Tennessee, a-1 zone - can I rent out on Airbnb? We are planning on purchasing land in Sevier County, Tennessee, with the intention of setting up a mobile home and then renting it out on Airbnb. The lot has A-1 zoning. Is this legal?
It's not impossible. Here are the regulations. Single- and two-family dwellings are legal, as are mobile homes. But the activity is not necessarily allowed (since you aren't residing there). &quot;Customary home occupations&quot; are allowed, but that means businesses customarily run out of a home like making / selling homemade arts &amp; crafts, selling antiques, education, but also &quot;Any other uses which the Board of Zoning Appeals finds to be of similar character&quot;. However, &quot;Public Uses&quot; are allowed with an approved site plan, spelled out in §303; or &quot;Rural businesses&quot; with similar approved plan. This means you have to give lots of information about the site and the plan has to be approved. There doesn't seem to be a specific prohibition, and the use seems consistent with the principle that This district is created to establish and preserve areas with agricultural and rural qualities by allowing for traditional Agricultural Uses along with low-density residential activities but the Sevier County Board of Zoning Appeals might feel otherwise. A counter-indication is that §504.3.1 lists for R-2M zones &quot;Bed and Breakfast Inns, limited to a maximum of four (4) bedrooms for rent&quot;, thus the zone must be more residential for B&amp;B usage to be accepted. Since the standards are not clear, the only solution is to officially inquire with the Zoning Board.
In the lease agreement we stipulated that rent would be 50% off until the building received full services and then the full rent payment would be due. Ouch. I bet the lease agreement also says something like &quot;no other agreements verbal or otherwise are in effect for this agreement.&quot; So what you did was release the landlord from the responsibility to make the building habitable. Pretty sure you will need a lawyer to unwind this.
Just think of the subtenant cum owner as two separate people with two separate roles. Tenant = T Subtenant = ST Old owner = OO New Owner = NO The rights of the tenant vis-avis the new owner will be informed by the lease and the local laws. Generally, if the sale happens in the middle of the existing lease, the NO is obligated by the terms, as is the T. NO cannot just kick T out, and T cannot just break the lease. The lease may say what could happen and local laws will apply. Likewise, ST has whatever contract with T that previously existed. Pretend NO and ST are different people. If T owes NO $1000 per month, and ST owes T $400 a month, that continues even though ST and NO are the same person. Depends on what kind of dispute. See above. All contracts continue, subject to whatever the lease with the original owner and the subtenancy agreement say abut modifying or breaking the lease and sublease. Local laws apply. Note, if the subtenancy was "off the books" or was done when not allowed by the original owner, and if it was not in a place that the local law says owners cannot deny subleasing, then tenant might not have any protection. ST, now that he is owner could just move out and stop paying. On the other hand, even if he is the owner, he cannot just say "I am the owner now, so I am moving back in for free" because the original lease gave the tenant use of the whole property. But ST could just drop out because T always owed OO, and now NO, the full rent. Do you mean if rather than sublease, they were both on the original lease? Interesting, but just imagine it as the obligations before the sale = the obligations after the sale. I don't know though. There are some tax implications for an owner occupied rental.
Your question seems to be about abandoned property and whether Missouri’s statute on disposing of property after a tenant abandons his/her property applies. See Mo. Rev. State. Ann. § 441.065 (“Abandonment of premises, disposition of remaining property.”) Assuming there was no agreement (in writing or orally) for the 19 year-old to pay rent, he was most likely a guest and not a tenant. As a guest, landlord-tenant laws, would not apply to the property that that was left at the nice family’s house. The definitions section of Missouri’s landlord-tenant statutes (and common sense) support this analysis. See Mo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 441.005. Therefore, the issue them becomes did the 19 year abandon his property? To that question, I think the answer is yes. Missouri Courts have defined the test for “abandoned property” in Herron v. Whiteside, 782 S.W.2d 414, 416 (Mo. App. W. Dist. 1989), stating: Abandonment is the voluntary relinquishment of ownership so that the property ceases to be the property of any person and becomes the subject of appropriation by the first taker. Wirth v. Heavey, 508 S.W.2d 263, 267 (Mo.App.1974). Abandonment of property requires intent plus an act. Id. A sufficient act is one that manifests a conscious purpose and intention of the owner of personal property neither to use nor to retake the property into his possession. Id. Intention to abandon may be inferred from strong and convincing evidence and may be shown by conduct clearly inconsistent with any intention to retain and continue the use or ownership of the property. Herron, 782 S.W.2d at 416. So to synthesize that passage from Herron, the court is saying that there is a 2 part test for determining if property is abandoned. Did the person intend to abandon the property? Did they commit some act to show this intention? If the answer is yes, to both, they the “first taker” or person that gets possession after the property is abandoned is the new owner. Here, it seems that the 19 year-old intended to abandon the property. He left without explaining why and stated that he would not unload the property if the nice family tried to return it (implying he would not accept the property back). Looking at the second part, him moving without giving notice, and telling the nice family that he won’t accept delivery of the property are both acts showing his intent to abandon the property.
In general, people have less expectation of privacy in cars than in their homes. To challenge a search and/or seizure under the Fourth Amendment, a person must have standing - the right to sue (that is, you must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place where the search happened; if you didn't, no standing - can't claim your privacy was violated if you had no privacy). The US Circuit Courts are split on the issue of unauthorized rental drivers and whether they have the same reasonable expectation of privacy as the authorized driver of a rental car would have. Some Circuits allow the unauthorized driver to challenge a car search if the authorized driver gave them permission. Some Circuits look only at the agreement and if the driver isn't authorized on that, they're out of luck. The 6th Circuit is more case-by-case, with a presumption that driver can't challenge the search that can be overcome based on the facts. (All this info from US v. Haywood, 324 F.3d 514) There's a current case before the Supreme Court (argued January 9, 2018), Byrd v. US, on this very issue. This SCOTUSblog page has a lot of information on the case. Edited to add: Texas is in the Fifth Circuit, which follows the rule that unauthorized drivers don't have standing to challenge a search/seizure even with the authorized driver's permission to drive the car; unauthorized drivers of rental cars don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy because they lack a possessory interest in the car and/or they're violating the rental agreement. Basically, even though it seems the cops' stop of the car would've violated the Fourth Amendment if he were the authorized driver, since this happened in Texas, he's not going to be able to challenge the stop. IMO, this is incredibly unjust especially when the cops admitted there was no probable cause, so hopefully the Supreme Court makes this rule obsolete and allows unauthorized drivers to exercise their Fourth Amendment rights. Some law review articles on the topic of unauthorized rental drivers: "Hertz and the Fourth Amendment" "Resolving a Three-Way Circuit Split"
I do not have anything official proving that I gave him the 2-months worth deposit What did you do, hand him a wad of cash? Pay by check, and put what it's for on the memo line. You've been there for nine months and there are several other people who can testify that you've been living there, so it would be difficult to claim that you aren't a renter. If you can show that the landlord is aware of your residence, that definitely helps even further, as does receiving mail there, registering to vote or with the DMV with that address, etc. Question 1 : what would be the best course of action to force the landlord to give me the requested lease agreement? You can't "force" someone to give you an agreement. That's kinda part of the definition of the word "agreement". If you find the conditions unacceptable, you can find another place to rent. When I asked the landlord about what he was planning to do regarding that, his answer was that it was not his business. It doesn't seem like it is. You could take the money you would have given to the other roommate, and give it to the power company instead. If paying for the utilities is part of the renters' responsibilities, and the renters are not paying for the utilities, then it's their choice to not have power. In California, landlords are required to make power available, but that just means that they can't interfere with you purchasing it from the power company, not that the landlord has to pay for it (if the landlord had agreed to pay for it, and isn't, then you can deduct the cost from the rent, but you can't simply withhold all rent, and your question indicates that the landlord hasn't agreed to pay for power anyway). Am I protected in any way, or can the landlord just come in my room and throw everything away, or worse just point me with a gun and force me to move? It would be difficult for the landlord to get rid of you, and would probably take several months to do legally. Performing an eviction himself, rather than getting the sheriff's department to do it, would expose him to serious charges, especially if a gun were used. Besides criminal charges, "If this or other unlawful methods, such as locking a tenant out or seizing his possessions before an eviction process has ended, are used to force a tenant to leave a property, a landlord may be subject to fees up to $100 per day of unlawful method use." http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tenants-rights-utility-billing-california-8073.html However, while the legal process will take a long time, at the end you will still be liable for back rent, and you will have an eviction on your record, which will make it harder to rent in the future.
Here is a document from the city, which says p. 16 that Oakland does not have an Ordinance or Regulation restricting the amount of rent a master tenant charges a subtenant. This assumes that subletting is not prohibited by the lease.
None. Putting something on a piece of land long term and prohibiting anyone to move it is effectively occupying that piece of land. You only can occupy land that you either have legal rights to, or that encounters no objection from those who has (adverse possession). In the latter case, it's not that you don't &quot;provide them right to tow&quot;, rather they just don't mind not towing it. What you describe more resembles homesteading, but that is not possible in California.