Lovely three-bed family home. Sleeps 14.

Hot on the heels of last week’s celebration of local loveliness comes a rude reminder that all is not quite rosy in our garden, for there is a fly amidst the buttercups and daisies. Well less fly, more monster for the house next door is in fact a hotel.

Alice and Jason own the house next door; they have done it up very nicely – they tell you all about it on Airbnb. This handsome ex-local authority town house has been refitted to sleep up to 14 guests – a snip at £420 a night. Making the most of its market, the house also boasts “essential business amenities”, perfect then for company away-days or conference stay. In short, the house next door is a business masquerading as a home, for Alice and Jason live no doubt very peacefully, in the next street.

While families in East London face rising rents and fierce competition for fewer available good properties, people like Alice and Jason buy second and third homes, not to rent out to families or key workers but to revellers whose sole purpose is to party long into the night. These are people who contribute nothing to the community, to the neighbourhood or to the economy – bars and clubs excepted. They turn up, have fun and go home, leaving empty bottles, fag-ends, and knackered neighbours in their wake. Meanwhile, rents are pushed up and locals pushed out – because they can’t afford to stay.

We have been lucky with a few low-key weekends, but at 3am last night our peace was shattered by garden revelries – a lightweight issue compared to other occasions when music and myriad other noises thud through our walls well into the later than early hours.

Friday is approached with trepidation, for who knows what this week’s guests will bring? We have endured hen parties, stag weekends, corporate shin-digs and other love-ins (yes, we hear all that too.)

We have complained bitterly to Alice and Jason who presented us with a bottle of Organic wine, yellow tulips and an assurance that they would levy a fine on guests who caused us disturbance; £50 according to the website. How nice that they will be compensated for putting up with our weary texts at 2, 3, 4am. As to the guests …. They don’t live here, they probably won’t be back, they don’t need to apologise, they couldn’t care less. £50 and a finger-wagging on top of £1000 weekend won’t nail it.

Tower Hamlets tell me that Airbnb lets are limited to 90 days a year, on which basis the property is “outside the scope of a landlord licence”; I’m not sure they appreciate that this home is in fact a hotel, presumably not paying business rates either. As to the noise, they very kindly provided me with a number for Noise Control; the people on the other side of the hotel report that this has little effect. They have tried.

The calendar for the business next door shows over 40 days’ occupancy between now and the end of June. Given it has been booked almost every weekend since we moved here in November, the 90 day annual quota seems a little optimistic, but it’s not in Airbnb’s interests to enforce limits on their landlords. More to the point, the revenue from 90 days equates roughly to the annual yield of a traditional rental, so to make the business viable the more the merrier – after all, who’s counting …  and who’s to know?

Ironic surely that this house, built for people who could not afford their own homes, is being used as a commercial enterprise by others who have more than one.

There is nothing wrong with the Airbnb premise to help home-owners generate additional income from renting rooms or the whole place when they are not there.  Turning homes into hotels however, is a whole different thing. If you find yourself living next door to one, you might just agree.