - particularly that as a one person booking no other guests will be permitted on the property without the host's written approval and an alteration to the booking (this should be in your House Rules if it isn't already).

It wouldn't be appropriate to ask things like the guest's age, profession, family/marital status, or other details irrelevant to his stay. But you'll often find that people reveal more than about their character just by how they answer a banal question than a direct one. 

[Carol5493]

Thank you for the reply.  In order to be more comfortable, I would like to know his purpose for travel, a bit about what to expect his schedule to be and a bit about the person he's traveling with.  At some point, we will need to discuss check in and location.  The same day I posted my question to you,  I used one of the messages suggested by airbnb  (the one that contains, "as this is my home" ) to message him.  My concern is growing as he has not responded.  I plan to send another message today and pointedly ask for a reply.  If there is no response, I'm thinking about sending a third message letting him know that if I get no reply withing 48 hrs, I will be cancelling the reservation.  I am not comfortable hosting someone who is not communicative.  I have read in this thread to listen to your gut and this is what mine is telling me.  Does this sound reasonable?

[Brian1663]

I would love to hear how his profile photo caused your "heart to sink", Mariam.

[Mariam160]

@Brian1663  you’re welcome to look at my guest reviews. It’s the last guest I had and most probably be the very last guest that I will ever have. They made several damages. It took two days of cleaning. I cleaned my house from bottom to top. I don’t know if the photo profile of the guest is visible if you go to my profile. It was basically a hunch and he looked like someone who was up to no good but I didn’t listen to my hunch.