Airbnb bookings dry up in New York as new short-stay rules are introduced
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.
So basically they decided to ban Airbnb. I wouldn't be surprised if hotels lobbied for this
I wouldn’t be surprised if people living next to Airbnb’s pushed for this as well.
It’s horrible having holidaymakers show up to an otherwise residential building/area.
NIMBYism is the reason the housing market is fucked.
While you're not wrong about that sentiment, it's misplaced in this context. Partyers and holidayers make for awful neighbours.
So fuck people trying to pay rent because you don't like people on vacation.
How exactly is that defensible?
If you have a property permanently on Airbnb, you're not 'trying to pay rent', what is that nonsense?
This doesn't just effect permanent airbnbs
If you're renting a place, and subletting your guest room on Airbnb... This doesn't stop you, they specifically made this the default case. If for some reason you've got a 5 bedroom place or something, maybe consider finding some long term housemates, then. It's not like there's a shortage of renters.
Nah man, fuck people driving up my rent for hosting vacationers. I reported an AirBnB to the city last year and now we have actual tenants.
Zoning laws exist for a reason.
Yes and that reason was originally safety, and now is "protecting my investments" at the cost of not having enough housing.
How is a law ending the stealth conversion of residentially zoned areas into commercial a net negative for housing?
Apartments are not commercially zoned, and neither are AirBnBs.
Both should be added to mixed zoning. That would be dope. Stores on the bottom, or alternating floors, with very dense buildings above current height restrictions, is basically the ideal solution.
Apartments are residentially zoned. Hotels are commercially zoned (for good reason).
Turning residential homes into unregulated mini-hotels at scale depletes housing stock, and is a nuisance to residents.
This law effectively blocks residential homes from continuing to be used as hotel businesses operating out of residentially zoned areas, allowing residential units to once again be used as housing, and removing the nuisance to residents.
Please explain why you see this as a NIMBY net negative for housing.
Mixed use zoning is absolutely the way forward everywhere, but most especially for already-dense cities like NYC. "Nuisance to residents" is always, and will always, be a terrible reason to do anything. A nuisance isn't a health concern, but a preference. Their preferences are irrelevant when the market is on fire.
There are 40k AirBnBs in NYC, and a housing shortage of literally millions of units. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/05/25/new-yorks-housing-shortage-pushes-up-rents-and-homelessness#:~:text=The%20problem%20is%20acute%20in,%2C%20and%20Houston%20(5).
This is not a big enough number to actually dent the housing shortage, and a not-insignificant number of these people are doing part-time rentals to make ends meet, which means they're gonna get evicted. Meanwhile, the landlords people are bemoaning will simply rent their properties at the AirBnB rate to not lose income since the net housing has not meaningfully shifted.
I agree with your sentiments about multi-use, multi-story buildings. I am, however, a bit baffled as you how you seem to have confused New York fucking City with the suburbs. NYC is the most dense city in the US. In fact, a quick wiki search has the NYC metro area occupying the top 12 spots for density.
It's the most dense city and yet it is not dense enough
I'd say NIMBYism is second to investment buyers and rent seekers.
Scooby doo mask reveal. They are the same thing!
How so?
Not disagreeing, just having a hard time working out your point.
Comes from another comment I posted here:
This is because of zoning restrictions preventing building. This occurs everywhere you see housing spiking, which distorts even the areas where building is occurring.
People don't want "those people" in their neighborhoods or don't want to lose their "neighborhood character," or simply want to "protect their home values," and so a persistent lack of supply is strangling the market.
Denying current renters an income stream, tightening the grip of the hotel market monopoly, and not actually freeing enough homes to impact the increase in demand, is not the solution.
That’s fair, but I think it’s not particularly relevant here.
Tourists should not be holidaying in people’s “back yards”.
It’s not about keeping out certain “types of people”, it’s about not wanting any people who have specifically come to holiday and treat the area like their playground.
And every Airbnb I know is run by someone who has multiple properties, and certainly isn’t letting holidaymakers live in their actual home.
Literally just NIMBYism.
Okay, ignore the rest of what I said and focus on your little buzzword 🤷♂️
I don’t want someone to knock down the house next door and start fracking the land, is that NiMbYiSm?
"I don't want X people here" is a far cry from "let's demolish more housing for oil speculation."
https://www.sidewalkchorus.com/p/nyc-housing-is-expensive
Try to actually address this topic with an eye for a solution, if housing costs are actually something you give a shit about.
I just don’t see how anything you’re saying is relevant to Airbnb??
Landlords are buying more houses and turning them into Airbnbs, hence less houses available and increasing prices for regular people.
The idea that it’s really benefitting regular people is just not the reality of the situation.
NIMBYism
The area for holidaymakers are hotel districts. If you need to expand the actual hotel district then so be it, but don’t just let everywhere essentially be a hotel district.
Edit: Can’t respond if you block me 🤷♂️
We will never see lower home prices while NIMBYism exists.
I'm willing to bet you don't want tall buildings with dense housing for low-income people on your street either, yeah? They'd ruin your view/the charm of the neighborhood/bring crime?
Congrats. You're the problem.
Edit: didn't block you.
But turning half the units in that tall building full of dense housing into short-term lets that are a nuisance to the people who actually live there is okay in your book? Because, as you say, objecting to that would be "NIMBY".
Airbnb is way more profitable than conventional letting. Why would anyone offer stable leases to poor people when they can rent out the whole place for higher rates?
In some parts of my country, it is becoming functionality impossible for families to rent a property for a stable term, because landlords want properties vacant over the holidays for short-term lets.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/59744/1/airbnb-is-making-life-hell-for-young-renters-in-tourist-hotspots-cornwall
But you think unregulated AirBnB is somehow a positive for housing?
Yes, because you're still adding net housing in those buildings.
I think AirBnB helps people pay their rent in NYC, because data confirms that people do in fact use it as bridge income
I also think AirBnB both is not the culprit here (a housing shortage is) and that building more housing solves the problem more neatly while also discouraging using housing as an "investment" which then discourages predatory housing practices.
Human beings will always respond to incentives, and right now the incentive is to buy housing and hold it because it will be worth more later. That's a big problem.
New York isn't like other places - it is quite literally out of available land to build residential structures. NIMBYism may have an affect, but the overwhelming restriction in preventing new construction is that you'd have to raze structures to do so.
Yes and that's not doable with current zoning restrictions.
https://www.sidewalkchorus.com/p/nyc-housing-is-expensive
A bold opinion that seems to have been quite conclusively rejected in cities across the world.
Yes, hence the insane shortage in housing.
I tell a lie. There is, in fact, an excellent case study for what happens without zoning laws. Houston.
Let's take a look at that:
Houston Derided as the Worst City in America in New Rankings https://www.papercitymag.com/culture/houston-worst-city-in-america-new-rankings-boston-2nd-worst
Houston among U.S. cities with worst air pollution, study finds, with minority areas hit the hardest https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/cities-with-worst-air-quality-houston-pollution-17829505.php
Stats Reveal Truth About Houston's Housing Crisis https://www.texasobserver.org/houston-is-hailed-as-a-national-success-for-fighting-homelessness-but-the-reality-isnt-quite-as-rosy/
Houston’s Affordable Housing Problem Is Going To Intensify https://itexgrp.com/houstons-affordable-housing-problem-is-going-to-intensify
Houston, San Antonio and Dallas among cities with the most housing problems https://voz.us/houston-san-antonio-and-dallas-among-cities-with-the-most-housing-problems
Houston 1 of 4 cities with worst housing availability https://news.yahoo.com/houston-1-4-cities-worst-010144144.html
First 2 are aesthetic complaining or lack of density related. Third contains this gem that supports my entire stance:
6th link confirms it. Edit: 6th not 5th because 5th is broken and also proof you didn't actually read any of these. You just googled for headlines that sound bad.
Renters by and large don't benefit from Airbnb, landlords do
Renters absolutely benefit from AirBnB if they were using the money to help bridge costs, which nearly every single article on this subject mentions.
And Landlords benefit a lot more from tighter housing restrictions.
This is less accurate as most recent residences built in NYC are "luxury" and not affordable.
That's irrelevant because net increases to supply still move toward closing the supply/demand gap, and people further down the chain just move into vacated homes as people move into the new ones.
Yeah, that's not happening. Those prices also go up. That's because the invisible hand isn't invisible. It's greedy landlords jacking up rents.
Your theory is cute but it doesn't match reality.
It's not happening because demand still outstrips supply by a huge amount. What is happening when building occurs is a mitigation of cost increases, but the production is not not enough to lower costs .
The thing about supply and demand is that it exists even if you don't like it.
Because owners aren't selling their property, and why would they when they can keep it and rent it out either monthly or daily on ABNB?
airbnb has a lot of hate from a lot of directions in NYC. Hotels, yes, but also from renters and homeowners.
Airbnb units remove long term rentals from the market, in a city which is desparately short on affordable, middle, and even luxury housing units.
Airbnb units in condos and coops (which usually violata the bylaws) create noise and safety conditions.
Probably held a bidding auction between hotels and air bnb. The hotels must have had deeper pockets to buy up a piece of legislation in a democratic system. How good is freedom