Houfy Listing & Platform Guidelines

These Guidelines apply to every listing on Houfy. They form part of our Terms of Service, and words defined there have the same meaning here. They sit under our Community Standards: the Standards say a listing must be honest; this page says what that means when you are filling in the form.

We do not inspect properties and we do not check listings before they go live. What a guest knows about your property is what you wrote.

Your listing must be the property you are letting

• One listing for one property a guest can book. If you let several units at the same address, list each one separately.

• List only a property you own or are authorised to let. If your lease, mortgage, HOA or building rules do not allow short-term letting, do not list it.

• The map location must be the property’s real location. You may keep the exact street address private until a booking is confirmed; you may not put the pin somewhere the property is not.

• Do not create a second listing for the same property to take up more search results, and do not use one listing to take bookings for other properties that are not listed.

• List a property only when it exists and can be booked — not one still being built, and not one you hope to acquire.

Photos must show the property as it is

• Use recent photographs of the actual property, inside and out, including the rooms a guest will use.

• The photographs must be yours to use. Do not take them from another site, from another listing, or from a photographer whose licence has ended. See our Photo Guidelines and Copyright Policy.

• Adjusting light, colour and straightening is fine. Editing that changes what a guest is buying is not — do not remove what is really there, add what is not, or use a generated image of a room. If you use Houfy’s photo tools, you are still responsible for what the finished image shows.

• No watermarks, no other platform’s branding, and no contact details or promotional text laid over your photos.

Show the whole price

• Show every amount a guest has to pay in order to stay: the nightly rate, cleaning, pet, resort or amenity charges, linen, extra-guest charges, deposits, and any tax you collect yourself.

• A charge a guest cannot avoid belongs in a fee field, not in the description and not in a message after booking. Add it under Pricing > Rates & Fees, and leave the optional box unticked so that it is charged on every booking — see adding fees to your listing.

• Do not add a charge at or after check-in that the guest did not see before they booked.

• Label a refundable deposit as refundable, and say what the conditions are and when it comes back.

• Your cancellation policy, house rules, and check-in and check-out times belong in the listing, not in a message afterwards.

Availability must be real

• Keep your calendar accurate. If you also list elsewhere, sync it.

• Do not hold open dates you cannot honour, and do not publish rates you will not accept.

• Cancelling a confirmed booking is the worst thing that can happen to a guest. Cancel only where you genuinely cannot host, tell the guest as soon as you know, and refund under the cancellation policy you set.

Tell a guest what they need to know before they book

• Anything that could hurt someone: steep or open stairs, an unfenced pool or hot tub, a balcony, a wood burner, a road with no footpath, water that is not drinkable.

• Any camera, doorbell camera, smart speaker or other recording device on the property, and where it is. Never place one in a bedroom, a bathroom or any other private space. Recording someone without telling them is unlawful in many places, and it will get your listing removed here.

• Firearms on the premises, and how they are stored.

• Shared entrances or shared spaces, other people living on site, building work nearby, stairs with no lift.

• Accessibility — say what is actually there, such as step-free entry, door widths or grab rails, rather than the word accessible on its own. A guest may be relying on it to be able to stay at all.

• Any permit, licence or registration number your local rules require. Add it under Pricing > Rates & Fees > Tax and it appears on your listing as Registration ID — see where to add your city permit or registration number. Registration, tax, occupancy limits and safety rules are yours to meet, not ours; our Tax Guidelines are a starting point, not advice.

What you write

• Write about the property, not about who you want in it. You may not say or imply that a guest is unwelcome because of race, colour, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, familial or marital status, age, or any other characteristic protected where you or the property are. No children, professionals only, not suitable for — read our Fair Housing Guidelines before you write a house rule.

• Use each field for what it is for. The title is the property, not a slogan.

• Do not copy a description, a house-rules list or an area guide from another listing or another site.

• You may link your own property website — there is a setting for it — and pages that help a guest understand the property or the area. See our Link & Video Guidelines. Do not add affiliate or referral links, or anything that asks a guest to pay outside Houfy.

• Your phone number, email address and website belong in your profile and in the fields built for them, where we show them to guests at the right time. Do not put them in the title, in your photos or in the house rules in order to move an enquiry off the record of the booking. A booking that starts on Houfy stays on Houfy — your own direct guests are yours, and that is what Houfy is for.

• No HTML or scripts, no keyword stuffing, and no text written for search engines rather than for guests.

If a listing breaks these Guidelines

We may ask you to fix it, hide it from search, remove it, or act on your account. What we do depends on what happened and whether it has happened before, and it follows the process set out in our Community Standards — including telling you why, and your right to appeal within 30 days. Where a listing is fraudulent or someone is at risk, we act as soon as we know.

Changes

We update these Guidelines as the platform changes, and change the date at the top.