"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And who could argue with that, from the pen of one of 19th-century America’s greatest thinkers and writers?

Well, if it’s your family home, and you value your friends, it has a definite truth. But, in the case of Angela, speaking to Philip Boucher-Hayes on today’s Liveline, the people frequenting a house owned by herself and her husband were far from what you might call “ornaments”. In fact, they were complete strangers come from all over the globe!

“We have a house in Dublin we rent out to students during the winter, and in the summer, we let it separately. We discovered from a neighbour of ours, we got a text, saying that our AirBnB tenants were causing problems. I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

Angela’s husband explained to her what AirBnB was, an website whereby you can let a room in your home, or an entire property, on a short-term basis, mainly to holidaymakers.

The problem? Neither Angela nor her husband had ever offered their second home for this purpose. It was, as far as they knew, with an estate agent and rented to an individual.

Needless to say, they went straight to the AirBnB site and, sure enough, there was their property, available for short-term letting. So, who exactly was responsible for this posting?

Well, according to the letting agent, the property had been let for the duration of the summer to a college lecturer. But seemingly, it appears he felt he was onto a nice business idea, letting the rooms individually, and pocketing the extra cash!

All of this would have gone completely unnoticed, had Angela not received a telephone call from some neighbours at the house, complaining about the noise, and the comings and goings of lots of different people.

So, how much was this college lecturer earning from this little on-the-side enterprise?

“Three rooms, they were €70 per room, per night, and €10 of that was for AirBnB. We rang them ourselves to complain but we got no satisfaction. They said they would phone us back, but they are in another country.”

So, let’s do a little maths, as Philip did on the show.

The house was on the market for €1,500 per month. The lecturer was renting each of the three bedrooms individually, for €70 per night. That would be €210 per night, assuming each bedroom were occupied.

In a 30-day month? A potential €6300.

Wow. Nice work if you can get it.

And, as a matter of interest, what about the reviews? Anybody who has used AirBnB will know that renters and holidaymakers can review the “hosts”, as they are called, and the hosts can equally review those renting. From what they can gather, he seems to have been a rather decent host, as the reviews were uniformly positive.

Other details emerged during the interview, which were frankly mind-boggling. Firstly, the fact that the lease agreement with this college lecturer specifically precluded subletting. But when Angela approached the letting agent about this clause, she didn’t seem to feel there was any problem. It was left to Angela herself, and her husband, to contact this tenant, the college lecturer, and confront him about his apparent breach, and his misuse of their property.

“He was extremely abusive, which we weren’t really expecting. We thought he would be apologetic and try to get around us, but he was calling us “effing landlords”, who did we think we were, tenants have rights.”

Bizarre, as what exactly did he think he was, himself?

Eventually, he calmed down, and he agreed to move out, after just one week. But bizarrely, it emerged that this man had rented 30 houses, including six from Angela’s agent.

Angela wanted to let other landlords know about what had happened, recommending that they should at least know how their houses are being used.

You have been warned.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images