The Airbnb Economy in New York: Lucrative but Often Unlawful
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"I'm living in one of these places now and I could not say enough negative things about the place or AirBNB. Its a mess, most of the rooms are either filled with beds or used entirely for furniture/tool storage. There were no shared trashbins until about 4-6 weeks after I had arrived. One of the guests had a severe breakdown and would spend hours in the middle of the night rapping or shouting at the top of the lungs, forcing his roommates to move to the permanent tents in the backyard. Eventually the guy left during one of his rants and disappeared for a few days, during which the landlord had us avoid calling the police because he did not want to have them involved. Worst of all, I feel like none of us are in a position to do anything. I complained within a few hours of arrival on my first day because the place is a mess, but AirBNB charges a months rent to leave early on a long term stay and there's nothing to gain in destroying our relatioships with the landlord. The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords. I'll probably never use AirBNB again regardless."
I'm sure AirBNB is great for a night or two if you're backpacking and just need a matress to crash on before you move on, but if you're expecting anything more than that, I would highly recommend against using it.
Edit: and if that doesn't work, you should absolutely report the landlord to all relevant authorities when you leave, probably including the NY attorney general currently chasing airbnb.
Unless of course you can't find a better one for the same money that you are paying now -- in which case you are getting what you are paying for, so relax and enjoy the savings :)
I'm all for the idea of Airbnb, but there needs to be something in place that prevents this type of thing. Finding an apartment in NYC is rough enough, but artificially reducing supply via this type of thing causes the rent increases even more.
Taxing it seems like the only way to put the reverse pressure on landlords doing this, but I'm doubtful it will do enough.
Prison shouldn't just be for poor people. This is much more likely to harm me than some guy selling pot.
I've stayed with people who had a few properties that they rented on Airbnb. Renting 1-5 seems okay. More or less, you're running a B&B.
When it gets to whole floors or buildings, you've got a hotel on your hands. That is and should be illegal and Airbnb should work with authorities to shut that down.
NYC rentals are some of the most regulated in the country; nearly half of rentals are covered by rent stabilization law, which makes it all but impossible to evict tenants as long as they pay rent, and dictates annual rent increases regardless of the gap between current rent and fair market value. Rent-controlled tenants who rent out through AirBnB are, quite literally, rent-seeking -- using their government-granted preference in the housing market to extract a profit.
Beyond that, there are very real issues of security and disturbance of community when strangers are coming in and out of a property. My wife and I lived in our building, and it was like a little neighborhood. People left their boots and umbrellas in the hall on rainy days, and we had a communal BBQ grill in the backyard. If you haven't lived in a super-dense city like London, NYC or Tokyo, it's hard to understand how sacred the interior of an apartment building is.
One way to look at it is that AirBnB is "disrupting" the stale hotel industry. Another way to look at it is that hotel laws and regulations were put in place to put paid to the crush of illegal/dangerous/unhealthy boarding houses that cropped up near the turn of the last century. Stories like laxatives' make me fear that we are headed right back there.
I have no problem with condo associations limiting what individual owners can or cannot do (or charging them extra for the privilege), same with landlords limiting re-rentals, but neither one calls for city involvement.
Not to mention that the booking experience on Airbnb is way better than using the counterparts of hotels and hotel booking sites.
Why can't NYC come up with some common-sense regulation, like everyone is allowed to rent their apartment to up to 8 separate groups of people, for not more than 6 mos out of the year total, or something? And that landlords are not allowed to interfere?
This would prevent "hotel"-style abuse, like different tenants every night in a residential building, but still give people the flexibility to rent out for the occasional weekend, or month, or whatever.
The 30-day thing is just ridiculous.
If someone's renting an apartment, it's by definition not "their" apartment but the landlord's apartment. The landlord decides to rent to a particular tenant based on things like background checks, references, interviews, etc. These kind of assurances are not available for random people that the tenant rents to. Unless the tenant bears complete legal and financial liability for anything bad his subtenant does, it's asking the landlord to take on a significant risk.
Also, if each tenant in a large building could rent their apartment to up to 8 separate groups of people, you would have a constant flow of strangers through the building. Since the short-term renters don't have any stake in keeping the building clean or safe or quiet, this could pose problems for the other tenants. I've lived in apartments where even the long-term tenants left garbage in the halls and played loud music at 2am. I can imagine that someone who is staying in the building for a weekend might be even more anti-social, since there would be no personal consequences to their bad behavior.
1) Airbnb has a crazy insurance policy [1]
2) Both the host & guest get reviewed. A single bad review can impede your ability to rent on either side.
This is purely based on my experience, but it seems like guests really don't misbehave.
Maybe there is the occasional party or guest who trashes the place. Good hosts tend to hire cleaning services to deal with messes. Generally, guest are tired from traveling and doing activities and are low impact.
Note that the Airbnb guarantee doesn't insure the host's personal property: "The Host Guarantee is not insurance and should not be considered as a replacement or stand-in for homeowners or renters insurance." However, using your apartment as a rental property probably violates the terms of a standard renters insurance policy, so the insurance company would probably not pay for losses that were due to an Airbnb guest.
For me, the common sense rule would be: let people contract however they want. Let them talk out or complain/negative-review/sue for any actual abuses that develop.
A parade of responsible short-term tenants incurs little negative impact, while a single bad tenant (or even house-guest) can be a disaster of crime of destruction. Let the right checks and balances evolve, rather than trying to dictate beforehand what formulas might work for wildly different tenants, properties, landlords and neighborhoods.
First of all, NYC landlord-tenant law is so far past the "let people contract however they want" phase that it would be laughable to let AirBnB operate under these rules. Nearly 50% of the apartments in New York are rent-stabilized, meaning that the tenants can't be evicted except for non-payment of rent, and are guaranteed a below-market-rate rent with government-dictated annual increases. It's ridiculously unfair to landlords to allow rent-stabilized tenants to re-rent their apartments at market rate and pocket the difference.
Second, have you ever actually tried to sue someone? It's incredibly difficult, time-consuming and expensive.
Third, there's the issue of moral hazard. A renter whose AirBnB tenant burns down the building is unlikely to have the resources to pay for the damages to the property of the landlord or the other tenants (and is unlikely to even have insurance to cover those costs). Upside always looks better when you know you'll be able to walk away from the downside.
All of these are horrible things (particularly rent-controls). Perhaps instead of crusading against AirBnB it would be better to focus your efforts on changing this system? Sometimes the only way to bring a bad system (an it is a very, very bad system) down is to abuse it to the extent possible.
The lawsuit is also what the regulated system relies upon, in the end, to enforce its judgements. It's a last resort, but always part of the balance when other discussion and leverage fails.
Why would an AirBnb tenant be more likely to burn down a building, or less likely to compensate after negligence, than any other leaseholder-tenant or houseguest? I suspect AirBnb tenants are less of a risk: they're paying a market rate, unprotected by laws which shield problematic tenants, vetted by the reputation system, and backed by AirBnb's guarantees. A landlord and neighbors seem equally (or more) at risk of uncompensated damages from all other kinds of occupants.
And AirBnB is suffering from it's own popularity. Once you get beyond a certain size your audience stops being responsible, early adopters and grows to include everyone and anyone.
Zoning BS is quite another matter.