Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals quick actionable items to acquire manage and scale in your portfolio, I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

There’s a lot of confusion around the topic of what is a service animal and what is an emotional support animal when it comes or short term rentals this is a somewhat tricky subject and something that I learned a serious lesson from probably my biggest fail to this date in regards to my short term rental business so that’s we’re gonna talk about this week thanks for joining me once again on the short term rental riches podcast so my biggest fail if you listen to podcasts for awhile you might remember that at 1.I had a property in California where we questioned a animal I had a pet that someone was bringing over we denied them in some form or another and Airbnb took down all of my listings but they didn’t really notify me that well they sent an email that went into our email inbox that has hundreds of emails from Airbnb because we don’t actually manage all of the messaging on Airbnb we use a property management software so my bad missed the support email and they took down our listings but they didn’t take him down in a visible way so they were still on Airbnb everything looked fine and on the front end but on the back in our calendar was just blocked because we made a mistake with someone visiting with an animal and because we don’t allow animals and all of our properties doesn’t even matter doesn’t matter if it’s a service animal so we’re gonna talk about that so anyways I learned that lesson I don’t want you guys to have to go through that as well so we’re gonna talk about this week what is a service animal once emotional support animal what are the differences service animal basically is the more strict of the 2 very strict I should say in fact if someone has a service animal which isn’t actually consider. An animal’s someone something doing a job for someone who’s been trained to help service someone Airbnb is definition when you hook up on Airbnb they say it’s most commonly a dog which is most the time what we see a dog helping a blind person maybe someone that’s. Hearing impaired maybe someone that has seizures there’s lots of really good reasons to have a service animal but your service animal courting Airbnb could also be a small horse they could be basically whatever type of animal has been trained to help someone so these are very very helpful dogs and it’s great that people have that option so we’re not allowed to discriminate against a service animal in any way whatsoever on Airbnb or on VR BO or on most of the platforms again you want to check with your local laws but this goes for the US so the whole US we can’t discriminate against a service animal we also cannot charge. Additional for a service animal so we can’t treat a service animal like an animal really I guess it’s it’s someone it’s something that’s actually helping our guests so we can’t charge you can’t discriminate we’re actually only allowed to ask 2 questions legally we can only ask 2 questions and the questions are is the dog a service animal required because of a disability. For what work or task has the dog been trained to perform those are the only questions we can ask this is straight off Airbnb is policies at the time of this recording and again if someone has a service animal they don’t even have to tell you that they’re coming with the service animals are really the only other way we’re going to know is if we have cameras set up and I really encourage you to have cameras on the exterior of your properties you can see who’s entering your property and how many people how many guests and in this situation how many pets or if they have pets there is one exception to service animals with one exception where you could potentially deny a service animal but again this is risky territory right you don’t want Airbnb taking down your listings or any beef I guess between the O. T. as the one the scenario is if you have a permanent resident at the property so maybe you’re just running out of room and this person coming with a service animal could put the other person at risk their safety at risk so maybe the permanent resident human being has a severe allergy to animals well then maybe that’s the case for you to deny someone with a service animal the only other situation is after I guess is already showed up to the property if you have a way of knowing that that dogs out of their control and it’s just kind of let loose well you could also ask that there be be get involved in you can have that the gas removed the the reservation canceled and that situation but those are the only ones other than that you gotta be super super careful that you’re not breaking the law essentially by asking too many questions or charging or anything like that if it’s related to a service animal now if you have damaged your property while damage is damage right so just make sure you take pictures of the damage and supported Senate and their baby want to submit a resolution of something got day. Image well then you need to be compensated for it you see this all the time people are coming with emotional support animals so you’re allowed to ask questions around this topic you’re allowed to charge people if they have an emotional support animal an extra pet fees so if you missed last week’s episode go back and check it out we talked about the opportunity that is there to rent our short terminals and allow pets there’s a ton of opportunity and a lot of good reasons reasons that I’m considering doing that and then put in quite a few my property so you can charge a little extra however much your market will justify it you’re allowed to ask these questions are allowed to charge in most situations unless you are in a state California or New York if you’re in California New York or your properties are in those 2 states we pretty much have to treat motional support animals or like a service animal basically exactly the same you can ask questions and that’s where we got caught off guard because this property that we denied the service animal was in California. N. the guests complain filed discrimination so if you’re in those 2 states sorry it’s a little more difficult for you to to deal with pets if you don’t want in there to property for everyone else all of the 48 states well you can verify you can ask more questions you can charge so hopefully that cleared that up a little bit for you if it’s a service animal he had a fall the law can ask questions you can’t charge it’s emotional support animal you can an Airbnb has a handy additional pet fee now you wanna raise your cleaning fees a little bit if this is something you’re planning on accepting all the time and keep in mind if you’re in California earlier in New York you had to ask any questions about emotional support animal so hopefully that cleared up for you guys hopefully you’re doing really well out there and until next week talk to you soon take care. I want to get on the fast track to financial freedom for short term rentals what all searching the properties you acquire you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties I want to give you my you doctor will show you how to do just that there is no charge to my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to restmethods.com that’s R E S T methods.com.

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