All short-term rental hosts must register with the city.
This includes hosts who are renting out their entire apartment or house, as well as hosts who are renting out individual rooms.Hosts must be physically present in the home for the duration of the rental.
This means that hosts cannot rent out their property while they are away on vacation or for business. This is a deal killer for most investors planning to lease on a short-term leasing platform.Hosts must share living quarters with their guests.
This means that hosts cannot lock off their bedroom or bathroom while their guests are staying in the home.No more than two paying guests can stay in a short-term rental at a time.
This rule applies regardless of the size of the dwelling or the number of bedrooms.Hosts who violate the rules can face fines of up to $5,000.
The last monthly average of open rental listings in New York City is nearly 33,000. By way of comparison, there were 22,434 non-hotel properties listed in August on Airbnb. This number dropped to 3,227 by October 1.
Given the scale of Airbnb’s presence here, if a significant percentage of listings pulled out of the long-term rental market were to return, that surge of supply should help the rental market which has seen unprecedented upward pressure in prices.
Investing in properties for the purposes of short-term rental income seems to be a thing of the past. Penalties on non-compliant hosts make the strategy uneconomic. In just over one month the market has shifted as hosts remove their listings from Airbnb and VRBO and advertise instead on Facebook, Craigslist, and Houfy. This exposes hosts to risks that are facilitated on the large established platforms that offer transparency and other protections and is hardly advisable.
6sqft delivers the latest on real estate, architecture, and design, straight from New York City.
