drvannostren

Folks, I figured this might be a half decent place to start.

I own an apartment in Medellin (no this isn't an ad), which I was gonna put on AirBnB, then I noticed a warning they had about local laws potentially prohibiting short term rentals. In my naivety I just assumed if I owned something I could basically do as I please, except when strata councils prevent it.

EVIDENTLY, there's a law in Medellin about rentals under 30 days and that it's actually recently got fairly well enforced.

Wondering a few things after searching around for a while, maybe someone here knows or can point me in the right directions.

1) Does anyone have a website outlining the exact rules? Everything I found just uses examples of other places and doesn't really provide much in the way of details. For all I know it only covers the tourist part of town, which wouldn't apply to me. Preferably in English but I'll take what I can get!

2) Clearly, others just ignore this law if it does in fact exist, as AirBnB has multiple listings offering short term stays. Are those people just rebels or is there something I'm missing? Obviously it's easier with a house as you won't be subject to strata or whatever, but there's listings that are basically hostels, would those people have gone through some kind of a zoning process?

3) A couple things that I've read suggest the biggest issue is the neighbours and doorman. I could easily have a word with my neighbours and stop the practice if it got to be a problem, I even specified in the listing to be quiet cuz it's a residential building and people have jobs. The doorman is daytime only, the apartment wouldn't rent very well/often I'm confident in that. So I mean, if some random person has my keys for a week, for all he knows it's a friend of mine. There's nothing illegal about letting someone use your place short term...I think just the act of exchanging money for it is?

Basically if anyone has any experience on either side of this equation I'd be open to hearing it. I've never rented, I went straight from hotels to ownership, without a second thought and haven't regretted it. Never really thought much about renting it, but then I thought why not?

coolcoil

No matter where it was in the world, I would not rent a property without having a very good local agent. If your tenants have a problem during the stay (e.g. locked out, water heater breaks) who are they going to call? If your tenants trash the place, you won't know about it until either you or the next tenant arrives. If the tenants are problematic, who are the neighbors or apartment management going to call?

I would look for somebody local to take on the work for a fee/commission. There is at least one expat who advertises several places on AirBnB who might be interested in that, and there are local agents as well. You might consider looking at Medellinliving.com for more info and even placing a classified ad for an agent there. As for the legality, I can't speak to that, though I am sure that you would be legally required to pay IVA and possibly other hotel-type taxes. Again, this is something that somebody with local experience can tell you.

I agree that you are going to have a hard time with short-term rentals without a 24-hour doorman. I know that in my first few years coming to Medellin, that would have been a deal breaker.

If you are able to move forward on this, I'd really like to hear about your experience. Good luck!

drvannostren

I was planning on doing local stuff, either with an agent I used to buy the place, but I'd know if they trashed it too because I was gonna use a friend's mom as the cleaner (who already does it for me once in a while when I'm not using it cuz it gets dusty).

I'll have to ask my agent what the short term deal is. I would have no problem renting to locals, but then I'd basically have to sign it off to them for 6-12 months, which I don't wanna do since I wanna use it. Still looking into buying a 2nd one for that purpose, but I don't have the cheddar at the moment and the rental rates you get there from locals would only BARELY cover the mortgage if I took out a loan to buy it.

Maybe you know because you're a local, but I feel like, there's strange thresholds. You can buy an apartment between 30,000,000-60,000,000 and get 400,000COP a month. 60,000,000-100,000,000 gets you 550,000 COP a month. Obviously these aren't set in stone and location/furnished or not/layout and stuff all factor in, but I feel like you can very easily overspend on the purchase and you're not rewarded with a higher rent. When I bought mine and told her my budget was around 130,000,000 and that it's partly an investment (like buying property always is, only this has a manageable mortgage) she's like "well then lets buy 3 at 40,000,000 and I can easily have them all rented long term". Maybe that's all over the world, but it seems more evident to me in Medellin than anywhere else I've previously looked.

For the 24 hour doorman, I honestly prefer just diurno, cuz we still have a secure front door and it's in a good neighborhood, but I dunno, maybe I'm just a little weirded out coming home at 3am stumbling drunk and having to chat with the doorman haha. But then I've also never grown up with a doorman either so that makes it a bit harder. At first I thought "it only makes sense to have him there at night" but then I realized during the day he actually takes care of a decent little amount of deliveries and cleans the common areas.

JohnnyColombia

I don't have a link to the applicable law but it was introduced about 5 years ago. It was principally because the hotels complained that they are losing business to private renters doing holiday rentals. I don't know what the nature of the complaint was but a lot of hotels have got good tax breaks to encourage them to establish their places, I don't know if they said "We still are not setting up hotels because of the holiday rentals" or "Hey we did this and there is no an oversupply and holiday rentals, we are losing out"

You can let your own place out on a short term basis as long as you own more than 70% of the units in your building. (That's the figure from memory, might be a bit off)

Porteros and potentially even neighbours might not even know about the law preventing holiday rentals. And it is not just Medellín, it is the whole of Colombia. Portero can obviously be bought off for a bottle of Águila and an arepa.

coolcoil

Note: I'm going OMNI here, so I will keep it short

Now that I have thought about it for a bit, I'm glad that Colombia has such a law. We live in a building with two other apartments, and I would hate it if one of them was doing short term rentals. Even if most of the visitors were decent people, you will inevitably have some problem people show up. It is also stressful as a building occupant to constantly see new faces in the hallways. One of the apartments in our building turns over 1-2 times per year, and we always go through a period where we wonder how these neighbors will behave, who should be legitimately in the building, etc. Most people prefer to live in a community where they at least have a nodding acquaintance with their neighbor, and mixing in short-term rentals destroys that.

I want to be clear that I'm speaking of apartment buildings that are mostly populated by long-term residents. This would not apply to apartment buildings, say in resort areas, where it's understood by all that short-term rentals are the norm.

Forrest Bump

Does anybody know some alternative to Airbnb for a short term (2 weeks) rent in Bogotà?
I'm still amazed by the hefty prices I see listed for an apartment, planning to visit on the second half of August.

Maybe it's quite late, but nothing decent seems to show up for less than EU80 per day, 1 bedroom.

And I'm not even looking at Parque 93.
Usaquén or north Chapinero are absolutely fine.

Cheers.

JohnnyColombia

There's a place around the corner from me on Calle 51 (ish) that is on AirBnB. I have met a few foreigners that have rented that place and it seems to be quite popular. It's a lively student area and has a buzzing social scene from Thursday through Sunday.

I have commitments in the second week of August, otherwise I'd do an apartment swap with you

Forrest Bump

Thanks Johnny. Will check it out.
Last time I was at 66 and 6 and liked the area. Still a long walk to 93 but pleasant outside the rush hours madness.