Short-term rentals raise neighborhood concerns
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Airbnb and other platforms for short-term home rentals have found a friend just south of downtown Indianapolis.
Until recently, the innkeepers’ tax that hotels collect from guests was not acquired from short-term rentals. However, the city has few regulations of short-term rentals and no registry of the owners, and hotels get inspections but short-term rental properties do not.
The lack of restrictions is what brought real estate agent Rachel Prince to Indianapolis. Prince is an advocate of Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms, and most of her clients buy houses for short-term rentals.
“I have never seen so many boarded-up, abandoned homes in a downtown and neighboring areas and, because of this, I feel like allowing Airbnb is going to be good for the economy, allowing investors to come in and have secondary homes or rentals and make those into Airbnb properties, make those improvements,” Prince said.
In a near-southside neighborhood just south of East Morris Street and west of South Meridian Street, there are close to a dozen short-term rental homes. All of them have been remodeled, renovated or rebuilt, which, according to Prince, has had a positive ripple effect through the neighborhood and set the stage for dramatic changes in the local real estate market.
“In my opinion, Airbnb is a complete disrupter in the market, not only in the real estate market, but within the hotel market. It is kind of in the gray area … what is it, well, it is not regulated like a hotel. It is not regulated like a home,” Prince said.
The lack of regulation has folks like Jed Fuller concerned. Fuller said he would also like to see inspections for short-term rentals.
“You don’t (know) what to expect every weekend. It’s a different group of people. They are parking in your parking spots. I have no problem at all if my neighbors, if they choose to have alcohol, but when there is a whole group of people you don’t know in your back alley carrying around drinks, walking around, it can be a concern,” Fuller said.
Fuller said short-term rentals take people out the neighborhoods by reducing available homes for sale or long-term rental. He would like to see short-term rental use restricted to the owner’s primary home. He said that restriction would put people back into the neighborhoods.
Laura Giffel is the president of the Bates-Hendricks neighborhood association. The neighborhood is an area that has become popular with investors of short-term rentals.
“As a neighborhood association we really have to balance the interest of the residents that are already here with those that are coming to visit and those that are opening Airbnbs in our neighborhood, and the balance, I think, tends to lean toward those that are visiting out neighborhoods,” Giffel said.
Many leaders of neighborhood associations told News 8 that getting in touch with short-term rental owners in an emergency is a problem. The neighborhood leaders said they believe having a registry would help solve some of the noise and party issues associated with short-term rentals.