Hallowe’en is over, but vampires still abound! I’m not talking about the sharp-toothed ones that thirst for blood, but vampire short term rental listings that wake at night to accept their bookings from guests, and then go to sleep during the daytime! Generally short term rentals remain as a problem for city bylaw and code enforcement officers and property managers to contend with in their neighborhoods. Specifically, vampire listings are difficult to obtain evidence because of their elusiveness and their rarity of showing up online.
A vampire STR operator can put a listing “to sleep” with one click. Why do we know this? Because we’ve been monitoring short term rentals for 5 years since the “sharing economy” exploded onto the scene. Short term rentals have been a disruption with nuisance problems of noise, parking and trash, and affecting livability of cities. Above is an example of a listing where the listing is down during the day but pops up at night to “feed” on bookings from guests looking for the property. We also know that vampires are not only predators, they are prey. Security guards, and condo property managers also hunt for vampires because they may be against condo or HOA regulations. Below are some statistics on cities where Vampire listings are sometimes up and down, called INTERMITTENT listings. Some cities like Pittsburgh, PA have high intermittency which can also be due to seasonal sporting events, and festivals.
| City | STR Listings | Percent Intermittent |
| Fort Lauderdale, FL | 4914 | 12.6% |
| Sonoma County, CA | 5156 | 13.9% |
| Allegheny County, PA | 2902 | 18.9% |
| Seward, AK | 241 | 4.1% |
Harmari STR has an easy way to visualize vampire listings that are intermittently up. We have an active/inactive chart which shows when a listing is up or down throughout its timeline. Below is an example of an intermittent STR activity timeline.
With the activity timeline above, Harmari STR’s user interface allows you to easily visualize the listing. Furthermore, if the listing happens to be inactive the time you check it, then you can access our copy of the STR listing in our embedded browser in the archive folder, with time-stamped evidence on the date in which the STR listing was active.
Contact Us to schedule a demo today and catch those elusive vampire STR listings!