Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are Thanks for Visiting. And this is the Hosting Hotline.

If you wanna get your questions answered here on the hosting hotline, go to hostinghotline.com ask us your question we'll answer it here on the podcast. You can also leave a comment on one of our YouTube videos. We often take questions that we get in our comments on our YouTube channel, today's question is a doozy.

Yeah.

And it really is a wake up call to all of us.

Hi, um, this is Renee Um, I am a Superhost for a property in Tucson, Arizona. We recently purchased another property, um, that was already offering as an Airbnb and, uh, VRBO. We took it off on market, still listed under a new listing under me as the new owner, um, but with not taking any bookings. Um, so we can give it a refresh remodel. The problem we're having is Airbnb sent us a, um, a notification that the listing was gonna be deactivated because that property had some violations. And so, of course, I, um, went through the process of appeal, sending legal documents, showing where the new owners within the last month that we were doing a, uh, a redo of the property and they denied the appeal. So in trying to talk to somebody and getting escalated, they basically said that that appeal stands and that there's nothing we can do. Um, and so in talking through it, I was like, why are you penalizing me as a, as a, a new owner with a new property that I will make just as good as the next one and can generate property for me or money for me and for you? And they said, well, it has violations. I said, well, can you tell me the violations? And they said, no, because it's not your account. I'm like, exactly. So I am being penalized. Anyways, I don't know if you have any experience with this or if there's anything you could do to suggest areas and routes to go. Thank you.

Renee. This is frustrating. That is very frustrating. I just wanna empathize. Empathize?

Empathize.

Empathize. I was like, I'm combining two words.

You tried. Renee, we also want to thank you for calling in and being very honest about a difficult situation. Listeners, we want everybody to perk up right now. Listen to. What has happened to Renee? Let this be a PSA or G-S-A or H-S-A host service announcement. It's just that P-S-A-G-S-A-H-S-A. They're all other acronyms, so we're all here now. This can happen to anybody before you've launched on Airbnb, while you are listing on Airbnb. Please be advised that this is something that could happen to all of us. None of us are, um, you know, immune, immune to this happening. So Renee let's, we, we definitely want to, to serve you though, and dig in.

They have so much inventory at this point, Airbnb, that they can be super. Picky. They can be. They can stand in their ground. That being said, Renee, I don't think you should give up just because they denied your appeal. I have one other idea for you that you should try before we get into our whole, as you can probably guess it rant into, well, let's not rely or put all of our eggs in the Airbnb basket. Before we get to that rant, have you thought, Renee, about having your realtor. Talk to the seller's realtor. Maybe if they still have their Airbnb account, they could give you insight into what the violation is. 'Cause I'm guessing it's a safety violation with the property.

Mm-hmm. A trust and safety issue for sure.

Whether it's, it's some sort of foundational or some sort of gas situ-, something's going on there. And so I, and I know it stinks, they're not telling you what it is, but if you could find out from the realtor who represented the seller of that property and then. I know you're doing renovations. Have a licensed architect or general contractor sign off that that has been solved.

Remedied. Yeah.

And then submit that for another appeal to Airbnb that could maybe move the needle. And then another suggestion we had is to, once you do that, and if they still deny you, you could, since you have nothing else to really lose, is make this public on Airbnb help on X to have a more exposed conversation with Airbnb on that platform. Sometimes that can work.

Yeah. And I love what Sarah said here about reaching out to your professional partner that you partnered with on this, your realtor. I'm very interested if they were selling this property because they knew they had a violation and were they selling it as an Airbnb, you know, as a short-term rental? Having realtor to realtor chat. Make sure you know those things were disclosed because this is, this is when we're reading between the lines here. This is nothing to do with you as a host, Renee. This has everything to do with the property address and absolutely this is a trust and safety issue. We have no idea what ha what the violations were. We just are making a pretty large bet that it is trust and safety, that they are not messing around with it. Um.

It does stink though, because usually they say you know, she opened up a whole new listing. The the listing follows the owners, but I'm, I'm just.

It's gotta be with the street address.

It's gotta be.

There is something with the street, the, the exact street address. And also we've been doing a lot of talk about this everybody behind the scenes in our, in our programs, AI is oof such a powerhouse. The things that can be flagged within any business now they are super powered with tens of thousands, essentially, AI agents that can do the work, that would take, um, humans such a long time to, to flag historically. The AI agents are helping expedite that. And we shared this on, you know, we'll offer this up. This is for our, our paid community, but we wanna offer, we were talking to a lot, some of our hosts last week about AI and they were seeing some things with their listing. And I want everybody to know if you are getting private feedback. You better believe that the AI is crawling that private feedback. And if you are getting the same things over and over again in your private feedback, and you are not remedying, remedying it, they're seeing it. The AI agents are everywhere, and guess what? I'm not mad about this. It's gonna get rid of the bad apples, it's gonna expedite the folks that should not be there, um, faster. But Renee, so wanna offer that to you. Let's really, I, I think Sarah's plan of attack A, you can send that text, phone call, email today. Let's see if we can get straight to the root of potentially what the violation is so you can address it in the way that you are contacting a Airbnb. So yes, be calm, be persistent. We want you to keep, keep reviewing it, the change of ownership. So don't. Don't lose hope there. However, we've got to bring up the stuff that we can control. Sounds like you host another property nearby. Hopefully you have been collecting email addresses from your past amazing guests and you can invite them back to your new property, your new and improved property. Hopefully you have a direct booking site that you can bring them to. We, of course, wanna make sure. Let's go. Let's see what happens if we're trying to list on vrbo, booking.com, can you get on Furnished Finder? There are so many listing sites that yes is is Airbnb the powerhouse? But let's not count ourselves out. We should be diversifying anyways. They've just kind of forced you into it quicker. So we wanna look at the positives there. So let's work on those. Let's make sure you're not up against any other violations on any other OTAs. I'd rather you figure that out now. Those are some things like as you are working through this with Airbnb, I want you to put something positive on your list every day where you can be a small business owner, not a Superhost for Airbnb.

Right, right. Yeah, Renee, it's. Anyone listening, when you have challenges like this, it can just feel so defeating, but I want you to flip the script on it. Change your mindset. Maybe this is a great gift. It's gonna force you to do Renee, what so many hosts hear us chirp about, they hear other people chirp about, but it's hard work. And if you're forced into the hard work, I just know it's gonna pay off for you to diversify. To open up that direct booking site to find other OTAs for you to crush it on and not need Airbnb and I, it's gonna put you ahead of the curb. So while you are working, you feel behind, maybe right now something, right? You feel behind, you feel slighted, you feel like this is still work on addressing the appeal and, and be that squeaky wheel. Don't give up. Change your angle. You can't just keep repeating yourself. But if the end result, you can't control Airbnb, it is their platform. They don't need your house. They just don't. So, do the work now to diversify. There's, there's very possible for you to be a VRBO only host or a VRBO and booking.com and WIM stay and I mean, there are so many OTAs out there. Get a good PMS that allows you to easily connect to multiple channels so that you can do that and not need Airbnb and their 15.5% host fee. Okay?

Make sure on both ends of this, Renee, I want you to keep a log, keep a log of every time that you're reaching out to Airbnb, you know, the time, who you're talking to, but also I want you to keep a log of positive things of wins that you're having with the property. Uh, Sarah and I also do this inside our, uh, inside our programs. It's, it's a part, it's a very disciplined part of what we do, is having hosts vocalize and document their wins. You know, um, there's a great book called The Gap in the Gain, and so many of us as entrepreneurs wanna live in the gap, and we really need to lean into the gain. And so I want to celebrate your new home. We're excited for you. And again, just another message to everybody, we, we chat about this so much, but that's why when Sarah and I are looking at properties, we make sure, what does this property look like as a short-term rental? As a midterm rental, as a long-term rental, because. Let's say something would even happen in that neighborhood, that city, it's not, there are so many things that A, we, we love real estate because we own the, the, the, the property. But we don't own the city limits. We don't own the platforms that we list on, so we wanna try to have as much ownership as possible. So direct booking site, having diversification in what we could do with the property if needed to. So please, everybody. This is just kind of a gut check for everyone is what would you do if this was to happen? So if anybody, I think also just sending some like support to Renee. If you guys could all do something personally to diversify your property today, it would really help knowing that when Renee called in, she was making a difference for, for hosts out there. All right, so do a little give back to yourself because you heard her message today.

With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are Thanks for Visiting.

Talk to you next time.