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New York Senate Passes Bill That Bans Short-Term Apartment Listings On Airbnb (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Senate passed a bill on Friday that makes it illegal to advertise entire unoccupied apartments for short-term rentals on Airbnb. The bill is headed to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's desk for him to either veto or sign into law. The Verge reports: "The bill prohibits online apartment listings that last under 30 days and run up against the city's multiple dwelling law, which is designed to stop apartment buyers from renting out the entire space and basically turning their units into Airbnb hotels. First-time offenders would be fined $1,000, but a third infraction would be much costlier at $7,500. 'Let's be clear: this is a bad proposal that will make it harder for thousands of New Yorkers to pay the bills,' an Airbnb spokesperson told Tech Crunch. 'Dozens of governments around the world have demonstrated that there is a sensible way to regulate home sharing and we hope New York will follow their lead and protect the middle class.'" One of the bill's sponsors, State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, disagrees and claims that it targets "people or companies with multiple listings. There are so many units held by commercial operators, not individual tenants. They are bad actors who horde multiple units, driving up the cost of housing around them and across the city." She went on to say, "You should know who your neighbor is and what happens when people rent out their apartments on Airbnb is you get strangers," said told the New York Post. "Every night there could be a different person sleeping in the next apartment and it shatters that sense of community in the building. It also can be dangerous."
If the law only targets apartments, and leaves owners of detached houses free to do what they want, isn't this creating a two-tier system favouring the already rich?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I've just arrived at an AirBnb apartment for a 2 week stay. When booking the place I was warned not to mention that I was in an AirBnb place as the locals aren't too happy with it. So I have been thinking about such apartments this week, and it seems to be that the hotels are missing out on an opportunity for renting out complete apartments. I generally rent a complete apartment and end up paying less that a hotel in the same area and being 2 or 3 notches of luxury above the hotel and don't have to worry about strangers wandering in every day to clean the place and poke around my belongings. Yeah I know about long stay hotels, but they are sad little things in comparison and don;t give me the same feel as staying in a furnished apartment for an extended stay,
On the other hand I have read all the sorry stories about AirBnb rentals where people have run everything from prostitution rings to wild parties from them. So I can see the benefit of local regulation.
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That's not true.
AirBnB drives the cost of all rentals in all cities. AirBnB was designed to rent out coach houses/basements of the same property which is your primary residence. That is also still allowed under this.
What this law is designed to do (and needs to be done in Vancouver BC, Seattle WA, Portland Oregon, and San Francisco California) is stop people from hoarding property from the people who live in the city and need that property. There are people who own a dozen properties and list them on AirBnB or just keep them empty and use it as a store of value. "Investors" are locking up the housing supply to drive up the property prices.
AirBnB has it's purpose, and if you look on a map of a city like NYC, SFO or YVR you'll see the AirBnB units outnumber the actual rental units available to people who live there.
It's only arm of solving the housing affordability problem. Developers should be designing condo buildings with a few floors of 3-bedroom units that can be partitioned into a 1-bedroom main unit and a 2-bedroom "BnB" (No kitchen in the BnB side) with it's own entrance. Anything smaller is not a BnB qualifier.
Vancouver (and the lower mainland in general), has a similar problem that i assume new york does. Air BNB depletes possible rental stock. I am not sure low the new york vacancy rate is, but mostly due to foreign capital in-fluxing into the real estate market here, our vacancy rate is 0.3% (probably less now, things are only getting worse).
That said, I stay in airbnb pretty much every vacation i go on with my family as what you can get for the price blows hotels away (if there even are hotels in a destination). It's either that or camping, is really all one can really afford when you pay more than half of your salary into paying rent.
It seems that people are somewhat confused and think its like a "big hotel lobby" or something driving this ban on aribnb. It very well may be that people are trying to protect their cities from ever higher rents. Especially in popular cities where it is impossible for an average family to own a property. The cities become just a resort in this case, instead of what they should be: A place where people can live within an hour or two commute of their workplace affordably.
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What this law is designed to do (and needs to be done in Vancouver BC, Seattle WA, Portland Oregon, and San Francisco California) is stop people from hoarding property from the people who live in the city and need that property.
The obvious solution to a shortage of housing is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. Last year, SF rejected 95% of all building permit requests, and most people don't even bother to submit a request. Despite soaring demand, the number of new housing units is near zero. So the result is high prices. Duh. NYC and other cities are not much better. The problem is driven by NIMBY and BANANA voters. It is absurd to blame this on Airbnb.
Be fearful! There might be strangers sleeping somewhere in a property near you.
I bet the hotels are lobbying for this. Airbnb is one thing that is pushing the cost of visiting New York down.
We're fearful because we live in shared doorman apartment buildings. We usually keep our apartments unlocked 24 hrs (for our own convenience, and because we know and trust our neighbors, and because old buildings have quirks like single elevators that jam and so you hop through someone's front door to get to the back door elevator bank.)
We'd like to keep that and not have to switch to living in a hotel-like environment.
The only thing that should be banned is the use of the word "sharing" when it comes to all of this sort of stuff. I'm paying you for a ride, or for a place to sleep. You're not "sharing" it with me! More hipster word-erosion.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Leaving a door unlocked is plain dumb no matter where you live. You may know and trust your neighbors, but can you say the same about your neighbors guest or even family visiting?
My wife grew up on a farm, their front door didn't even have a lock. Her Uncle owned the property and had hundreds of milk cows and other animals.
If you're out and the neighbor needs something, they can come borrow it, they'll replace it or pay it back in kind, no big deal.
There is a level of respect there that is lacking in big cities.
I gave you a +1, but I have to undo it because commenting is more important.
Everything you say is true, and beyond that, the rental market in the first place does this same thing to the general housing market as well.
Investors buy rental properties to generate a passive income (i.e. get money in exchange for nothing), by exploiting an advantaged capital position (i.e. just by having more money to begin with).
That ability to benefit financially from housing you don't need for, you know, actually housing yourself, attracts people with money to spare into buying up more investment housing, increasing the demand and thus market price for housing.
That makes it more difficult for people who need housing to actually live in to buy, forcing them into the only other option left, renting, putting them on the receiving end of their landlords' passive income (i.e. they're the ones paying that money in exchange for nothing).
The real estate investors can then reinvest their rental income into buying more housing to rent out, and the renters, throwing all their money down a rent-hole, are inhibited from ever saving enough to buy their way out of that situation.
In this way, those who already have more profit off those who already have less in an ever accelerating vicious cycle; the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and while for those around the middle (i.e. those who've got around about just what they need for their own use, and neither can profit from their excess nor have to pay for their deficit) it seems like it would be simple to change from one end to the other with some good old fashioned hard work, in reality there is an invisible pressure away from that center, and for those starting far below it, it's an extraordinary effort to even approach that middle point in their entire lifetimes; and getting to far above it comparatively easy, for someone starting out around the middle already. Because being poor costs you money, and being rich makes you money, and rent is the engine that drives that process.
This whole process is much more visible in places where supply is unable to easily scale up with demand, and where demand is already high; people living in Bumfuck Nowhere where no one wants to live, surrounded by unending undeveloped flat lands to the horizon, might not see this problem as more than noise in their market data, but in places where the market is already crunched this process comes to life and makes it infinitely worse than it already would have been.
In the absence of a rental market, anyone who had more housing than they needed for their own use would have only one option to benefit from it: sell it. But nobody's going to be buying it as an investment property anymore if there's no rental market to profit from, so the only people buying would be those who need it for their own use. Which means if you want to sell it, you have to sell it at a price (and on terms) that people who need it can actually afford; that's how a free market works. Your only alternative is to not sell it and get nothing and have wasted everything you spend buying it. So in the absence of a rental market, the purchase price for housing would have to come down; conversely, the presence of a rental market artificially inflates the purchase price of housing.
And this critique doesn't just apply to housing rental, but to any kind of rental, including the rent on money otherwise known as interest; though, again, the supply and demand curves in a given market will make it more or less visible a problem -- nobody's going to complain about the evils of the DVD rental market (if such a thing still existed). But it's the places that really matter, like housing and other big-ticket items, where the problem really manifests, and those are... well, the places where it really matters.
Rent (including interest) is the problem with capitalism; which, n.b., is not a synonym for a free market. Free markets do not intrinsically lead to runaway concentrati
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As a realtor, I will comment on the following situation from multiple perspectives :
San Francisco; multiple issues, biggest issue ( which is common ) is the self-interest of homeowners who's values have increased 200% to 400% in the last 7 years, and or rental incomes have doubled or tripled in the same timeframe, don't want any new supply to hit the market. Because it stalls the income increases ( source : https://www.rentjungle.com/ave... ) look at the stalling 2 bedroom rental market.
Now rent control in that market ( SF ) provides lifestyle and culture living, so you might still enjoy the look and feel, but what happens when a property is removed from that market, poof, those parties are forced to move to real cost. and that's painful for them.
New York: Rent control has worked rather well to help a large percentage of people stay within the commute of the "city", what Airbnb has done is created a very small problem which is a huge concern for the landlord. Rent control apartments can not be subleased in any which way or form, if the tenant chooses to sub-lease and get's caught, is a slap on the wrist, the landlord get's a huge heavy fines ( this one is fine related to a regular rental cite : http://therealdeal.com/2016/01... )
Miami Florida : Well this is my market, let me explain a few interesting things. Condo's here have very interesting rules about renting. Some won't let you rent, some have policies about minimum stay ( 1 year, 6 months, 30 days, 7 days, 1 day ). it's all written within your condo documentation which you sign off that you have read. All leases that are realtor made, show, no sub-leasing unless authorized by the owner. Rent control almost does not exist near the beach, we have senior housing ( IE: over 55 places ) that are discounted to the market, so the character of community sticks. The problems we have with Airbnb are the rule breakers, You pay for a lifestyle type building ( 1 year, 6 months, 30 days, 7 days, 1 day ) you expect it IE: transient buildings are noisy but fun, 6 month or longer are quiet. I live 19-minute walk to the beach and it's quiet, Airbnb ended up with a few listing here and it became " who the fuck are you in my assigned parking spot " with people yelling and screaming. couple of emails to the staff of Airbnb stopped all our problems, they were helpful, and we have a few angry owners LOL
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