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.
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
venturevulture 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 believe it since that's how actual BNBs work.
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.
That basement should be someone's house.
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.
*some neckbeards house
NY is killing it. More of this, please.
They're called hotels. A ban is appropriate. Fuck you.
Not to mention legitimate bed and breakfasts are still legal and well regulated businesses.
Too bad it's only the city doing this and not the whole state :(
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.
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.
Why can't people live in hotel vacant rooms them?
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.
Absolutely incorrect in central/eastern Europe. Hotels are usually $100+ a night for a suite, Airbnbs depending on the city can be as low as $50 a night for the whole apartment.
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.
Airbnb didn't created supply shortages.
So companies like VRBO are better than airbnb? How do you think cabins are getting rented?
That's a whole different sentence that I never said.
Your last sentence says airbnbs are not supposed to be the same as renting a cabin for the weekend. I pointed out there are different companies effectively doing the same thing. Its not a far stretch. Let's add in families like going to cities on trips and not just camping in the woods.
And you conveniently missed things like population density. Put some thought into the why instead of looking for the first strawman that jumps out at you.
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?
Just limit the number of residential buildings a company can own then
And then should we limit how many corporations a person can operate?
Sure, anti monopoly laws exist for a reason
I don't think you know what a monopoly is
A single person or entity having control over specific commercial commodity or service or a vertical monopoly in which a group or entity own the means of production, distribution and other levels of the commercial activity,
All of which can be done by increasing the amount of companies that a group or entity runs or acquires.
People seem to forget we used to tell companies "no" about encroaching on other companies or buying them out to have a larger market share literally as anti-monopoly policies.
Anti-monopoly? Unless a person owned every corporation that owned every rental property, anti monopoly laws wouldn't apply.
Limiting the number of companies someone can spin off and operate is reasonable to stop monopolies as well. An unlimited regulation would in fact just cause people to spinoff new companies whenever they hit a limit and just pretend it's a different company and person doing anything. Limits to corporations is absolutely anti monopoly
Great idea!
People would just create a different LLC for each property so limiting ownership for companies wouldn't work either.
Exactly correct
Trouble is, any legitimate effort to stop that sort of property prospecting would affect other real estate development, which is a huge industry (and political contributor) in New York.
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.
I love this way of looking at it. The market optimizes for profit not general good for the public
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.
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."
And Nestle actively wants the dystopia you describe. Very good example.
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.
So that's not "letting the market decide the best use of space." That is the Government deciding the best use of space and passing laws to encourage that, which is exactly what is happening here.
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.
I don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand: I dislike the trend of commercial companies buying up living space to turn around and rent it out to disruptive short-term tenants.
On the other hand: I don’t want to have anyone else present in my rental with me because that’s creepy.
That's the point.
If you and I stay in hotels, people who work there will be able to afford to live near there.
They want you back in a hotel
They are trying to address housing shortages. The hotels might benefit, but so does everyone else because it effectively bars commercial operation of AirBnB. No landlords with 50 units etc.
Really to drop housing prices you have to address the secondary mortgage market. More supply is a band aid.
This will not actually help with the housing shortage. It will even result in further evictions as some people lose the potential income of renting out excess space to get over the hump.
That is still allowed though. The host can rent out a spare room with up to 2 guests at a time. The host just has to live there.
So they register? There isn't anything to indicate that hosts who plan to rent out a spare room and follow the rules won't be approved.
When you register, you must comply with hotel-level standards.
I went and looked up the regulations.
https://rules.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/FINAL-RULES-GOVERNING-REGISTRATION-AND-REQUIREMENTS-FOR-SHORT-TERM-RENTALS-1.pdf
Host requirements start on the bottom of page 16. The requirements boil down to posting a fire exit diagram of the unit, keeping records, and not violating building or fire codes. Nothing in there that really seems that onerous, and is stuff that obviously protects the guests.
This requires personal investment from people over something they nominally may not have the means or ability to change or influence.
Fire doesn't care about limp excuses.
So guests should just burn then? Like we have regulations because people died before said regulations.
I'm sorry was there a rush of ABNB fires I haven't heard about or is this a total non-issue
Then I guess they shouldn't be opening living spaces to other people for commercial purposes. Almost like doing that implies you have a responsibility to your guests
The horror.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-05/airbnb-s-new-nyc-regulations-what-renters-and-hosts-need-to-know
This effectively blocks struggling renters from using ABNB to bridge their payment gaps.
Yes, I think people being evicted over this policy would agree with the statement "the horror"
It's weird to watch you balance "evictions are evil" with "I hate what I'm told to hate" and end up choosing your hate first.
Those struggling renters might not be struggling so much if other people renting out their apartments on AirBnB weren't pushing up their rent by an extra 20%.
Housing markets have problems. AirBnB is not a responsible solution to those problems.
https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-city-increase-so-do-rent-prices
As mentioned previously, then they shouldn't be housing others. You spend a small sum of money to make money, when I worked for the city of new York, all us engineers knew the saying, "regulations are written in blood" because NYC was one of the first cities to experiment with new housing methods and such. We were thus the first to witness the horrors of lack of regulation.
I wasn't alive for the triangle waistcoat factory disaster. Will I learn from it? Yes. Will I force others to learn from it and protect innocent people around them? Also yes. Fire does not care about your class or situation, they happen and the steps to being protected are necessary.
If a person has extra rooms and can barely afford rent, they are occupying a unit that doesn't fit their needs. They would be better served by downsizing to a smaller, more affordable place instead of heaping their financial problems onto the rest of society. Alternatively they could sublet the room(s) which would better serve their community instead of catering to tourists.
I'll be sure to remind everyone who gets evicted about this.
Good?
Oh my god, you have to register with the city, like every other landlord? Crazy.
Yes and this requires additional restrictions on the property that many people flat-out cannot afford.
Like what, exactly? If you can't afford a fire alarm or sprinkler system, you really shouldn't be running a rental business. Hell, if you can't afford a fire alarm, you have much bigger problems than whether or not you can rent a room to a stranger.
You aren't running a rental business in these cases, but supplementing your income by allowing someone into your home a few times per year.
.....which makes you a business. You're making income from rentals. A landlord who has 500 units but can't seem to fill them but once or twice per year for a weekend doesn't suddenly stop being a landlord. And if they told me "I'm just supplementing my income" in order to get around installing fire alarms, I'd laugh in their face.
If you're providing a commercial service to strangers, you should be able to ensure their safety, full stop. If you can't afford to do that, you can't afford to provide the commercial service.
I find it so weird that your take is "only the wealthy deserve a home, period." Like that's such a hellish thing to say.
If they can't afford to sit on multiple empty houses due to increased AirBnB regulations, then they can always sell some of those assets back into the market. In fact, that's the point of the regulation :P
The idea of some poor landlord barely scraping things together because their 50 rental properties (and thus millions of dollars worth of assets) are less profitable is preposterous
The idea is that a non-negligible amount of renters pad their rental income with AirBnB and are not actually landlords.
Are you, by any chance, padding your income by subletting your rental home on AirBnB?
Judging by how hard they are attacking this thread (seriously like half the comments are them), I am going to say yes. I don't believe them denying it.
No. I own my own home and my mortgage costs less than average rent here, while my home has more than doubled in value, and I am sickened by that.
If you can afford to run a business you can afford to run a business properly.
Not if onerous regulations designed to solve problems that don't exist are placed in your way by populist idiot laws.
Theoretically, any business could be legislated out of existence maliciously.
How is following basic fire code onerous?
From what I can tell this is to help make sure they follow the new rules
If those hypothetical people lose their investment houses then other people can buy them.
To live in.
People who aren't living in their home will lose the home to eviction? Listen to my violin.
I want them back in a hotel too.
Yes, where they should be.
If you’re travelling somewhere then stay in a hotel, it’s what they’re for.
No thanks. Apartment rentals have existed for decades.
Just not nearly so many, and with so little regulation.
Regulation isn't my job though. Just like those not paying tax isn't my responsibility, but it should be sorted properly.
And why is that a bad thing?
It's the same as ride-sharing ... which, when it started, was advertised as a cheaper alternative to taxis/cabs but that's no longer the case.
I use taxis instead od ride-share because taxis are regulated and they have to buy licenses. Does this make them better? Not really, but they are contributing to the local economy through the tax base ... and that alone does make them better.
It is still cheaper.
I’ve stayed in plenty of Airbnb’s that the owners were on-site the whole time. It’s not bad at all. I even used Airbnb to rent out a spare room for a couple years and it wasn’t weird at all (except for the people who were much more comfortable with nudity than I was).
The time I visited NYC, the Airbnb I rented was a small apartment divided up into three rooms with other renters staying there. Same as if the owner was there, wasn’t a problem or creepy.
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?
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
Leave your dog in the house, call the stay a 'dog sitting job' instead of AirBnB.
Gotta pay min wage for that
i don't think so? under the table and not enough to be taxed
I think these aren't thought out.
One way to improve them might be to make them only apply to hosts with more than one property. Like if I own a home I should be able to rent it out.
the issue is that it's not individuals renting out their homes, it's corporations that rent or purchase many apartments and then put them on air bnb. additionally, landlords leave apartments vacant for many months. both of these factors make renting harder and more expensive in nyc.
NYC is full of these apartment blocks where reasonable apartments got split into 3 or 4 tiny units designed specifically to be put on Airbnb. If they each get 3-4 bookings a month, that's way more money than would be made renting the whole apartments, which crushes the rental market and drives prices sky high. These measures Should have been implemented 10 years ago. Second best time is now.
Hasn't Hawaii (at least on Oahu) had this for some time now? I know when you look up AirBNB and VRBO there are mentions of it, and to contact the owner directly, etc.
It's had it for a while, but enforcement was pretty spotty. I believe they've recently gotten buy-in from AirBNB to not list properties that weren't permitted.
The only way to resolve the housing market issue is to increase the supply of houses on the market, both in new developments as well as discourage vacancy.
So, with this new law, there's no more vacant residentials being used as unlicensed hotels, which hopefully will lead to housing prices dropping. (Vacancy property taxes is also needed in my opinion)
Also, I'm against AirBnB in general, not going to be paying to clean somebody else's house when I'm on vacation.
It was such a cool idea to start with. Going away for the week? Make some spare cash. In town and need a place that offers more than a hotel? Here's an awesome rate.
As soon as it became about landlords making profit it was ruined. It was supposed to be about spare cash, not squeeze people for all they're worth
I'm jealous
I just sold my grandmother's house in Feb.
I lucked out as that's what we were doing and what the dude who got it was doing
That said, they will just move to Craigslist or a backpage-like site until they uncoordinated fix the law
This is big government overreach unfairly discriminated against landlords
If Justin Trudeau had any balls he'd implement a mandatory landlord tip for all renters
See now this I can get behind! Unfortunately communism runs in his genes so he will never stick up for the little guy landlords.
Have you considered that landlords should be discriminated against?
No, that would be discrimination against a minority which is pretty bad don’t you think?
Nah, I also discriminate against Nazi's and they are also a minority
Have you considered that discriminating against Nazis makes you the real Nazi all along?
I'm fulfilling my role in the Paradox of Tolerance. Intolerance cannot be tolerated
This does nothing to address NYCs actual housing shortage, and will hurt the market more than it helps.
Housing stock isn't just total number of housing units, it's available housing on the market. This will absolutely free up property that's been hoarded off for AirBNB rentals
I would be interested to see stats on the impact of this a year down the line. From what I've seen, Airbnb has a very tiny percentage of actual housing stock, but (deservedly) disproportionate impact on public perception.
I do actually think it's a small percentage, but it's been reported that a lot of realtors/landlords have been running AirBNB's in empty units fraudulently in order to skirt laws and regulations. Not sure if it's still happening (I saw this reported maybe 3 years ago now?).
Institutional landlords make up a large chunk of the housing stock though, we need to combat that as well.
The Airbnb figures come direct from Airbnb, so there's only so much inaccuracy possible.
"Units being sold for permanent living than being bought to rent out days at a time will cause a housing shortage." lol
Not surprised that NYC is overcorrecting once again. I work in the industry and out of 2500 apartments we estimate around 20 are tenants involved in short term rentals. The last two we caught were even people that rent multiple rent-stabilized apartments and run their own business on Airbnb. This not only puts a pressure on unit supply in general but also specifically removes affordable housing opportunities for those in need.
At least with the buildings I'm involved in, the bigger issue is the state removing any ability to raise rents on vacant rent-stabilized units. We have at least 60 units sitting vacant indefinitely because it would take over 5 years to recover the cost of fixing up the unit and getting it rented. This rule was meant to stop shitty landlords drom taking advantage of tenants but if their focus was on tenant protection laws instead of completely removing all incentives to invest capital in old units they wouldn't have swapped one issue for another.
I'm sure there are legitimate uses for Airbnb that have now been completely eliminated and we'll see unintended consequences down the line.
NYC has existed before, and will exist after Airbnb
I think a lot of people have kinda forgotten what NYC was like before companies like airbnb and uber showed up.
Before Uber, there were underground networks of ride sharers that had to evade the police by using "secret" signals and code words. It was absolutely wild, required a ton of trust and only really existed because of the stranglehold the cab companies had over the city.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a similar system in place for rentals before airbnb showed up.
Turns out people will just go back to hotels. Novel concept.
"removing any ability to raise rents on vacant rent-stabilized units"
Am I misreading or doesn't this actually sound great? Whoever wants to raise the rents can fucking starve for all I care. if it's too expensive to fix and rent out then you should lose the place. what's not happening?
5 whole years to see a return on investment! Regulation has gone too far! /s
A lot fewer people are going to vacation to NYC, because NYC hotel rooms are small and unattractive whereas AirBnBs were not.
Fucking lol.
I was with them until they banned more than 1 guests at a time. Are you a couple needed somewhere quick to stay before going to an airport or something? Go die in a fire. New York only wants solo couch surfers. People who want a friend along. A single person with a child. A family in a money crunch, anyone really can just pound sand.
That is a super bizarre and IMO indefensible position. If someone wants to host more than one person in their home for a short span why is does they city even care?
I'm also worried about how this could be abused. What if you legitimately take someone (or even two someones) in for a week, kick them out and then they report you for being "an unregistered short term rental". This is going to be a shitshow.
Edit: alright I misread this morning. It's 2. Still bullshit. Why have a limit at all with the other stuff. My same complaints apply now with one more person. It's not like 3 people groups (aka 2 parents an a single child or one parent and 2 children, etc) are uncommon.
IMO hotels just don't fill the niche of needing a cheap single night or needing to have a bunch of people for a long time. Traveling with my family got so much better when airBNB became a thing.
Damn, if only there was some sort of established and regulated type of business where you could rent lodging by the night in New York City. I bet they could make a whole lot of money building big buildings full of rooms you can rent like that.
Do you make a habit of charging your friends and family that come visit you?
As someone who has a big ass family, hotels fucking suck for families. When I compare my childhood vacations in hotel to what we do now in airBNB, we do airBNB every single time.
I have in the past when I was hard up for money because food costs for extra people can be great.
Airbnb is a lot better than a hotel for families: you get several bedrooms plus a full kitchen for a similar price to a hotel that only gives you two beds in a room. That kitchen will save a typical family $100/day over a hotel if they cook their own meals.
Yeah and for that convenience you fuck over actual people in the city who need a place to live.
Sorry but fuck airbnb for this.
Your city needs to build more if there is a problem. People who live there should not have more rights than people who visit.
AirBNB isn't a right.
Maybe they do. What's that to anyone else? Maybe they also eat broccoli and mint ice cream
From article and summary:
Where are you seeing a limit of 1?
I read it in the summary, but I guess I made a mistake. I still think it's ridiculous. Like why have a limit at all on who people want to host in their house?
There are typically limits on residential building occupancy. To put the kibosh on things like this, for example:
I assume NYC has similar regulations. If the ordinary residents are also in the property, things could get quite snug.