theblaze.com

Renter has stayed at luxury Airbnb in California for a year without paying and demands relocation fee of $100K

Carlos Garcia

~3 minutes

A renter at a luxury Airbnb in California has stayed there without paying for more than a year and is demanding $100K in relocation fees, according to the rental property's owner.

Sascha Jovanovic told KTLA-TV that the renter had initially paid for a six-month stay at the luxury studio in Brentwood for about $105 per night. But after that period ended in April 2022, the renter simply refused to move.

“This is like a nightmare, to be honest,” Jovanovic said. “This is extortion. This is like manipulation. Nobody should go through this.”

The attorney for Elizabeth Hirschhorn, the renter, told the Los Angeles Times that “she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy" and added that "its shower was constructed without a permit.”

Jovanovic is now asking for $60,000 for what she owes in rent. He says that he fears for his safety.

“She is a smart person who knows how to manipulate the system and it is dangerous that people like this are allowed to do this,” Jovanovic added. “She is obviously trying to extort a community member and she has done this before.”

He says that he refuses to settle with Hirschhorn because people like her "have to be stopped."

KTLA's legal analyst, Alison Triessl, said Jovanovic made a mistake by renting the unit without a certificate of occupancy.

“If the landlord does not have a certificate of occupancy, any contract they had is void, so legally, she actually owes nothing,” she said. “But that does not leave him without remedy.”

Airbnb has also washed its hands of the case because Jovanovich admits that he allowed Hirschhorn to stay after the period of time agreed upon on the platform.

Jovanovich's attorney, Sebastian Rucci, has called Hirschhorn the "tenant from hell" in an interview with the Times.

“If she’s right, the theory is that if a landlord has something that isn’t permitted, then you can stay in it rent-free forever," he explained.

The average single-family home in Brentwood, California, currently sells for about $2.15 million according to Redfin.

Here's more about the rental nightmare:

How much is the fine for simple assault? 10 grand? $60,000 in lost rent minus $10,000 fine = $50,000. Hmm.

Another vote for squat on the squatter. Wait until they leave, then go in, change the locks, and be sitting there with a shot gun over one knee when they return.

What are they going to do, call the cops? It's your property. The Deed is in your name. The squatter gets to hear the dreaded, "It's a civil matter".

Buh bye.

Ken, that's supposed to be the way it operates, but well, you know... it is California. Home of sophisticated laws and judges. We have a poster here who has told us about how much better they are than the rest of us numerous times. We should all be taking notes and learning from their wisdom.

The police won't get involved here because it is not a legal rental. They WILL remove people from hotels and airbnb that are legit rentals. So, this isn't because of "California." It is because the LL tried to cheat and lost.

The landlord here didn't do what they should have. This should be a lesson to all of us on what not to do. They basically didn't have an approved rental space, put it up on airbnb anyhow, and got screwed for doing so.

Sid: As far as that poster here who likes to make up fun stories... I think that he's the exact kind of person to be the LL in this situation: skirt the rules and then complain when the city actually enforces their laws. I don't see that as an example of "wisdom" at all...

John, I dont think that is who Sid was referring to.

I'm advocating for not renting properties that aren't ready to rent. He put in an illegal shower. He ignored permits repeatedly. Sorry, but I'm not feeling real sorry for a LL that does that sort of thing.

Is it ridiculous that this person can stay there this long? Absolutely! But did this LL get himself into this mess? Yup!

(If you think all it takes to have a legal rental is to list a property for rent, then you're part of the problem. You're why we all have to deal with more regulations and other crap -- because you're just doing whatever you want with no regard for the law or other landlords. You're screwing us over with your "I listed it, so it must be a legit rental!" garbage.

Ken: I don't know what you're talking about. I've never discussed zoning here and do believe in it. You must be thinking of someone else.

NE: If you read what I said, I absolutely said that I thought it was "ridiculous" that someone could stay in a unit that long just because it wasn't a legal rental unit. So, no, I don't think a code violation justifies someone staying in the unit that long. Again, I flat out said that very clearly at least twice in this thread.

It isn't about permits to me. This seems very simple to me. To rent a unit in that areas requires a certificate of occupancy. Many of us have been in areas where landlords need something similar. Good landlords get them. They are easy. We pass every inspection without much issue. They are annoying, sure, but not a big deal.

This area requires one and the landlord didn't get one. The law is clear that any unit without a certificate of occupancy does not have a valid contract and no rent can be collected for it.

That's it. It's simple. He screwed up. He needed a certificate of occupancy to rent a unit. He knew this. He didn't get one.

Now he has consequences for his actions. I thought you were all into that? Talking about how people should take responsibility for their own life and actions? Well, he skipped the system and now he has to take responsibility for that decision.

Do I still think it ridiculous that the person can stay this long AFTER? Yes! It's crazy to me! But this guy was also asking for like $60k in back rent from her -- and he's NEVER going to get that when he didn't have a properly licensed rental. That's on him, sorry.

John, If it's such a problem of being an illegal rental because it doesn't have an occupancy stamp or permit then seems like the city would be willing to condemn it and get the tenant out until it is remediated. That's not happening so I can only assume the city doesn't think it's that big of a deal. This is purely about stiffing the landlord by all involved.

MikeA, ding, ding, ding! If permits were really about habitability and safety... AND if this situation were really about the certificate of occupancy... THEN the city would have ejected the holdover tenant. 1 + 1 = 2.

But that's NOT what this is about. This is about the city flexing its regulatory muscle on this LL. Did he screw up? Yep. So what ought a city do when someone ignores code?

Fine the LL, eject the tenant for safety reasons, and make the LL pull a permit. Has any of that happened yet?

No. I leave everyone here to their own thoughts about why. Mine haven't changed.

John, I'm not talking about Robert J. He can take his Uzi and do whatever he wants. *grins Think about the phrases I used a bit more and a name should pop into mind.

I agree with MikeA, Sid, and Don! I know there are things around here that all we need is a permit and no inspection. A garage under 1000 ft.² with no electric in it requires a permit but no inspection. So we don’t get those very often and have built many WITH power in them. Somethings require an inspection, but no permit. Like a new electrical service for example. Our electrician is commercially trained, so he just unhooks the powerline and lays in the grass until he gets the meter done and hooks it back up. God bless America!

As I've made clear... I agree this situation is ridiculous. I simply said that the landlord did not help himself and certainly brought a lot of this on himself. If he was a member here, we would have all told him BEFOREHAND not to even try this sort of thing. If he did it anyway, we'd blame him for his actions. He has to take some responsibility here -- he screwed up royally and now it has come back to bite him. (But, again, yes, it is crazy that he now can't get her out, of course.)

On a side note, who the heck uses AirBNB to do long-term (6+ month) rentals? Is that a thing now? To me, AirBNB is still a week or maybe a week or two vacation rental system. Maybe in some areas people are using it for normal leases now?

John, I'm seeing and agreeing with you it's ridiculous. No need to beat that dead horse any longer.

AirBnb does offer longer term rentals. It's not common, but back when I was doing it I recall at least monthly renting as an option. They also pressure you to give hefty discounts for long term rentals, and that plus their ever-present fees for "brokering" the deal (i.e. basically giving you an ad platform like Zillow) makes the net proceeds less than standard year leases. Why anyone would use that option is not clear to me. The whole point of AirBnb is to do short term, highly profitable rentals rather than standard M2M landlording. Once you go past a month, the benefit essentially evaporates.

Nightly rentals were a cool idea for a while, but then like many businesses a ton of newbies jumped in and the market got saturated. They still seem to work okay in highly desired vacation locations. But locally, they are worse than standard landlording. AirBnb almost never sides with the landlord, and their $1 million insurance only helps if they agree with you, which they seldom do. I had a gal admit that they let their daughter light up a joint in one of my lake cabins, even though on my ads I only allowed smoking outdoors. AirBnb said if I allowed smoking outside I had to allow it everywhere, which is B.S. It also didn't matter that at the time, pot was still illegal in Missouri, so they were violating the law as well as my pollicies.

So I promptly clamped down and prohibited smoking. Shortly after, I sold the lake properties and was never so happy as to realize I never had to deal with AirBnb again.

6 x 6, yes you can, but it may be harder. For one, where will you advertise that lots of people are looking? Not on Zillow or Zumper. Maybe on FB marketplace, but with all the scams out there, how do you vet your customer or how does your customer vet you?

Speaking of which, there's a huge challenge of constantly having to pre-qual stays. AirBnb/VRBO do a minimal amount by requiring an ID, but that's about it. Supposedly, they also have their rating system, but that is dubious as someone can set up a "rental" then have a friend rent from them, and in exchange they give each other positive reviews.

In the end, I don't think it's a very good model unless you like being 24/7 on call. If it's Wednesday, they don't want their water heater fixed on Friday or tomorrow... they want it RIGHT NOW at 2 AM! And you will pay RIGHT NOW rates to get that done.

Better to just buy a hotel if you want to mess with that stress. Or turn it over to a management company that specializes in nightly rentals. Once all is said and done, the pay isn't very good for most locations. Highly desirable, kitschy places do well, but it's like any business except here probably only about 10% of the people make 90% of the money. The rest buy themselves a job as a cleaner and concierge and risk a ton if even one bad renters shows up and trashes the place, which will lead to canceled bookings while you do repairs, which lowers your ratings and profits, etc.

In short, to be good at nightly rentals and make any serious money on it I believe is a full time gig for either the owner or a specialized property manager. It's not something for passive income landlords who want more freedom.

NE: No, the landlord's royal screwup was trying to rent a unit in an area that requires an inspection and certificate of occupancy without getting that done. Had they requested the certificate, the inspection would have showed the shower issue and he wouldn't be in this situation.

I don't think AirBNB has much to do with it -- I just thought it odd that someone was doing such a long-term rental through AirBNB at all. That's odd for my area, but unrelated to the issue at hand.

So, my understanding is that she paid for the original 6 months as agreed. Close to the end of that, he noticed some water damage and mold and offered to fix it while she stayed in a hotel. She said no to that and then refused to leave from that point on. At some point, I guess they both agreed to extend things an additional few weeks -- and I think she paid again during that time. They had a "final move out date" and when that finally came, she just refused to leave and stopped paying.

All that being said, I do think this was her intent from the start. From what I gather, this happened in a previous place just a couple months before she moved in here!

Once again, if he was here, we'd have told him about checking previously rentals out and so on...

Thank you Ken & Sid.