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Rental Idea Challenged

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By LAURA KINSLER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 10, 2007

Updated: 10/08/2007 07:11 pm

LIVE OAK PRESERVE - The company that has been renting two former builder's models as vacation rental homes says it will cease immediately.

Jose Echavarria, owner of Vacation Rentals by Owner, managed the properties on Bluff Oak Boulevard and leased them to vacationers for a week at a time. They were listed on multiple Internet sites with rates ranging from $1,000 to $1,450 a week.

'They were very popular,' Echavarria said. 'There was a lot of demand for them.'

And why wouldn't they be? They're advertised as 'lakeside villas,' in a family neighborhood of New Tampa, that are 'just 20 minutes to the beaches of the Gulf Coast.'

Both houses were purchased in 2004 by California-based investors, who leased them back to Transeastern Homes to use as models. When the lease ran out, the owners tried to sell them, but the market had turned sour, Echavarria said.

'They never got an offer,' he said. 'They were going to go into foreclosure, and they contacted me as a last resort.'

But residents have complained for months that they violate the community's deed restrictions. In a neighborhood where fewer than 60 percent of the homes have a homestead exemption, these short-term rentals were a sore spot.

'They don't respect the rules,' complained Gui Pradieu, president of the Cypresswood Homeowners Association.

Maplewood Homeowners Association President Shelden Cohen agreed. 'They're running, in effect, a hotel on private property.'

In Hillsborough County, anyone who rents out property for less than seven months at a time is required to pay 12 percent of its revenue for state sales tax and tourist development tax. The county tax collector's office has no record of receiving tourist development taxes for either property. Echavarria's company doesn't have a business license in Hillsborough County.

When a Tribune reporter went to Live Oak Preserve to see the houses last week, the front yard of one house was covered with household garbage: ketchup bottles, eggshells, half-eaten fruit and plastic bottles. The trash had spread across several properties before it was cleaned up.

Paul Knuth, one of the property managers for LandArc, said he became aware of the vacation rental problem when his company took over management of the master association in September.

'We met with the subassociation presidents, and it was pretty high on their list of concerns,' Knuth said. 'The builder-controlled master association wants it to stop, too.'

Echavarria said he had been contacted by LandArc and would stop renting out the houses. 'They sent us a copy of the homeowners association documents, and it says you can't rent a house for less than seven months,' he said. 'I don't know what the owners are going to do. We tried to make it work, but it didn't work.'
Echavarria said he has refunded deposits to customers who had reserved the houses and he took them off the Web site last week. He said he fears the houses will go into foreclosure within months.

Reporter Laura Kinsler can be reached at (813) 865-4844 or lkinsler@tampatrib.com.

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