Due to the new law, on January 9, all hosts wishing to rent their accommodation for less than 30 days will need to register with a city portal operated by the Mayor’s Special Enforcement Office, and services such as ‘Airbnb will not be able to process transactions for any unregistered listings.
The registration rule is the result of a year-long process following the passage of a measure by the city council in December 2021. But in enforcing the new law, the Office of Special Enforcement will require hosts to comply with the city’s extensive historic building code, as the short-term rental law requires explicit agreement from hosts to accept all relevant city bylaws.
Execution will begin in May.
Estimates place the number of available short-term units listed on various platforms at around 25,000 to 40,000; the city said it expected about 10,000 registrants to fail to register.
A May estimate found that the number of short-term rentals exceeded the number of apartments available. Some listing companies such as HomeAway and VRBO, both owned by Seattle-based Expedia Group, have already significantly reduced the number of rooms and apartments on offer in the five boroughs, the city said.
Airbnb said few hosts would be able to check in and operate after the check-in rules take effect.
“The bill passed by the de Blasio administration, as interpreted by the Office of Special Enforcement, will create a draconian and unenforceable registration system that will prevent legal and responsible hosts from registering their homes at any given time. where New York families navigate rising costs. lifestyle,” said Nathan Rotman, Airbnb’s senior public policy manager for the region.
Rotman said the company would try to keep an open line with the Adams administration about a new regulatory framework. Other dense cities, including Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago, have created check-in processes for short-term rental operators that are strict but workable, he said.
The company’s problems with registration rules follow quite separate paths.
First, Rotman and hosts said the registration process itself was cumbersome and invasive, with hosts having to upload multiple forms of identification. The names and addresses of verified operators will also be posted on a city-run website, which owners and the Office of Special Enforcement say was imperative for the safety of visitors and nearby residents, but that the guests found it disturbing.
“They’ll put our information on the web,” said Bronx owner Le. “You can have a lot of people with bad intentions who can use it in ways that we don’t know about.”
Another part of the rule allows landlords to prohibit all short-term rentals in their units; yet another gives the city the ability to sue the individual who breaks the rules, rather than the landlord who owns the building, a provision supported by the real estate industry.
A second cluster of complaints relates to the city’s housing code rather than the registration process. For example, city rules for residential Class A housing stock require that residents of a single unit be a family or no more than three unrelated adults, and that guests, who cannot be more than three, have access to the entire surface of the residence. .
This rubs hosts the wrong way; even legal hosts who allow guests to share kitchens and other common areas often prefer to lock certain rooms. Another part of the housing code requires that hosts be present when renting; in practice, many hosts only list when they are out of town. In 2016, the city and the platform banned multi-unit hosts and cracked down on various operators in the years since.
Airbnb recognized this second set of rules as early as November 2020, when it filed plans to take the company public. In these plans, he described New York State’s strict housing regulations as an important regulatory consideration.
While hosts, many of whom are middle-class owners bearing the brunt of rising costs or diminishing economic opportunity in their area, may have to pull their listings and lose an important source of revenue, the company itself is likely to be protected by the geographical diversity of its listings.
At the time Airbnb filed for an IPO, no city accounted for more than 1.5% of listings or 2.5% of revenue, the company said. More recently, he said Covid-era trends have pushed customers out of cities, further reducing the contribution of city properties to the bottom line.
In the third quarter of this year, nights booked in what the company calls “high-density urban” areas accounted for 48% of total gross nights booked, up from 58% in the third quarter of 2019. Although the company does not disclose New York-specific figures, in 2019, 11.9% of Airbnb’s revenue before adjustments for incentives and reimbursements came from the company’s top 10 cities. In New York, these are often outside of central neighborhoods. Less than half of the total number of Airbnb listings are in Manhattan; Brooklyn hosts 37% and Queens 13%, according to company figures.
Airbnb’s market cap was around $63.95 billion at the start of December. That’s more than Marriott International, at $51.8 billion, and Hyatt Hotels Corporation, at $10.68 billion.
Despite Monday’s hearing, the city said it was unlikely to make substantial changes to the registration process because the details came directly from the 2021 law.
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