[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:15] Short Term Rental Management. We are here to talk about a policy change with Airbnb. For those of you that use Airbnb, not everybody does. Oh, totally understand that.
[00:00:27] A lot of folks listening to this podcast might find that hard to believe, but it's true. A lot of property management companies don't use Airbnb. But today we are going to talk about their new policy for age minimums for homes in the United States. And on today's program, we are going to be dealing mostly with facts as opposed to opinions. Will be a couple of opinions, but mostly facts as I just go ahead and start by reading basically the entire new policy. So the policy is called. It is a community policy called age minimums for homes in the United States. All right?
[00:01:07] And it reads as follows. For homes in the United States, hosts may require an age minimum for guests, reserving the listing parentheses the booking guest up to the age of 25.
[00:01:22] So in other words, we are now allowed to have a minimum age of Anything up to 25 on Airbnb. Let's continue.
[00:01:33] If a host imposes an age minimum, it must be applied to all prospective booking guests and must be clearly communicated to the guests before booking.
[00:01:44] Makes perfect sense. In other words, you can't be 24 and older with one guest and 18 and older with another guest. That's not good. I think most folks would call that discrimination. We can't do that.
[00:01:56] Totally understandable. And it also needs to be disclosed. What was that exact language? There must be clearly communicated to the guests prior to booking. And they don't yet so far haven't told us how to communicate that. Let's continue.
[00:02:11] Any age minimum applies only to the booking guest and does not restrict the age of children or other individuals accompanying, accompanying, accompanying the booking guest.
[00:02:23] Hosts are responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable law when imposing an age minimum or booking guests for homes in the United States. Meaning if your city or even your HOA has governing rules that are different than this, then you need to be in charge of that.
[00:02:42] All right. And it goes on to say that age minimums are not permitted for booking guests for homes outside of the United States unless they are applicable laws or regulations that prohibit guests of a particular age. So again, United States only.
[00:02:56] All right, then we go on to some bullet points here. In the new policy, it says how hosts should notify guests of age minimums. There we go. That's what we were looking for. Hosts must notify guests of age minimums prior to booking.
[00:03:11] Hosts must prominently disclose their age minimums on their listing description as well as through messages to guests. So they want it in the listing description and in auto messages or messages of any kind.
[00:03:25] Host must confirm the booking guest understands and in and is of the age minimum within a reasonable time after booking through a follow up message to the guest and then a sub note here afterwards. Hosts are allowed to confirm at check in that guests that the guest is of the minimum age by checking the guest id.
[00:03:48] Which sounds like a lot of work for out of town hosts, but it is a fairly common thing if you're a local property manager to do that, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
[00:03:57] However, hosts cannot ask a booking guest to submit their ID through the messaging feature unless they have legal or compliance reasons for collecting IDs. Learn more about when hosts can collect IDs.
[00:04:13] So that's a little bit weird there. Like you're allowed to check the guest ID before they go into the home, but you're not allowed to ask the guest for their ID on the messaging system. Which does that mean that if my management software has a way to ask guests to upload their ID that Airbnb is not going to allow that? I would say probably yes.
[00:04:36] But will it be enforced and how will they enforce it? I don't know.
[00:04:43] Host. And then lastly here hosts are required to allow the booking guest to cancel that penalty if the booking guest does not meet the age minimum.
[00:04:53] Pretty simple stuff. So basically this is now going to be similar to what's going on on vrbo with a more in depth set of expectations, if you will. On VRBO there's actually a drop down menu where you can select the guests age minimum. So there's a an age section on your VRBO listing where you can find a drop down menu and choose you know how low you're willing to go. So you can pick 25 and older.
[00:05:23] That's never happened on Airbnb. Matter of fact, last summer, it's not even been a year ago now, to my recollection, Airbnb got more strict on they have to be allowed if they're 18 years or older.
[00:05:39] So now very quietly, Airbnb has changed this policy, the age minimums for homes in the United States community policy.
[00:05:47] They haven't told anybody about this. We just discovered it by poking around because we do our homework.
[00:05:54] And now you're allowed to be 25 and older, 24 and older, 23 and older et cetera on Airbnb. And it's a very simple process. You would just put it in your description. Hey, this home is 23 years and older. Only the booking, the booking guest, the person who books the home, which is very important because used to be back in the day, some folks would say every single guest has to be over the age of 24, 25, whatever the number is. Airbnb saying we can't do that.
[00:06:24] Vrbo, to my knowledge, without having that policy right in front of my face, is not as worried about it. You can be just 25 and older across the board. I could be wrong about that. We're not talking about Airbnb or VRBO's policy today, but VRBO again has been always a little bit more on the side of the hosts with this policy since day one.
[00:06:45] When it comes to buying and selling your first or next vacation home, you need to work with the best.
[00:06:53] Do not compromise. Call the short term shop.
[00:06:58] Our agents are laser focused, highly trained, and many of them also own their own short term rentals.
[00:07:07] Find
[email protected] now. I will say I think this is a good move for Airbnb because it'll make their lives easier. I can't even imagine how many folks they have involved with trying to enforce this 18 and over. Only thing that they've been doing for quite a few a while.
[00:07:25] They're probably getting lots of phone calls and messages and, and from guests and, and hosts alike saying we don't want to do this. We.
[00:07:32] How. How dare this host not allow us to book. We're, we're 22 years old and this is a pretty smart move in my opinion.
[00:07:41] Also, you gotta be what, 24, 25 to rent a car.
[00:07:46] Most cases a home is more expensive than a car, so it makes sense. Why wouldn't I be? As I'm trying to clean my glasses here. If you're on YouTube, why wouldn't I be? Need to be the same age as a car rental.
[00:07:58] You know, Makes sense.
[00:08:01] Okay, I'm going to switch to opinions. My opinion is that I'm likely within my property management company. I'm likely going to remain 18 and older.
[00:08:10] Why not? I don't have any problems. I never have any problems. I do know, I realize that some new folks get nervous. They get, they panic. Especially around spring break time.
[00:08:22] Oh my goodness. These, these young kids are going to come in here and party and trash my house. Well, if you're worried about that, you shouldn't be in rental real estate. That's My opinion. So I'm going to stay at 18 until further notice. But I do kind of like the, the option to go a little higher if, if needed.
[00:08:39] I would equate this to being pet friendly.
[00:08:42] I don't want to be pet friendly, but maybe I can have an advantage here. If some of my competition is going to 24 and older or 25 and older, and I'm only 18 and older, It is worth noting that Most hotels are 18 and older.
[00:09:01] Again, my competition in some cases, not in a lot of cases in my. Where my properties are, they're in vacation towns where hotel is a whole different thing and have better locations in most cases. And I have a kitchen and I have a washer and dryer, you know. But most hotels now, they're allowed to have their own rules, but Most hotels are 18 and older. Some require 21 and older.
[00:09:26] Walt Disney World allows you to book and stay at the age of 18.
[00:09:31] I like the way Walt Disney World does business. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with them. So what my point is, I am in no way saying that you should raise your age limit on Airbnb and. Or verbo.
[00:09:50] I'm just telling you that this is an option and I am not going to. Not, not right now anyway. I have in the past, before Airbnb was very strict about this, been 25 and older.
[00:10:01] The more strict Airbnb got on the 18 and older thing, the more we loosened it up and said, screw it, let's just allow 18 and older. And we didn't notice the difference. So I'm just going to stay there until further notice.
[00:10:14] Okay. And I will also say that this usually comes up with new folks.
[00:10:21] Most of the time that somebody's worried about renting to an 18 or a 19 year old is they're new and they're worried about their house getting trashed. And I'm here to tell you, get over it. You're renting a house. It's a rental.
[00:10:33] Rent the house.
[00:10:37] This is coming from a guy that's been landlord and for. For a long time.
[00:10:41] Rent the damn house. All right, so again, Airbnb's new policy is you are allowed to choose your minimum age only for the booking guest. The person whose profile booked the home up to the age of 25.
[00:11:00] They didn't make an announcement, but that's what the policy reads as of a few days ago, to our knowledge. I mean, it does read this and to our knowledge, it was as of a few days ago.
[00:11:11] One Another thing I'll note is that you it would behoove you for my new folks especially that would probably need this advice to keep it the same on all platforms.
[00:11:25] I actually don't know what it is on booking.com I didn't look that up, but I'm sure it's easily googleable.
[00:11:30] But if you're going to be 23 and older on Airbnb, be 23 and older on VRBO.
[00:11:36] And then there's that starts the conversation of verbo sucks. I never get any verbo. We're not here to talk about that today.
[00:11:44] So big news in the world of short term rentals.
[00:11:48] The Airbnb platform has now decided to allow the booking guest age to be at the discretion of the host, up to 25 years old.
[00:12:00] Come back next week. We will talk about how to handle spring break, spring breakers and booking Spring break on part two of what age should my renters be on short term rental management.
