Airbnb bookings dry up in New York as new short-stay rules are introduced
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
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.
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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.
Under the new system, rentals shorter than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city.
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.
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.
not violating building or fire codes
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.
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
Units made available as short-term rentals must also abide by building and fire codes, including one that prohibits placing locks between rooms and having certain sprinkler and fire alarm systems on the property.
The horror.
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.
Growth in home-sharing through Airbnb contributes to about one-fifth of the average annual increase in U.S. rents and about one-seventh of the average annual increase in U.S. housing prices.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.