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Comment by dopamean | Hacker News Reader

I'm renting an apartment in Brooklyn next week from someone who is going to be out of town for a while. Basically our trips overlap and so I get the whole apartment. It would seem that since the host wont be present my arrangement is technically against the law. It seems to me that it shouldn't be.

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INAL and this is not legal advice. This is my understanding based on looking into this change a while ago (they have been lobbying NYC residents hard) but I haven't looked at what got passed.

Subletting is generally legal in NYC and lease provisions banning it aren't allowed in most cases. What isn't allowed is subletting for more than you are paying in rent. If the host was charging more than his rent it was already illegal to perform the sublet and it is now illegal to advertise the illegal sublet.

If he is charging the same amount or less than it continues to be legal to both perform the sublet and advertise the legal sublet on platforms like AirBnB.

If it is a condominium you can be sure that the by-laws of the building stipulate the minimum allowable sublet term. You can be guaranteed it won't be less than 30 days.

You're allowed to charge a premium (since you paid for the furniture, utensils, utilities, cleaning, etc). The maximum amount of that premium however is limited by law.

When I first moved to New York, I spent weeks living in an AirBnB place before finding a real apartment. Same thing when I moved to London. I could have found a place via other means (Craigslist, or pay tons of money to some real estate agent) but this was much better.

This will inhibit mobility and hurt newcomers to the city, especially in the young technology/creative classes. But what sort of politician would actually care, as long as they're not politically active in our jurisdiction yet, am I right?

As someone who happened to be a young adult before the advent of iPhones and AirBnB I can promise you that it was indeed possible for people to do things without technologies available since 2010.

I successfully moved to a number of different cities with neither money nor job prospects. It involved using the ancient human rituals of "using a telephone", "riding the bus", "speaking with other persons" and "walking around".

In the process I had to deal with some minor inconveniences and sometimes things didn't go exactly the way I wanted. The horror!

Yes, but these days, that kind of stuff is only something old or even the poor people might do. You're clearly old, QED! I, however, am a liberty loving rugged individual, so treating me that way is unacceptable.

Can't you just understand: what you're advocating is pretty much legal torture of high-income Americans on a site about Web 2.0 startups?!?!? /s

Anybody who claims that there is no possible benefit, or increased efficiency of housing stock usage, as a result of services like AirBnB is a fool.

But that doesn't mean that an unrestricted free-for-all is the only possible alternative.

What folksinger is snarkily and rudely trying to say is that there are other short-term alternatives, such as motels. Also, any listings made by people physically present would have been legal.

I agree that it limits mobility but the law also protects residents from constant, disruptive behavior from serial short-term renters.

I have never lived near a serial short-term rental, but I imagine I would dislike it if I lived next door to one.

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