New York City tightens the screws on visitor apartment rentals

New York City has finally got tough with Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms. Although the city’s Short-Term Rental Registration Law was adopted in January 2022, it hasn’t been rigorously enforced. That all changed on Tuesday, September 5.

Under the law, hosts can provide short-term accommodation only if they register with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. Hosts are required to remain with their guests in the apartment or unit, with no more than two paying guests at a time. Staying by yourself in a self-contained apartment, a popular choice for many holidaymakers, will no longer be possible. Hosts who violate the law and rent out an apartment short-term will be subject to a penalty of up to $US5000 ($7753).

The change could shift as many as 10,000 apartments from the city’s short-term rental market. It’s a blow to travellers but in a city with a chronic shortage of apartment accommodation for residents, the pressure from housing rights groups carried the day.

Hosts could simply ignore the ruling and continue with business as usual, but the law also tackles booking service platforms including Airbnb and VRBO, with fines of up to $US1500 or three times the fee collected for processing transactions for unregistered short-term rentals. Airbnb appears to be complying with the ruling – my daughter had booked an Airbnb in New York for a stay late in September and Airbnb recently refunded the service fee of around $500.

It’s only fair that the rights of residents take precedence over those of visitors. In Byron Bay, while short-term rentals attract sky-high prices on Airbnb, the shortage of long-term rental accommodation forces workers in critical service industries to sleep in crowded rooms or in vehicles.

The City of Melbourne council has recently voted to regulate short-term visitor rentals with plans to impose an annual fee on hosts and a cap on the number of days a property can be rented, but neither are likely to persuade a property owner to move their property to the long-term rental market.

If Melbourne City council wants to add to the city’s long-term rental stock, New York City’s Short-Term Rental Registration Law provides the answer.