Between all the television shows filming in Dallas neighborhoods and the thought of renting out one’s home during Super Bowl XLV weekend, the Dallas-Fort Worth area might become one big sublet region.
The city of Arlington, though, wants to make it a bit more difficult on companies trying to set up brokerages between property owners and prospective tenants.
City workers recently have been hard at, um, work, removing hundreds of “bandit” signs from public rights of way. The signs — touting the possibilities of $10,000 per day in rental fees to Super Bowl visitors — try to drum up business for the brokerages and their local property-owner clients.
Only a couple of problems there. First, the signs are illegal and the city just removes and destroys them, so, quick, copy down that phone number. Secondly, some of these brokers want their fees — as much as 12 percent of the rental or $895 — upfront. Then there’s the hotel occupancy taxes for which the homeowner would be liable. And, oh, yeah, North Texas contains about 90,000 hotel rooms, and the NFL already booked reservations for 24,000 of them, and that still leaves … well, a bunch o’ hotel rooms.
OK, so more than a couple of problems.
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. His place would make a good seedy flop house for one of the cop shows.
