It's nice that this will theoretically lower rental prices, but in practice there's no way that will happen. Demand is just too high. I don't believe that the number of short-term rentals was the difference between supply matching demand. The real solution is to build more apartment units and crack down on people subletting rent-controlled apartments where they haven't lived for years.
Just looked at prices out of curiosity. Tiny studios in Manhattan going for 3500. Not sure how people rationalize paying that for such small space. That's crazy to me, and I've lived in some very expensive global cities.
Ambition and work. Law firms, financial companies, media... people are starting low and working their way up, with starting salaries easily in the lower 100K range. You live close to work because you work 12 hour days. It's worth paying 1K more so you don't have a 1 hour commute to Flatbush or East New York, where your Seamless options and friends are limited.
There's more at stake than apt size and rent in a city where you spend most of your time not in the apt. This changes as you age.
It makes sense if you a) earn a decent amount of money b) want to live in Manhattan for all the entertainment options etc. c) only need space for a bed because you only ever eat out and don't spend much time at home.
Also, less abstractly people living in car-centric places drive everywhere. If you live in a walkable place you walk to do most of your errands so you get exercise without even trying to.
It’s around $2k after adjusting for not having to own a car [1]. Also, a solo studio is a luxurious way to live in New York. If you’re economising, you get roommates.
This is similar to the stats about Manhattan apartments though. Normal people aren’t paying 3k/mo to live in Manhattan. The 3k/mo people are the same ones that would be spending 1k/mo on their cars if they lived somewhere else
According to the Rent Guidelines Board in New York City, as of 2020, approximately 44.6% of apartments in NYC are rent stabilized or rent controlled. However, it's important to note that within this percentage, there is a distinction between rent stabilized and rent controlled units. Rent stabilization accounts for the majority of this percentage, while rent-controlled units represent a smaller portion. The exact breakdown between these two categories may vary over time due to changes in regulations and market conditions.
I can understand how AirBnB might raise rent prices.
I can understand how that's a serious problem, and agree it should be dealt with.
But seriously, as a home-owner, why shouldn't I be allowed to rent out any amount of space in my own property arbitrarily to whoever I so please for a short term without seeking a loicense from my central government?
This isn't meant to be argumentative. Why should anyone have the right to tell me who I can and cannot shelter under my own roof if they aren't a criminal?
Or, more-specifically, because concerns like this have to be weighed by effect: is the problem really so bad that it merits usurping someone's right to use their property in order to counteract? I do own a house, but I don't live in a metro area, so I could use some perspective.
That was the original intent of AirBnB. What the problem is is "investors" etc buying up properties to effectively turn into hotels and rent out as short term rentals THAT THEY DONT LIVE IN.
Workers need a place to live. They cant forgo a place to live if they cant afford it like they can with a big screen tv. These AirBnB entrepreneurs are taking housing stock out of circulation for local workers to rent/live in.
I don’t doubt that Airbnb has had some effect on housing prices in many cities, but I suspect the effect of STRs isn’t quite as strong as people think it is.
Desirable places like NYC have always been competitive markets to rent in, and we know that there’s a long term trend of migration toward population centers which is slowly making things worse.
But there’s another factor that seems like it isn’t getting it’s fair share of blame - the accelerant that is social media. There’s been a huge rise in micro-influencers showing us what the good life looks like in desirable places, whether we are talking about a neighborhood of NYC or a western mountain town. A decade or two ago, these desirable places were on the radar of a small number of people (relative to today) as viable places to build a life in, now the pool is much larger.
Airbnb deserves some criticism, but it certainly seems like short term rentals are getting more than their fair share of blame because they are a convenient boogeyman to point at. The end result is that we see regulations like this one that are more punitive than effective.
I can't count the number of cheesy, narcissistic/artistic films I've seen centred around New York/Paris/London where people's accents are overblown beyond credibility and the main protagonist is exceedingly rich to live out the life that they do... but is unaware of their exceeding wealth and is therefore unable to communicate that to the audience.
As a decent earner, I cannot find myself relating to these characters in these settings since its like watching a millionaire discussing their financial problems.... but my girlfriend and her friends all seem to love and relate to the characters and the depicted "normal" lifestyle, despite sharing nothing in common.
This reminds me of the Sex and the City effect of the early 2000s. It affected/ influenced women quite a bit in their not only moving to the city, but their behaviors, dating habits and dress (remember the cargo pants with heels?)
the discrepancy is because those shows are about Prince Charming, in a 20th century setting
and that fantasy of being subsidized by said obliviously wealthy is probable enough to attain by your girlfriend and her friends if they focus on that part of their culture
if this option was available for you it would be something to fawn over and much easier to relate
You're underplaying the STR effect to a degree that suggests you have not experienced it.
I rented in NYC for more than 20 years, coming and going as life and work demanded.
Beginning in about 2015, it felt like half of the acceptable rental apartments in desirable neighborhoods disappeared - all lost to SRT.
Not only did that make finding an apartment harder, it dramatically increased landlords' leverage wrt pricing and lease terms.
On more than one occasion we had to rent vie AirBnB - at in insane markup over markets rents - while searching, full-time, for a place to live longer term.
Maybe opposite is true as well. NYC is horrible smelly place with old buildings, failing infrastructure and rats!
Before YouTube, most people know New York only from highly unrealistic sitcoms like Friends. Now you can have virtual tour through several apartments and streets, and see it for yourself.
I think the biggest benefactors of these laws (outside of the hotel industry) are real estate agents. The value of real estate agents has dwindled for years, but if they can help connect homeowners with short term renters, they can provide a lot of value and potentially skirt these laws.
If real estate agents in NYC can do that I would be very impressed given they generally struggle to find and rent apartments when given basic criteria as to what is acceptable. It would definitely improve the entire profession if they could replace airbnb.
New York rental agents are awful. But the usual workaround for these laws is an N-day lease with <N use days. So the law winds up being a rate limit, versus a ban, which I think keeps everyone happy.
I hope the effort is successful. I live there and the sight of confused tourists with suit cases had become pretty common. Idk how much it'll help with rent prices but interested in seeing how it works out.
Well, the major culprit is not AirBnB, its illegal washed money and other investment money, parked in cities worldwide. They want a return on those gambling chips, and AirBnB is simply better there. I highly doubt that regulating the value of the pokerchip stacks in the safe down against the interests of the planetary elites will work.
I can reword it because I've seen it written before. I am not sure if I believe what they are saying or not, and have no real desire to get involved on either side of the argument going forward.
Rewritten:
> A large percentage of real estate is being purchased as investments and geopolitical hedges by extremely wealthy individuals. In many cases, this can be be literally to assist in money laundering. This effect is especially pronounced in "global cities" (NYC, London, Paris, LA, Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc.), and especially in politically stable countries (So that probably excludes Shanghai). These are usually left empty, because income isn't their primary goal. This is considered to be a significant effect because the property types are those intended to be purchased by owner-occupants (e.g. condos), and therefore the supply is consumed. The complaint is not that the new owner of a massive apartment complex is a different major corporation/rich person. Really rich people will prevent any form of correction to the market so they do not lose wealth.
I believe they're referring to the practice of the extremely wealthy buying real estate in hot markets, not to actually use it, but in order to launder the source of their money. There are large numbers of never-occupied units in these cities; there are also efforts underway to stop the practice:
I'm not sure that there is, but here's my attempt at rewording it.
> the "planetary elite" invest their (ill-gotten) money in real estate, and Airbnb simply offers the best return. but that's not Airbnb's fault. GP further doubts that reglations affecting the interests of said elites will work.
airbnb pays more than FAANG and is fully remote. senior engineer above $400k and staff engineer close to $600k. i hope the cities don't crack down on my employer :(
fully remote without pay reduction + top pay + great WLB (less than 30 hours/week) = awesome job.
taking away airbnb's eligibility would just be disastrous for the employees who worked hard to get in
Good. Airbnb is cancer. I just hope there's an actual enforcement mechanism.
The optimist in me hopes the housing crisis may finally start to wake people up to how most of us are being systematically exploited and we live in a society that deliberately withholds shelter, which quite literally kills people, so a tiny number of people can profit from it.
NYC is a place where enforcement is connected to who's in power and what the issue of the day is. The issue of the day today is the astronomical rent increases since the pandemic ended. Blame is everywhere.
And Airbnb certainly has at least somewhat of a role to play.
Two hotels in the centre of Manhattan—the Redbury and Paul—just converted to refugee motels. There is a layer to this popular discourse is missing, and I’m unclear what it is.
Housing availability is gruesomely low, but not so low as to challenge the Sanctuary City concept born of another political moment.
I'm suspecting this might change, as NYC is more politically diverse than places like San Francisco and Seattle, and pendulums swing hard back and forth historically.
At some point the city will move more to the Right as will the state. There is a misunderstood demographic that is large, diverse and at odds with the young Progressive crowd (many of whom are out-of-state transplants). Evidence of what I've just said can be seen in the breakdowns of which mayoral candidates were most popular by neighborhood. The most pro-police ones were in the poorer and less white boroughs, while the most radical left-wing ones were in the white, upper-class hipster neighborhoods.
Immigration is just another one of these types of these issues that's not well understood by upper-class liberals, is my speculation. Conversations with people and observations are making me think the migrant issue has potential to galvanize the working class to oppose it.
I wish every City does this. I believe Airbnb is one of the big reasons rents are raising in these Cities. Personally if it was up to me, I would have a 90% tax on receipts from Airbnb customers.
If you are caught without being registered, your property is taken and sold off in a auction.
I worked in Manhattan for just over a year prior to the pandemic and spent quite a bit of time in AirBnBs while I was getting to know the city. All but one of them were people renting out a spare room in their owner-occupied space.
I appreciated that I was able to experiment with different neighborhoods without being limited to those where hotels were available.
My point was more about quantities - assume 1:1 elasticity, there are like 11,000 Airbnbs in nyc (assume all investor owned / 100% dedicated to Airbnb), that’s like 0.3% of the housing stock in NYC. If you sold them all tomorrow it would be like one months sales.
My main point being that people expecting any sort of regulation on Airbnb to have an effect on pricing seems naive.
Assuming 0.3% and also assuming a rental vacancy rate of 3% (typically reported in many cities), that is a 10% boost to available rentals - so yes, it's significant.
It's not a trick question, and it's not as simple as matching the percentages. Rents can raise by more than 100%, but total supply caps at 100%. If AirBnB controlled every rental unit, rental prices wouldn't go up exactly 100%.
> Opponents of the measure, though, claim that the new measure will do significant damage to the tourism industry in New York City — potentially driving would-be visitors to New Jersey
Just LOL
If you believe is that New Jersey is just waiting in the wings to take tourism from NYC I've got a bridge in Brooklyn available for a good price.
I think they just mean people will stay in New Jersey - which would be extremely plausible if NJ allowed more hotels to be built. Most of the tourist stuff in NYC is in midtown which is a 15/20 minute public transit ride from the port authority/penn station/broadway area.
I have family that stays in Stamford Connecticut whenever they want to do stuff in NYC, because they find it cheaper/easier to stay there and take the train in.
I wouldn’t see the problem with that. Tourists would still flock to NYC during the day and businesses need not worry from a drop in business, it’ll work out.
So tourists still spend all their time/money in NYC, with the exception of paying for sleeping accommodations (and taking up beds) there? Isn't that the ideal goal of this legislation?
Hotel tax is one of the easiest ways governments collect taxes from people who are not its own citizens - in NY its 6 percent.
I am understanding of the arguments against Airbnb's, but they really need to allow more hotels to be built. The amount of money they can bring in (raised entirely from people out of state) is large and shouldn't be thrown away.
I've commuted from NYC to NJ to rent a car with Turo (the AirBnB of cars, which is not allowed to operate in NY). Granted, I probably wouldn't do it again, but I could imagine Jersey City AirBnBs being appealing to NYC visitors on a budget.
I’m not sure what the context here is, but as a lifelong NJ resident I can assure you that there are a lot more legal burdens here than you find in most other states. Of course we do ignore most of the driving laws
The context is a lyric in the musical Hamilton referring to the Hamilton-Burr duel, which took place in NJ. Apparently dueling was already illegal in NJ.
Lin-Manuel didn’t invent the phrase, and I wonder if the original meaning was more in the spirit of “New Yorkers can get away with violating NJ laws” rather than “New Jersey literally has no laws”.
Of course NJ isn't get to take the majority of NYC tourists but for those who are in town go to a game at Yankee Stadium, or perhaps this week's US Open, or people who just have a business meeting near Wall Street, there are far more convenient and economical places to stay than midtown Manhattan, or Manhattan at all.
The anti Airbnb narrative always assumes we are talking about some crappy apartment that someone was duped into staying in.
Let's entertain the idea for just a minute that you are an extended family visiting NYC. You need 2-3 bedrooms, some amount of space to spread out, and a kitchen could potentially save you some real money vs. eating out for every meal.
Hotel rooms like that really don't exist, at least for normal people. On Airbnb you could probably find a comfortable luxury condo that checks every one of those boxes and saves you thousands of dollars compared to booking 3 hotel rooms.
That’s exactly right and that’s what my family and I did when we visited NY. We are a family of four. Typical hotel accommodations suck for families! As you pointed out, it’s not just the space, it’s also the cooking facilities that are so important. Our typical approach is breakfast in the unit, picnic lunches while touring around, dinner out.
Sometimes we’ll cook dinner in our unit too, especially for our kids. If you’re in a city for several days, you get tired of your kids eating pizza and burgers every night because nothing else is familiar (and they do too). They welcome a healthy home cooked meal with the simple foods they are used to. As such going grocery shopping in our new city of residence is a key early part of every trip.
I think the anti-AirBnB narrative also misses a couple of other things:
- this is a huge win for hotels, and one they have lobbied for fiercely.
- there are people who own apartments in NY that couldn’t afford to live there if they weren’t able to earn some money from renting out their space on AirBnB.
Lastly, I’m willing to bet that the housing crisis in NY will continue unabated despite this move.
> there are people who own apartments in NY that couldn’t afford to live there if they weren’t able to earn some money from renting out their space on AirBnB.
Yes, but also turning every apartment into a potential revenue source puts upward pressure on rents.
So there are also people who cannot afford apartments in NYC because of short-term rentals.
My experience with NYC hotels is that rooms are really cramped, so I wouldn’t call it comfortable for four people. And not to mention prices of hotels aren’t exactly cheap, and this law clearly isn’t going to help lower hotel prices. But maybe fewer tourists is what NYC needs.
Yeah if this prices out tourists to the point where it's a problem for the tourism industry, we can deal with that later. For now let's get these apartments back in the regular rental market.
Come on. As much as i hate Airbnb this doesn't paint hotels in a good light for larger groups or those with kids. When you have stricter dietary restrictions cooking our own meals is highly desirable and affordable hotels in this area - nil. Travelling in a group .. okay good luck. What I hate about Airbnb is all the hidden fees and ridiculous homework you have to do when leaving. Regulation could have gone to fix that but yeah here are some flying pigs!
Come on, people live in this city and rent is high as you might have heard. People are getting priced out so middlmen can make bank renting these things?
If staying in a hotel isn't convenient or affordable I'm sorry? Perhaps one day you can figure it out.
The government's obligations to its residents is far higher than tourists with very specific needs. There is no tourism if the area can't support workers to serve tourists due to inflated housing costs.
> What I hate about Airbnb is all the hidden fees and ridiculous homework you have to do when leaving. Regulation could have gone to fix that but yeah here are some flying pigs!
Airbnb could have gone to fix that. Why leave it to regulation?
> Airbnb could have gone to fix that. Why leave it to regulation?
when? they’ve had years. companies can’t logically fail to address a well known problem and then complain when regulations happen. there’s a sure way to slow regulations—address problems that you know will lead to regulation. don’t do… nothing, and then complain.
I agree. Airbnb should have done this instead of shafting the guests. This is why no tears lost seeing the crackdown! Frankly when I travel I avoid ABNB like the plague but still sad to see tourists with real needs having to scramble!
> Let's entertain the idea for just a minute that you are an extended family visiting NYC. You need 2-3 bedrooms, some amount of space to spread out, and a kitchen could potentially save you some real money vs. eating out for every meal.
Is there a particular reason why extended stay hotels don't work out for that kind of stay? They typically have a kitchen, fridge, and laundry facilities.
The anti-Airbnb narrative I find more common (and compelling) is that they cause even less housing to be available in markets already suffering from low housing supply. New York is a prime example. Airbnb hosts buy up apartments that people could live in, and short-term rent them out to tourists instead.
In Europe hotels which include a larger space and a small kitchen are called apartments hotels or apart-hotels.
They're more or less common in different countries, and sometimes are fairly pricy, although perhaps not compared to several hotel rooms. I've seen them most often in places you'd expect families to visit, like non-city tourist destinations.
Don't know about NYC, but in the midwest there are hotels that specialized in providing construction workers a home away from home for 1-2 weeks. You get a bedroom and minimal kitchen for 125-150/night. It isn't luxury, but most certain is:
> Hotel rooms like that ... at least for normal people.
I don't know about that. They're already spending $$$ on crap apartments in deep Brooklyn. That's at least an hour to lower Manhattan, easily two hours to upper.
Fair point but deep Brooklyn is still NY, and for that matter Brooklyn has sparked curiosity in Europe a lot in the last decade. There's a ton of European tourists. And deep Brooklyn has some things to see. Prospect Park, BK Museum, and some old school ethnic enclaves that pop up in Time Out type guides.
Also a good point! I recently moved away from Brooklyn, but I lived there for 9 years and would heartily recommend a Brooklyn-only tourist itinerary. Thanks for the perspective.
> Isn't new jersey right across the river from new york, with rapid transit lines going into new york?
In Chongqing, map apps will often recommend a "nearby" restaurant which actually is several hundred meters away, vertically; you'll have to descend many stair steps before arriving at that restaurant, even though it looked so close on the map. In other words, the restaurant was not actually "close", when it comes to the time and energy investment required.
In this same spirit, New Jersey is absolutely not "close" to Manhattan, even if it looks close on maps. Traffic sucks, public transportation sucks, bridges and tunnels suck.
The PATH is pretty good as long as you can stand a few minutes without internet and aren’t staying up until 4am. It used to be regularly late and require a different subway card which was annoying, but those issues have been fixed. The cars and stations are also typically cleaner and less crowded than the nyc subways.
Staying in Jersey City or Hoboken could definitely be an option for people who don’t need to be stumbling distance from bars.
jersey city took care of this years ago, like 70% of voters passed a bill regulating airbnbs. [0]
any rentals less than 30 days are not allowed unless it’s a room in your house, that you live in, and you have to be there, present, while the guests are there.
