An NYC Airbnb Racked Up $1M in Fines. New Rules Would Block the Listing
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Anyone that bitches that the rent is too high, here's your starting point, all those Air BnB rentals are driving the long term rental market up significantly. Adding 20% more units to the market would save you a ton of money.
This is the same nonsense as NYC's yellow cab vs black car licensing and regulations.
Let people make businesses how they choose.
I've lived across from nightly rentals at a resort, I expected it, so no complaints to the late night partying etc. But my current neighborhood I have no expectation the house next door is going to suddenly start hosting huge gatherings every weekend, and I expect it to stay that way.
If you live in a city, you have to deal with noise, full stop. That's one of the trade offs of dense, urban living. Certainly there are limits to what you should have to put up with, and that's what noise complaints to the police are for. Police aren't doing their job? Well, maybe you should find a way to force them to, instead of trying to restrict what other people want to do with their property. Or move to a building or area or whatever with a neighborhood association that disallows short-term rentals.
If fire escapes are necessary, they should be required in both cases. If they are not, they shouldn't be. Are hotel guest lives (or resident lives) worth more or less than the other?
Apartments are generally bigger than hotel rooms -> there's more people in an equivalent size building that is a hotel -> need better fire exits.
Condo buildings aren't that much different than hotels in terms of density and usage.
> The average size of a newly built apartment in the United States, as of 2018, is 882 square feet. https://getflex.com/blog/average-apartment-size/
> The average hotel room size in the US is 300 square feet (around 28 square metres). https://www.siteminder.com/r/hotel-room-sizes/
Airbnb has many problems and is a disgraceful company especially nowadays, but one thing they did well is to add significant flexibility to a legacy industry full of gatekeepers.
A vacation rental is not housing people.
AirBnB adds flexibility for new rent-seekers. It doesn’t address housing affordability and in some cases actually makes it worse.
It's not purely a bunch of tourists or whatever taking up this housing and driving out the locals.
This seems to have become a standard practice in VC-backed firms, a process clearly documented here [0] by Cory Doctorow (article covers much more than just the title-mentioned Tiktok).
[0] https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df...
NYC is somewhat notorious for recently disallowing all new hotels. You could not enter the hotel business in NYC if you wanted to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/nyregion/hotels-tourism-n...
https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2022/12/09/how-special-are-...
Many houses sit empty when their owners are away. Why not use that space to house travelers without having to build more hotels?
I think most cities have it backwards trying to regulate the hosts. Hosts aren’t at the property and aren’t usually awake at 1am when issues might occur.
The renters cause the issues, so regulate the renters. Cities could mandate a 25-50% deposit that’s refunded if no noise/parking issues occur. Whoever put the deposit down will likely be at the house and self-policing their group that they invited.
Makes more sense than blaming hosts when most bookings are “instant book”, or even if they do vet, it’s likely just a quick text chat or going off of previous AirBnB ratings (which many hosts rate 5/5 so the guest will return).
Sedona does it well. Every HOA gets to decide if they are a tourist neighborhood or not. Short term rentals are either allowed or banned and you know that going in.
There are many homes in tourist towns that are designed to be vacation homes. Sometimes they are 5+ bedrooms, or are located inside a resort area. Families don’t want to live in those homes and they’re not conducive to long term rentals either.
Tourism zoning allows those homes to not sit empty and be taxed appropriately, while keeping short term rentals away from residential zoning areas likes parks, schools, etc.
Instead you have cities passing dozens or hundreds of pages of regulations that makes no one happy. It’s led to lots of lawsuits, complicated enforcement and more bureaucracy.
Simple is better. Another option is to allow anyone to rent, but cap it at 30-60 nights per year, or only during peak tourism months. It‘s enough income to supplement a homeowner’s mortgage, but not enough to make it a profitable investment opportunity.
It seems like to me that the people who purchase homes specifically to run an AirBnB business seems to espouse "f@#! you, I got mine" attitude which is super contagious and toxic.
I have zero sympathy for this part of your argument: hotel zoning is just a legally-allowed monopoly, with all the bad things that usually comes with.
And do note that, in some jurisdictions, there are now taxes specifically covering short-term rental activities. No "cheating" going on there. And any municipality that hasn't enacted such a tax... well, that's their oversight, then.
We can disagree about laws but not following/enforcing laws because you disagree with them (for most part) is a recipe for disaster.
Building more housing in places where there is demand is the only way to reduce housing prices. We don't see that happening because homeowners like the high cost of housing, and vote down new development. Homeowners tend to have more political power since they're a bit more fervent about this sort of thing than renters, many of whom won't be living in the area long enough to care. Unfortunately, those renters who do want to stay, and perhaps even want to own their own home, just don't have the political clout to change things.
I’m not saying we should just ban short term rentals. I’m saying we should make all rentals ruinously expensive unless they actually provide some economic benefit. If you aren’t providing housing to low income renters that truly can’t afford a home then you don’t get to buy more houses. Just destroy the incentives to hold real estate through taxes.
Here are some examples: https://www.visitberlin.de/en/hotelthema/apartment-hotel
The problem is it is now polluted with grifters, and you don’t want to take a 15% chance that your place will have cockroaches, require digging through 8’ of snow to get to the front door, or have frozen pipes (all these have happened to me with Airbnb).
Even worse, I feel that it went from a 5% bad rate to more like 35%.
Huh? As a frequent vacationer and user of Airbnb (I'm staying in one right now, as it turns out), Airbnb has made vacationing so much better.
I get to stay in a larger variety of neighborhoods and locations. Kitchens are usually standard (good luck finding one in most hotels). There's more space if I want to stay with family or friends. Prices -- even in places where Airbnb hosts are required to pay local hotel taxes -- are much more varied and, in general, better (and when I do decide to choose a hotel for whatever reason prices are often lower due to competition from Airbnb). I could go on...
> Anyone that bitches that the rent is too high, here's your starting point, all those Air BnB rentals are driving the long term rental market up significantly.
I hear this a lot, but fail to see any hard evidence that killing short-term rentals would fix this problem. I don't doubt that short-term rentals are contributing to housing unaffordability, but there are much better solutions than banning them. Which brings me to:
> Adding 20% more units to the market would save you a ton of money.
Agreed! I've been saying that for years. Please, build 20% more units, and I think prices will indeed go down. Hell, don't stop at 20%, even. If there's demand, build!
The market for long term rentals doubled in Dublin during the pandemic due to lack of tourism. If you can't see how bringing all that supply (over 1000 units) back to the market won't help long-term rentals, that's on you.
AirBnB is a cancer to cities and locals, and needs to be banned for good. Tourists aren't locals, they're not entitled to live like them, especially at the locals' expense.
Well the city of Halifax just banned airbnb in some areas and there was a flood of houses both on the market to sell and for long term renting. Clearly AirBnb is taking some long term rental stock away from the market, that can't be up for debate.
if your point is that banning airbnb won't fully fix housing and therfor we shouldn't ban it, well that's an awfully high bar. What is clear is that banning airbnb will help improve the long term rental market.
Short term lets are nowhere near as important as long term ones, especially vacation rentals. They're actively harmful often, especially with the way AirBnB takes supply from the long-term lets.
But at least in bankruptcy I think primary homes are hard to claim by other parties. Not sure about the government though.
Note: you can let people stay for free as house guardians, as this is not commercial activity.
The law stipulates that you must obtain permission from the landlord prior to subletting (§ 540 Abs. 1 S. 2 BGB, § 553 BGB) which must be granted if the renter has legitimate interest to sublet. The burden of proof is on the renter.
Subletting individual rooms or the entire apartment to tourists (AirBnB) in the interest of earning money is usually not considered a sufficiently good reason and as such the the decision is at the landlords discretion.
You’ll have better chances if you sublet parts of your parts of your primary residence and can show that you’re long-term traveling for work or that the income is required to make the rent payment or similar interest.
The landlord can increase the rent if they grant permission to sublet.
There are exceptions auch as having your parents or kids move in, but they are very narrow.
Even if you obtain the landlords permit, subletting to tourists may run afoul of legal restrictions.
https://www.mieterbund.de/index.php?id=540
https://www.mietrecht.de/airbnb-untervermietung-was-sie-bei-...
edit: Ah, yeah, I confused who’s the one with the burden of proof, that part was indeed wrong
While legitimate interest is interpreted broadly, it doesn‘t mean „anything goes“. „I want to earn money on a cheap rental contract that I can sublet for more money“ is not legitimate interest. The legitimate interest must also be rooted in something that occurred after you signed the rental contract. „I can‘t afford this flat, so I‘ll still sign the rental contract and then sublet“ will not create a legitimate interest that requires your landlord to grant the permission. „My income situation has deteriorated after signing the contract“ has better chances of passing the test. Some examples of what does and doesn‘t constitute legitimate interest here https://www.mietrecht.org/untervermietung/berechtigtes-inter...
The landlord can also deny the request if they have an overriding interest, for example if they expect that the sublet would disturb the community in the building.
Contrast that with where permission is not required, for example having a second job. The only requirement is that you must notify your employer. You don‘t need to substantiate anything. The only option for your employer is to deny this on very narrow grounds. If they don‘t respond to your notification within reasonable time, you‘re in the clear. This is fundamentally different from the required legal procedure when subletting.
It has a decent chance of sending a terrible message to other listings worldwide and misinformation and fear could easily trigger an exit from providers.
This is such a wonderful development. It should never have taken this long to have such a basic safety issue addressed.
This is just dumb, and has nothing to do with short-term rentals. If you've fined a property owner, you should have legal means to collect those fines. If you don't, then you are a bad city and you should be ashamed at your poor governance. If you do have those means, but have still failed to collect, then you have only yourself to blame. Bad city!
> New York has tussled with Airbnb Inc. for years over the proliferation of illegal listings and has spent significant resources chasing down violators.
How is this a thing? Issue a court order to Airbnb to take down a listing and ban the address from the platform. Airbnb fails to do so? Fine them. And actually collect!
> New rules taking effect in May [...] Hosts who want to list on Airbnb or other platforms will be required to register with the city and receive an operating license.
What? How incompetent is NYC's government? This has been standard practice in many other locales for years!
I really have little sympathy for NYC here. They seem to have been badly mismanaging the situation for many years now. My sympathy goes out to NYC's residents, who seem to have a terrible local government. And I say this as someone who lives in SF, another city with a terrible local government.
I honestly don't care if they all Airbnb or not. I just find it distastful when governments insist on lying about their actual policy...
I actually agree with this though, they do create deadly machines.
Airbnb only let people rent out rooms.
When it gets really bad the person listing it will just flee the country, for sure. Assuming its not already straw man'd out.
I got news for y'all, though: the only thing that solves housing unaffordability in places with demand is... building more homes.
Don't get me wrong, Airbnb as a company has and causes a ton of problems, but they are not the cause of housing unaffordability.
2. Not sure what calculus you used to determine that they live at the locals’ expense. Surely people paid for their properties and local products including paying VAT.
2. Oh they pay a little in tax. Not the same as depriving locals of places to live near where they work affordably, and pricing all but the highest earners out of a home in general. Not to mention it pushes locals further and further out of the areas near jobs, and even then it's more and more expensive. Longer commutes, higher rates, it's all a net negative on the actual residents of a city. Nobody benefits but the entitled tourists and the rich landlords, who are insulated enough by their money to not see or care about the societal harm they cause.
2. Oh, so there are also “the rich landlords”, who stand in opposition to “locals”. Who else do we have? Politicians and construction companies. All of them seem to partake in that grand conspiracy of lack of xenophobia to serve entitled foreigners through legal means. If only they could learn about Blut und Boden calculus of not harming locals…
Is there no copyediting done at publications at all any more?
When the second word is misspelt, I really wonder how much effort has gone into verifying any information contained within.
I believe public opinion will always be an insufficient guarantor of these rights, due to inherent cognitive biases and over-simplifications (in effect, ideological narratives), in addition to susceptibility to special interest public relations campaigns (e.g. right now, the Hotel Lobby has effectively manufactured the entire mainstream narrative around Airbnb: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hot...) so we need means of fortifying rights in the face of a hostile political climate.
I understand that some guests are not as courteous as I am, and that I have been reasonably lucky in not having a bad rental experience, but the same holds true for any other hotel stay as well.
It seems to me that a better course of action than outlawing property owners from using it as they please is to provide the essential enforcement to ensure that the property owners do not impinge on their neighbors' enjoyment of their property, not outlawing specific uses all together.
The problem here is the landlords, not airbnb. Even if that didn't exist, you'd still have parasitic landlords and they'd still try to take renters for everything they're worth.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the markets where normal profit-seeking behavior in the landlord business is prohibited, via rent control, see housing become comparatively extremely unaffordable and/or hard-to-acquire. See San Francisco:
I am certain that banning short-term rentals will not solve housing affordability. And no, "but it will help a little" is not a valid counter-argument.
Travel gives people crucial exposure to other parts of the country and world.
Moreover, getting a job in a city often requires being able to get temporary lodging in that city due to the discrimination non-locals face when applying for jobs.
With tenant protection laws and rent control, the available stock of rentals can be extremely small, making it harder for people with poorer references to find shorter-term leases. Short-term rentals provide a means for these individuals to acquire the temporary housing they need to pursue job opportunities in other cities.
Given most of the productivity growth is, due agglomeration effects, accruing to just a couple megapolises: New York and the San Francisco Bay Area[1], short term rental stock can be a means of expanding opportunities for people not privileged enough to not already live in these cities.
Is the probably really parasitic landlords or parasitic governance?
Some people love that kind of thing. They want predictable, pre-arranged experiences. Personally I hate it with every fiber of my being.
1. Property developers; and
2. Police unions.
Eric Adams embodies both special-interest groups in spades.
We have the infrastructure to deal with this. You encumber the property with a lien. You treat it like unpaid property tax. That means it accrues interest and penalties and at some point the state can seize it if it's sufficiently in arrears and sell it to recover those fines.
Stamping out AirBnBs is incredibly easy if the will exists. It does not. It should AirBnB is cancer.
If developers are so well represented, why is it so difficult for them to build in most American cities?
There’s not enough development, which keeps the gap high between what it costs a well-connected developer to build vs what a finished building is worth.
Developers make money from developing, which they can't do in the majority of major cities due to regulations outright banning development and cost burdens that make most development unprofitable.
Also, although my day job is in tech I play a lobbyist on the side in my small Los Angeles county town. Development happens despite onerous and burdensome municipal code.
California refuses to learn the lesson that throwing money at a problem doesn't just mean it's fixed (see: the high speed rail).
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-19/jose-hui...
You are wrong.
But if I did, that would be fine. The reason there aren't affordable apartments in LA is because of the regulatory/cost burden. When neighbors can easily require a CEQA analysis that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, the only buildings that pencil are expensive ones. This is a well documented phenomena.