evicting bad tenants for non-payment or damage to property reputedly is relatively hard. Evicting hotel guests for the same infractions probably isn’t. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why motels don’t bother holding inquests into potential renter’s history.
Well, so what are the negative legal aspects of being a hotel vs a landlord? Or else, why don’t all landlords just declare themselves hotels in order to operate in a more business-friendly legal environment?
I’m pretty sure it’s not as easy as just calling yourself a hotel. You have to actually be a hotel.
In California, there’s a list of requirements to count as a hotel, and not require eviction proceedings.
So, you have to be short-term or have maid service, etc. And if you are a “residential hotel”, if the guests have lived there longer than 30 days and are paid up, you often have to treat them as tenants and go through eviction. Presumably, most states have some similar law on the books.
If you run a hotel, you (or your “guests”) have to pay hotel tax, which in San Francisco would add enormously to the cost of a room.
And there’s zoning laws. A Hotel is commercial, while a apt is residential.
Now, there are “rent by the week” apt/hotel hybrids aka “rooming houses”, which can fall under wither one, or be in a separate legal category. So, indeed, some businesses have tried the OP’s idea.
And, in general iamthewalrus(:3= is correct, once someone has been there long enough, they can be considered a resident/tenant as opposed to a guest.
Last year, I lived in a “hotel.” A rather nice one, even. Apparently, the economic downturn made the prospect of making the entire building a hotel a hotel, but it was already built. The result was that there were several floors renamed “condos.” It was much cheaper to have a condo than a hotel room. I believe it was about $2k/month for a condo, or $175/night for a hotel room. The only difference was that they were on different floors.
It was kind of weird going home and walking through a lobby in my “apartment building” that had a bar in it… Oddly, I never took advantage of that.
Well, restrictions work both ways. You often want to have the tenants bound by a lease to pay rent for a period of some months, instead of able to leave any morning they want.
I live professionally in hotels, in many cases, up to a year at a time. I’m never under the illusion that I’ll be booted into the street if merited without the inconvenience of eviction proceedings.
Kewpie doll in one. Where people get the idea that the courts are powerless to disregard even the grossest of pretexts, I’ll never know.
Every TV show & movie about lawyers and courts, ever?
I worked for a company that owned a rooming house. They are considered residential, and a special license is required to run one.
We would rent to anyone, and the class of people we got gave me many, mant stories.
Yes, laws on this vary widely, area by area.
I would imagine so! :eek: