How Airbnb bandits rent out properties to prostitutes, drug dealers and party animals next door to YOU

PROPERTY rental site Airbnb is blighting thousands of lives in Britain’s towns and cities, a Mail on Sunday investigation has found.

Homes let through the US-based online service are, increasingly, being turned into ‘ pop- up’ brothels and used for huge parties, likened by police to unlicensed raves.

It is now estimated that more than 120,000 flats and houses in the UK are unlawfully sub-let through the site, and others like it, often without the owners knowing.

Tenants can make a fortune, with some charging three times what they pay in rent.

In one shocking example, reporters exposed a London-based Italian woman who funds a jet-set lifestyle renting out 12 properties through Airbnb – none of which she appears to own.

Across the country residents spoke of how antisocial behaviour and a constant flow of anonymous visitors had degraded their quality of life and the character of communities.

All-night parties have caused ‘misery’ in one area of East London, for instance, while in Edinburgh the online service has been branded ‘a plague’.

And 90 residents of an exclusive apartment block in Cardiff Bay joined forces to demand that the council ban Airbnb after enduring a series of disorderly parties.

Airbnb transformed the tourism industry when it was set up in 2008 to allow homeowners to let spare rooms or entire properties for short periods. Hosts advertise their property with pictures, guests pay them per night and the website takes a fee from both.

But we discovered that the system is being abused and exploited on a major scale.

Last night, MPs demanded action to prevent illegal sub-letting and said Airbnb owners should be licensed. Only hosts with licences would then be allowed to advertise properties on the site.

Similar schemes have been adopted in New York, Barcelona, Berlin and San Francisco to combat the problem.

Airbnb insist anti-social behaviour is extremely rare and say the vast majority of guests act respectfully. But our investigation found:

Airbnb was warned about a woman operating a sub-letting scam, but allowed her to continue raking in thousands;

Prostitutes use Airbnb properties because they are more discreet than hotels and brothels;

A social housing flat in an area with a chronic shortage of accommodation was sub-let 119 times in just three years;

More than 100 apartments in an upmarket block in Central London are thought to have been unlawfully let, causing misery for residents.

Westminster North MP Karen Buck said: ‘ Airbnb is not what it was originally conceived for – there has been a massive shift in the model.

‘It is no longer used by people who rent out their homes while on holiday. People are letting all the year round.

‘There are areas where people tell me that they are now living in a branch of the hospitality industry, not a residential area.

‘People use it for brothels and parties, and local communities are suffering all the turmoil that brings: lack of security, noise, nuisance, parties, rubbish.

‘ Properties that could provide h o mes for people are being removed from the rental stock because much more money can be made from short-term lets.’

The Mail on Sunday discovered Italian-born Natali Rossi, 37, advertising expensive properties in Central London through Airbnb without the permission of owners.

When the owner of a £1.5 million Soho apartment she sub-let found out, he repeatedly wrote to the site – but Airbnb claimed there was nothing it could do. Rossi had posed as a £120,000-a-year cancer specialist and falsified references to rent the £800-a-week flat. After signing the tenancy agreement, she immediately began sub- letting it for £ 600- a- night. Soon there were reports of drug- fuelled parties, which got so bad that a neighbour was forced to move out.

In October, Rossi was arrested at the flat and cautioned after admit- ting fraud by false representation. Afterwards, to the fury of the owner, she continued sub-letting the property, with Airbnb seemingly powerless to stop her.

She told an undercover MoS reporter, who rented a room in another flat she rents in Maida Vale, West London – one of 12 properties she lists on the site – that she earns a fortune and boasted of overcharging super-rich Arabs. The sub-letting problem is most severe in Central London where Westminster council is investigating 1,383 questionable short-term lets. Our research found that a one-bedroom flat in the area will rent for £495-a-week on an ordinary tenancy, but £ 1,561- a- week on a nightly basis.

In one apartment block, Park West near Hyde Park, the council believes 106 of the 530 flats are being used illegally. Westminster said it has received reports of sex workers occupying the apartments. Others are frequently used by overseas medical ‘tourists’ to recuperate after operations.

The block is in the constituency of MP Mark Field, who said: ‘Concerns around security, safety, increases in crime and the loss of a sense of local community are recurring themes in my postbag from constituents.

‘ The frequent, in some cases constant, turnover of guests leaves residents not knowing their neighbours, uncertain as to who is in the building and what they are using the properties for.’

In East London, residents described how their lives have been made a misery by all-night drugfuelled parties in a four-bedroom house listed on Airbnb.

Neighbour Abigail Darling, 47, said of one party: ‘ It was very intimidating. The atmosphere was such that I really didn’t fancy asking them to turn the music down and my kids were petrified of me going outside.

‘I’ve checked the booking websites and it seems the place is booked out for New Year’s Eve, which fills me with dread already.’

This house, in Victoria Park, Hackney, was let by one of many agencies specifically set up to capitalise on the Airbnb boom. Often they have dozens of proper-