Under the new restrictions, short-term renters will need to register with the city and must be present in the home for the duration of the rental
Home-sharing company Airbnb said it had to stop accepting some reservations in New York City after new regulations on short-term rentals went into effect.
The new rules are intended to effectively end a free-for-all in which landlords and residents have been renting out their apartments by the week or the night to tourists or others in the city for short stays. Advocates say the practice has driven a rise in demand for housing in already scarce neighbourhoods in the city.
Under the new system, rentals shorter than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city. Hosts must also commit to being physically present in the home for the duration of the rental, sharing living quarters with their guest. More than two guests at a time are not allowed, either, meaning families are effectively barred.
the early days of airbnb was basically this concept.
they didn’t start out as a marketplace for unregulated hotels that destroy housing markets. that didn’t happen until after they started cashing checks venture vulture capitalists.
So many people forget this origin. Air mattress in your spare room (in SF), iirc.
As much as I, personally, prefer a house when away - either with the family or as a couple - this is one of the drivers behind the crunch in housing. People can’t possibly afford to by a place to live when the competition is a wanna-be property “entrepreneur” who is going to get 2-4x market rent by doing short term rentals.
Originally my mum moved my brother and I into the same room and rented out the empty room for $40 a night. The cleaning fee was $20 and we still cleared $2,000 in one summer.
My brother and I each got a 5% cut and we bought ice creams from Safeway every day for a week until we got wicked stomach aches
I took a trip out to the Rockies earlier this year, and booked an AirBnB. The listing was for the basement of a house where a lovely old retired couple lived. The basement was decorated and furnished beautifully, and we got to chat with the couple every now and then. They gave us recommendations to a farmer’s market which was pretty cool.
It was the first time I’ve ever booked an Airbnb that was true to its original mission. This is what AirBnb should be - renting out spare rooms - and not a turn-an-apartment-unit-into-a-hotel thing.
It’s so fucking obnoxious the way people try to make outlier situations as if it invalidates the argument. You know god damn well the situations you’re describing are an extremely tiny percentage of airbnb usage (honestly if any at all). Don’t be daft.
If they are using Airbnb then they are already a landlord.
Hotels are for short term, houses are for living.
in a case of a house shortage, maybe… but The issue is not that there is a house shortage. It is that the houses are not being used as houses. There are more than enough houses in almost every city to home everyone and several times over to house the homeless. But that isn’t what the houses are being used for. If they were then yeah, they’d have the space likely to rent out like an Airbnb. But there should be no homeless anywhere if there’s enough rooms to pull off Airbnb. But no one is looking at the homeless as an issue before starting an Airbnb.
Airbnb is unchecked capitalism that got way out of hand. It’s very fucked up to call this a society anymore. This is hell.
I agree. We’re short so much housing, I’m sure there are so many in that community that would leap at those accomodations.
Sure let’s force people to rent out for furnished rooms now. I have two and sometimes guests stay here but if I wanted to set up a b&b and have someone here a few times a year it sure shit doesn’t mean o have to rent it out permanently. The idea of being forced to live with strangers permanently disgusts me. This is my house and I need my privacy. It’s the government’s job who gets my tax money to fix housing not mine.
I’m surprised how many people have disagreed without taking the time to explain why.
NY is killing it. More of this, please.
Airbnb has fought the rules in court, arguing they were essentially a ban, and that they would hurt visitors looking for affordable accommodation.
They’re called hotels. A ban is appropriate. Fuck you.
Because the rest of NY state has a housing shortage?
The entire fucking country currently has a housing shortage.
The problem is there are more instances of people who own places just to rent. Ban those. But permit people to rent places they actually have established residency in.
As an example… Boyfriends and girlfriends with their own places but spending the night swapping between are also super inefficient usage of resources. I’m obviously not suggesting that couples must live together… But they’re perfect for occasional Airbnb rentals. Rent it for the week and spend that week at your partners. Same with people who travel for work.
Airbnb has fought the rules in court, arguing they were essentially a ban, and that they would hurt visitors looking for affordable accommodation.
They’re called hotels.
I don’t know about prices in NYC but I can assure you that the cost of an airbnb in asia is nothing compared to the cost of a hotel (for the same standard)
When we don’t have a housing crisis, this argument will be much more appealing. There’s massive homelessness where I live (Bay Area), so how much someone has to pay for a room is a lot lower on my list.
Airbnb prices are comparable to similar hotels, maybe even more expensive in the US and Europe. Same thing will happen in Asia once they gain the market share they’re looking for, then they’ll raise prices.
Hotels in NY and other cities need competition, smaller scale land owners renting their condos while on vacation, or their parents home that they wouldn’t sell anyways is perfectly fine. Hotels take up a lot of land and often have many vacancies so that is just as much of a problem, and yes tenants can longer term live in hotels- I lived in a hotel for around 7 months because it was cheaper than an apartment(not paying the market price but just talked to the manager) during COVID, many(maybe most) nights I was the only person in the building. Prices are a supply issue which existed long before Airbnb but it’s just easy to blame.
Hotels are not an end all be all solution. They are significantly more expensive when dealing with large family’s or groups of travelers. Most do not allow pets.
That doesn’t outweigh the problems being created. A bnb isn’t supposed to be the same as renting a cabin for the week.
So companies like VRBO are better than airbnb? How do you think cabins are getting rented?
Damn this seems like a hot take given the comments but I think these rules are dumb. If I go on a two week vacation somewhere else I should be able to rent out my place for those two weeks. The issue isn’t AirBnB as a whole, it’s people buying up places for the express intention of only using it for AirBnB,
There should be some cap on often a place can be used for short term rentals like 4 weeks out of the year, enough that people who vacation somewhere else can use AirBnb and low enough that it makes more financial sense for people to rent it out long term instead of short.
The issue is how to enforce granular rules like that. You’ll end up with people buying time shares of airbnbs or some other wacky workaround. The issue ultimately is, if you leave any wiggle room, grifters will ruin it for the people using that wiggle room as intended. You can’t put in a law and expect everyone to adhere to the spirit of said law. I think with the litany of other property value issues that NY has, this hard line in the sand makes sense. It sucks that the grifters ruined it for people like you and I but the fact of the matter is that they did.
There should be a cap to how many buildings a person or a company can own. Why a person can have more than 3 homes? In the current world, this does not make any sense.
100% agree and while at it I don’t think any single family homes or rowhouse/townhouses should be owned by corporations. Apartments and such I can understand the building owned by a management company that only does long term rentals but otherwise homes should be owned by people.
So then the person creates an LLC and now the LLC owns the properties. Do you then think corporations shouldn’t be able to own more than 3 properties, too?
People would just create a different LLC for each property so limiting ownership for companies wouldn’t work either.
Honestly, I don’t understand what everyone has against short term rentals. It may be an unpopular opinion, but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space? For a city like New York that gets visitors and transient workers from all over the world, maybe it would be better for it to have lots of short term rentals. Ultimately the market would find an equilibrium between short term rentals, long term rentals, and owner occupied properties.
I do think there needs to be more regulation for the rentals though, probably similar to hotels. Any property being rented out should be subject to the same safety inspections and regulations.
The market isn’t deciding the best use for the space; it’s deciding the most profitable. These are two very different things.
Definitely agree that the free market can come up with some undesirable solutions which is where I think regulation comes in to “guide” the more desirable outcomes that can be found organically. Personally, I think maximum occupancy and increased supply should be the goal where there is limited supply like NYC. Things like a vacancy tax and better zoning could help a lot.
Also, I’m not sure that I trust the government to find the best use of space either, especially in the face of corporate lobbying. The current road/highway system being built to the detriment of public transportation is a good example where a government prescribed solution can have a negative impact decades later.
I live in an area with AirBnB rentals.
All of the neighbor problems I and my neighbors have had, without exception, have been from short-term renters. That includes noise that continues all night, off leash, aggressive dogs, unsupervised kids, and threatening, overtly hostile renters.
The “market” can’t deal with this kind of thing, it requires regulations and enforcement.
but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space?
When it comes to something necessary for survival, like shelter, “letting the market decide” is a terrible idea.
For example: if corporations purchased all of the water so that people couldn’t access it, and you had to buy all your water from corporations, you couldn’t “let the market decide” what a fair price of water is. They have created this scarcity so they can profit off it, and the amount people are “willing to pay” to live turns out to be about “all the money they have.”
Definitely not advocating for full blown free market capitalism. My comment was more along the lines of letting the market organically find the best solutions. The government should set broad goals, like “maximize the amount of occupied housing units and minimize homelessness” and then provide the appropriate incentives to guide the market in that direction.
I agree that for inelastic goods like healthcare, food, water, shelter the situation is even more tricky. NYC just seems to be limited in that sense with already high density and low supply. Having any form of vacant units should be taxed heavily. Maybe even extend this to progressively tax larger units that reduce density. Billionaires row where the ultra wealthy have an entire floor for an apartment that they never use makes no sense to me.
They increase the overall cost of both buying and renting a property within that market, and are a nuisance for existing residents.
Historically – in the UK, at least – the market equilibrium has been that the rich own all the property and the poor pay rent until they die, aware that they can be served an eviction notice at any time.
This has not proven to be a popular policy. In 1918 all British men, regardless of whether they owned property or not, got the vote, and since then politicians have found it useful to not have the majority of voters perpetually furious about it.
the issue is that there aren’t enough available apartments in nyc. there’s high competition to actually get an apartment. it’s normal to look at apartments with all your papers ready and apply on the spot… and still not get the fucking place even though you have a very high credit score, have been working at your job for years, have high savings etc. so you end up having to keep applying to a bunch of places until your application gets accepted. it’s a nightmare.
I wanna draw a compromise like you. I think the rental system does suck ass and shorter terms could be better negotiated into the system.
The problem is that this current disruption in the market is making people homeless. So that some wealthy people can stay for the weekend.
The ‘market’ isn’t gonna solve this, these social conventions have always been written by lawyers. This market just keeps trying to squeeze people out to reduce housing supply for all but the filthy rich. But playing into that market is also zoning laws, approval processes etc. It would be nice to fill in these gaps! Hostels, taverns, larger hotel rooms for big groups, short term rentals for 1 - 3 months without ‘year long lease’ and all that crazy approval bullshit.
Agree that regulation and zoning laws can be way better but I’m not sure how much more could be done about supply in NYC. The place is already one of the densest on the planet. Having an vacancy tax makes total sense too. Make sure that maximum available supply is actually being used.
The issue seems to be short term vs long term rentals and I’m not sure if I favor one over another for a place like NYC where a large part of the population has always been transient.
