Mr. Dannen (airbnb.com)

If you're looking to make some extra cash, Airbnb can be an easy alternative to finding another weird Craigslist roommate or moonlighting as a rich dude's arm candy. But if you're going to go the room rental route, you probably want to make sure that doing so doesn't violate your lease--or else you might just find yourself kicked to the curb (or at least served with a restraining order).

Consider the case of Chris Dannen, a Brooklyn resident who claims to have made upwards of $20,000 in nine months from renting out his two spare bedrooms on Airbnb. According to a missive he penned for Fast Company:

On Monday, June 4, about 10 days before my cofounders and I planned to push our first product into the iTunes App Store, a stranger in a blue blazer served me with a restraining order filed by my landlord.... Attached to the order was a complete printout of my Airbnb listing and all my reviews, included as evidence I had violated clauses in my lease. (Some leases, I have since learned, have evolved specific language prohibiting tenants from listing their pads on vacation-rental sites such as Airbnb.)

We feel badly for Mr. Dannen, but we can't help but wonder how this came as a shock to him. Aren't lease clauses always the catch with Airbnb, and why you should only use it if you own a place, or if your listing is suuuuper stealth?

Let this be a warning to all of you cash-strapped, enterprising Brooklynites with space to spare: read your lease before signing up for Airbnb.