Editorial: House parties rules

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

In Las Vegas, your neighbor can turn his house into a motel and there is little you can do about it.

That is the lesson Kari DeMattia learned, as she says a neighboring home has become a high-priced party house, available for a weekend getaway, neighbors be damned. She says her lawn has been littered with beer cans, visitors zoom through the neighborhood and make noise at all hours, and on Thanksgiving she found a chartered bus parked in front of her house.

As reported by Mike Trask in Tuesday's Las Vegas Sun, an Internet ad for the house states it sleeps 14 and includes a sauna and a pool. It can all be yours for a long weekend, Thursday through Saturday, for $1,200.

Trying to balance property rights with neighborhood concerns, Las Vegas Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian is drafting an ordinance that would limit homeowners' ability to rent their homes for less than a month. We are glad that Tarkanian is taking this on , because these house-hotels can become a detriment to the quality of life in the neighborhoods.

Clark County and Henderson have ordinances against these short-term rentals, but the Internet has ads for vacation rentals in both areas, as well as all of Clark County.

There apparently is money to be made in the vacation rental business, witnessed by other ads. For example, a four-bedroom luxury home in the exclusive enclave of MacDonald Highlands in Henderson rents for $400 a night, a five-bedroom "entertainer's dream" in Las Vegas starts at $500 a night and a seven-bedroom mansion on Mount Charleston, with security, butler and chauffeur available on request, starts at $1,500.

Those may be dream vacations for some people, but they make for a nightmare in the neighborhood. People who rent the homes are there to have a good time, not necessarily to be good neighbors.