HOA regulations

Greetings to folks on this forum. We’re quite new to Home Exchange, and we’re interested to help our HOA develop language that specifies Home Exchange as an allowed use, while still restricting owners from using their apartments for AirBnB, VRBO, or other rental setups. We’d welcome any bylaws language that Forum members have for their apartments, condos, or other organized properties. Thanks in advance for ideas, especially if they’ve been vetted legally and/or through your HOA.

Hi there, my homeowners association is quite afraid of short term rentals there is verbiage that says nothing less than 30 days is allowed. They know that I do Home Exchange and sometimes up to 12 a year. I know they are talking about it so I am being proactive to let them know, it’s the same as housesitters so if they deny me having a HomeExchange, I’m gonna deny them having a housesitter. There is no money exchanged so it is not a rental. It’s not strangers but people I’ve met and vetted. I would even suggest that it’s one level above a housesitter since often these are people without homes of their own. I would be proactive about making sure that at some random meeting they don’t outlaw Home exchange without having people from the community come and talk about it. 71 exchanges.

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I agree with Susan’s comments and would add that most home insurance packages become invalid if a home is left empty for a period of time (ours says 30 days in a row) and also for your HOA you may want to argue that it’s safer to have someone in your home than leaving it empty particularly in the case of water damage which is not an unusual circumstance in multi unit buildings. If your home is occupied and something happens there is someone there to alert the HOA thereby avoiding potential serious damage. Also, talk to your immediate neighbours about the concept and get them on side.

In Canada, stratas (the term we use here) put in language that short term rentals, Airbnb, Vrbo are not allowed. Stratas also throw in HomeExchange. Soon Local and provincial governments want to get in on this and tax us. This may make it more difficult to do this in future years.