AirBnB is great, until it isn't. Let's just hope you're not one of the unlucky ones. Renting someone else's home is very different from renting out a room in a hotel or resort because they don't come with guarantees. What you expect, may not be what you'll get. Check out some of the horror stories below:

1. The drug-crazed orgy that happened to Mark and Star King when they rented their Calgary, Canada home to a grop of four people allegedly in town for a wedding. Then they started to receive messages saying that a party bus had shown up with more than 100 people. They returned home to find the place still packed with partygoers. The guests had trashed couches, left drug residue, toilets filled with condoms. Damages were expected to be at $75,000.


2. A San Francisco woman's home was ransacked by an AirBnB renter. In 2011, Emily J returned home from a 3-week business trip to find her apartment destroyed and her belongings ransacked by an AirBnB guest. Valuables were stolen, her birth certificate and social security cards were scanned with her own printer. She could not reach AirBnb until a through a friend who freelanced for them. But it wasn't until she posted the ordeal on her blog that the company finally took action. The damages were over $50,000.


3. AirBnB renters who refuse to leave a condo are the worst. Cory Tschogl rented her condo to two brothers for six weeks, but they refused to leave, citing California's tenant's rights laws, making eviction difficult after 30 days without the landlord paying a relocation fee. After some publicity and help from lawyers, the brothers left quietly in the night without any damages.


4. An AirBnB host was forced to pay $1,700 to get rid of tenants. She rented it out to a couple for two weeks, but when the couple asked to stay a little longer and pay in cash, she agreed. Except, that's when things went south. They began arguing and eventually stopped paying rent. They too cited California's tenant's rights laws. She was foced to deal with that herself and paid $1,700 for the couple to leave.


5. Jessica Penzari rented out her New York apartment for a couple of days to a woman who was actually a prostitute who regularly rented out AirBnbs for her work. She was alerted to the fact because cops were called to her apartment after an altercation between the woman and one of her clients. She found baby wipes and condoms everywhere.


6. Jacob Lopez was visiting Madrid and found a reasonably priced AirBnb he thought was safe. Except, he was sexually assaulted and trapped in a room by his transgender host. The host tried to kiss Lopez as soon as they were alone and forced him to undress. Lopez says he was sexually assaulted and ran to his room for safety. When he head kinves rattling in the kitchen, he called his mom from Madrid asking for help. She tried to reach AirBnb but they would not release the address where he was staying and told her to call the local police. He managed to escape and file a police report.


7. A dog bit an AirBnB renter. Mike Silverman had stayed in AirBnBs before, so he thought the next one wouldn't be a problem. The rental didn't mention any pets but he was surprised to see a full grown Rottweiler waiting for him one morning early into his stay. The dog chomped down hard on his forearm and he received a 6-inch gash and was rushed to the hospital.


8. This AirBnB host showed up drunk. Joseph Velardo and Robyn Finker rented a private home for a weekend getaway, when they received a strange text from the owner who showed up intoxicated, spooking the pair who ended up leaving at 4am.


9. This man crammed 24 beds in one AirBnB rental and it has been dubbed the worst listing ever on AirBnB. The apartment located in New York had 24 beds stacked into two bedrooms and had a minimum 30-day stay. Daid Jaffee, the host, has netted $250,000 a year from this kind of modus operandi and he has been banned from the site and is facing several lawsuits.


10. An AirBnB host died midway through a guest's stay. The guests staying there began noticing messages on their host's Facebook prifle saying things like "hang in there" and "we need you." They found out that the host had overdosed and was pulled off life support. They felt unnerving staying there for the remaining weeks looking at photographs of their now-deceased host.



11. Natalie White sued Airbnb last month (August, 2021) in Superior Court in Los Angeles, as well as the host who rented her a one-bedroom apartment, claiming she was sexually assaulted there in February 2020. Natalie says she was sexually assaulted by an Airbnb host in LA.

White says in her lawsuit that the host, an actor named Zafer Alpat, barged into the apartment as she was packing to leave, pinned her down, and licked and kissed her while she resisted. Samuel Dordulian, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in representing sexual assault complainants, says coming forward to report a sexual assault claim can be a harrowing experience. After a traumatic experience like sexual assault, the survivor deserves swift justice and should never be responsible for such losses.