
The Airbnb Economy in New York: Lucrative but Often Unlawful - davidf18
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/nyregion/the-airbnb-economy-in-new-york-lucrative-but-often-unlawful.html
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URSpider94
Ex-NYC landlord here. I'm glad to see how many people realize that re-rental
of a rental property in a multi-tenant building is problematic.

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.

~~~
xixi77
Surely they are rent-seeking -- I personally can't blame them. Perhaps if more
people do this, it might even lead to the end of these immoral and wasteful
"government-granted preferences". The fact that NYC rentals are some of the
most regulated is not a good thing, nor does it prevent all kinds of horror
stories with regular landlords. Is an average AirBnB customer less satisfied
with his experience compared to an average NYC renter? I suspect not,
particularly given the review system.

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.

------
kurtko
I'm all for AirBNB in NYC and otherwise, but the taxation issue is the real
issue. I think other laws/zoning can and should be relaxed to accommodate
them, but this is business - they need to pay their taxes to put everyone on a
fair footing.

~~~
benastan
I agree. It's clear that (1) hotels aren't worth the cost; (2) people would
rather 'live like locals'; and (3) distributing hotel management & maintenance
is more effective that concentrating it in giant hotels.

Not to mention that the booking experience on Airbnb is way better than using
the counterparts of hotels and hotel booking sites.

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tgeek
I lived in a building where the landlord stopped renting out apartments
normally and started instead putting them on Airbnb. He charged ~30% for doing
it via Airbnb than the normal rents would have been. Then they raised rents
more on apartments in the building. When I left ~4 out of 50 or so units were
on Airbnb. Apartment next to me was a continuous ramble of people who left
trash around and threw late parties(more than the normal residents).

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.

~~~
benastan
Your landlord was running a hotel.

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.

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laxatives
I'm living in one of these hostels right now (the landlord has half a dozen
buildings and probably ~50 rooms available in the area on AirBNB) and I posted
about it before. In brief, its a shithole (ffs the showerhead is held up by
electrical tape). From before:

"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.

~~~
jacalata
I'd guess that airbnb is pretty heavily invested in not getting the cops
called to any of these clearly-professional places in New York right now. Have
you tried doing the whole executive email bomb requesting a refund for
yourself/anyone else you can get together with there?

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.

~~~
laxatives
I don't know about an executive email bomb, but I requested a refund and was
basically told I was free to cancel at any time, but they'd bill me a fat
cancellation fee equal to a month of rent. I complained the first night I was
here and I spoke to a bunch of residents who also complained. I heard an
AirBNB representative was supposed to come check out the place due to the
number of complaints, but from what I gathered he never showed up. Also this
is in California, not NY.

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gmjoe
> In most residential apartment buildings, renting out your space for less
> than 30 days is illegal, unless you are present when you have that visitor.

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.

~~~
greenyoda
_" 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?"_

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.

~~~
benastan
Airbnb has sought to bake in accountability both at a large and small scale.

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.

[1] [https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee](https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee)

~~~
greenyoda
But the landlord is not a party to the contract between Airbnb and the host.
If any damage were to occur to the building, the landlord would need to sue
the host and collect from him, and Airbnb says nothing about paying for legal
expenses. (And once the landlord got involved, it would probably ultimately
result in eviction proceedings against the host for violating the terms of his
lease.)

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.

~~~
benastan
You're talking about a situation in which significant damage is done to the
building AND the host doesn't report this to Airbnb with photos and evidence.
There are bound to be horror stories with any service (hotels certainly
included), but I'd expect this particular combination of all-around
irresponsibility to be rare.

