• Airbnb (Air Bed and Breakfast) which entails inviting paying guests to sleep over at your house for a specific number of days is fast gaining traction globally.
• The owner of the house in this incident wanted to raise extra cash to pay off her mortgage a little quicker, she explains in an undated video posted online.
Image: SCREEGRAB
A woman in the US has found herself in a tight situation after a tenant refused to leave her house that she had rented out on Airbnb.
Airbnb (Air Bed and Breakfast) which entails inviting paying guests to sleep over at your house for a specific number of days is fast gaining traction globally.
The owner of the house in this incident wanted to raise extra cash to pay off her mortgage a little quicker, she explains in an undated video posted online.
“I put this ad up saying I was looking for someone to sub-lease one of the rooms in my house,” she says.
The transaction, she says, was really smooth so she went on vacation.
“The person was supposed to be gone three days prior to my return. I talk to my housekeeper and she is like the person is still here in your house,” the woman explained.
“She is still here in my house refusing to leave. So, I don’t know what to do.”
In the video, the house owner pans her phone camera and catches the tenant strutting across the leaving room to the kitchen.
“I ain’t going nowhere,” the tenant retorts once she realizes she is being recorded.
“So deal with it,” she adds.
She said she decided to evict the tenant the right way so she went and got the paperwork for an eviction order.
“I had to go through protocols and all the legal blaze,” she said.
“The police were right in my house and I tell them to get her out now and they are like oh, she is a tenant now,” the woman said.
The entire episode is hilarious, to say the least, because ideally, the owner of the house has no legal grounds to throw out the ‘intruder.’
It turns out that the US squatter rights, someone who you allowed to squat in your house has a right to extend their stay. And in order to get rid of them, you have to go through a long legal process.
A squatter's right is a legal allowance to use the property of another in the absence of an attempt by the owner to force eviction.
This right may eventually be converted to a title to the property over time by Adverse Possession if recognized by state law.
It’s a legal predicament the owner of the house never prepared herself for.
Don’t come to my door, that’s all I know,” the tenant is heard shouting in the video as she dares the owner of the house to call the police, again.
The conversation at this point degenerates into a shouting march between the two women with the owner insisting that that’s her house.
The tenant reminds her she’s rightfully in the house.
“This is my place,” she says and slams the door to the landlord’s face.
The owner of the house mumbles profanities as she continues to record, totally beaten.
“Excuse me, you can record all you want. I ain’t going nowhere,” the tenant says as she walks back out of her room to the living room.
“Don’t touch that door or I’m calling the police on you,” the tenant said with finality and lit a cigarette.