Airbnb's indoor camera ban took effect April 30. Check your entryway.
In March, Airbnb announced a ban on indoor security cameras in listings, effective April 30.
Six weeks past the deadline, we are still finding devices during walkthroughs. Not because owners are trying to get away with something — because they installed a camera in 2021, stopped thinking about it, and genuinely do not remember it is there.
This is a small post about a small thing that can cost you your listing.
What the rule covers, and what people miss
Indoor cameras are out. All of them, anywhere inside the home, regardless of whether they are disclosed, disabled, unplugged, or pointed at a wall.
The three things I keep finding:
The old nanny cam or "pet cam" on a shelf. Often a device from a previous life of the house that got left when it became a rental.
A doorbell camera mounted inside an enclosed entry. If the front door opens into an interior vestibule and the camera is inside that space, that is an indoor camera. This one catches careful people.
A smart speaker or hub with a camera in it. Some display-style smart speakers have a camera and a shutter. A shutter is not removal. If it has a lens, take the device out or swap it for a model without one.
Noise-monitoring devices that measure decibel levels and do not record audio are a separate category and are generally acceptable when disclosed — but read the current rules yourself rather than trusting a blog post, including mine, and disclose whatever you have.
Outdoor cameras remain allowed with disclosure, and they cannot cover spaces where a guest would expect privacy — an enclosed outdoor shower, for instance.
Why this is worth taking seriously
Because the consequence is not a warning. Camera violations sit in the category of trust-and-safety issues where a listing can be suspended, and a suspended listing in July is a catastrophe rather than an inconvenience.
And because guests report it. All it takes is one person noticing a lens in a hallway.
How we handle devices
Every home we manage gets a physical walkthrough on a quarterly cycle, and device inventory is on the checklist alongside the batteries and the HVAC filter. A person goes room by room and writes down every connected device in the house: locks, thermostat, doorbell, speakers, sensors, anything with a lens.
That list matters for more than this rule. It tells you which devices have batteries that will die, which are on a Wi-Fi network somebody needs to maintain, and which were installed by a previous owner and are still quietly on somebody else's account. I have found locks paired to a phone number that belonged to a person who sold the house in 2019.
When a platform rule changes, having that inventory means the compliance job is a ten-minute review instead of six site visits. That is most of what a management operation is actually for.
The five-minute audit, if you self-manage
Walk your house, or ask your cleaner to, with this list:
Every room, ceiling to floor: anything with a lens. Shelves, bookcases, above door frames, on top of the fridge, in the corner of the primary bedroom.
Your entryway: is the doorbell camera inside or outside the weather envelope?
Your smart speakers: does the model have a camera?
Your listing page: does the amenity list still declare an indoor camera? Remove it, then remove the device — in that order does not matter, but do both, because an amenity checkbox claiming a camera you removed is its own problem, and an amenity list that has drifted away from the house is the same problem in a different room.
Your outdoor cameras: disclosed, and not covering a private space?
Then write down what you found so you are not doing this from scratch the next time a rule changes.
One more thing worth checking while you are in there
Since you are already walking the house, check the two other device categories that generate complaints. Smart locks: confirm the code-generation is tied to an account somebody at your operation controls, and that the batteries were changed on a date you can name. Thermostats: confirm guests can actually adjust the temperature within a sensible range. Locking a guest out of the thermostat in a Nashville July is a guaranteed review, and a hard lock is almost never necessary — a sensible range does the same job without the resentment.
The general lesson
Platform policy changes land with a deadline and no reminder, and the owners who get caught are almost never the ones acting in bad faith. They are the ones with no inventory of their own house.
Keep a list. Update it quarterly. That is the whole trick.
If nobody has physically walked your home with a checklist this year, that is the gap. Quarterly inspections and a maintained device inventory come with management at Boost. Get started here.