BC tenant's sleuthing gets her $17,000 after Airbnb eviction
A BC family who evicted their tenant and then rented out their condo on Airbnb have lost an appeal after being ordered to pay $17,000 in compensation.
According to an Aug. 25 BC Supreme Court decision, Cristopher and Leonida Resurreccion bought their Surrey condo in 2023 and gave the tenant two months' notice, saying their son, Christian Resurreccion, was going to move in.
However, the now former tenant, Megan Neumann, noticed that she kept getting multiple buzzer access requests on her phone and noticed different vehicles parked in the unit’s parking spot.
The decision said that several months later she also discovered an Airbnb listing that appeared identical to her old apartment. The one-bedroom unit was on the 36th floor in a building of 462 condos, many of which were identical.
However, there were telltale signs in some of the photos on the Airbnb ad, that it was the same apartment. The window frame next to the patio had the same marks caused by taping an air unit against the window and the bathroom had the same tile patterns in the shower.
The ad was also put up by someone called "Cris," the unusual spelling was the same as the landlord's, "Cristopher." The Airbnb profile picture featured "Cris" standing in front of a historical landmark in Wyoming. And the landlords also had photos of them standing in front of the Wyoming landmark on their Facebook page.
Neumann's sleuthing then found a distinctive floral tablecloth in a photo on the Airbnb ad was the exact match to a photo on one of the Resurreccions' Facebook pages.
The former tenant used her evidence and took the Resurreccions' to the Residential Tenancy Branch, which ordered the landlords to pay her $17,136 – the equivalent of 12 month's rent – having found a family member hadn't moved in after evicting Neumann, a breach of the Residential Tenancy Act.
However, the landlords contested the ruling and filed an appeal at the BC Supreme Court.
The landlords claimed that the Tenancy Branch's decision was unreasonable and was decided by "predominantly irrelevant considerations."
The couple said their son, Christian, had moved into the unit in August 2023.
BC Supreme Court Justice Sandra Sukstorf said that while the evidence was purely circumstantial – Neumann didn't book the unit on Airbnb to prove her case – it was reasonable and supported.
The landlords argued the former tenant hadn't "confirmed" that the unit on Airbnb was her former home, but the Justice dismissed the argument.
The Justice said the tenant had to prove it was "more likely than not" that her former condo was the same as the one on the Airbnb listing, and she'd done so.
"(The evidence is) supported by multiple circumstantial indicators. These included the matching balcony view, window markings, tile pattern in the shower, layout, furnishings, the Airbnb host name and profile photo, as well as the timing of the listing’s creation and removal," the Justice said. "The consistency between a Facebook photo of the Condo, posted by the (landlords), and the Airbnb listing, both of which depicted a table located in the same position and adorned with an identical floral tablecloth."
Ultimately, the Justice upheld the Residential Tenancy Branch decision, leaving the family to pay their former tenant $17,236, plus their lawyer's bill.
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