Airbnb said it was forced to stop accepting some bookings in New York after new rules on short-term rentals came into effect in the city, the Guardian reports.
According to the New York Times, the city argues that the proliferation of short-term rentals through Airbnb and other platforms has driven up rents and contributed to New York’s housing shortage.
The aim of the new rules is to make the flats work as a place to live and to end the period when investors who buy flats for the purpose of making a profit rent out their flats to tourists. With this, a significant part of the city’s otherwise scarce housing supply was occupied by tourists from the local residents and workers, brutally driving up the price of renting an apartment.
Spabook says,
the rules that came into effect on Tuesday mean that the majority of accommodations on Airbnb and similar sites (e.g. Booking, Vrbo) will only be bookable for stays longer than 30 days.
Unless property owners have gone through the city’s rigorous registration process, only 257 short-term rental registrations have been approved by the New York office so far, according to the latest public data (as of Aug. 28), just half a percent of the current supply. Airbnb has already started removing unlicensed apartments from its listings.
New Airbnb rules in New York:
- Hosts must be present during the guest’s stay if it is for less than 30 days.
- Reservations must basically be for a period of less than 30 days.
- An entire apartment or house cannot be rented out for less than 30 days, even if the owner or the main tenant with rental rights lives in the building.
- A room without a window cannot be registered.
Airbnb called the rules a “de facto ban” on short-term rentals, which they say harms both hosts and New York tourism.
In Hungary in the recent period, the VI led by the momentous Tamás Soproni. Terezváros district municipality started to check Airbnb apartments. In the first round, the district inspected eight short-term apartments, in five of which the owner accommodated tourists without paying taxes or reporting them.
The district already tried to regulate short-term housing rentals last year, but the developed Airbnb regulation was ultimately rejected by the government office. In this plan, it was stated that those who want to rent out their apartment in the district in the short term must have the apartment building’s consent statement, must write their 24/7 telephone number and NTAK registration number at the entrance of the accommodation, as well as the apartment building’s house rules in English and Hungarian you have to put it out in the apartment.
After this, the mayor of Sopron, Tamás Tamás, initiated legislation at the Prime Minister’s Office “which helps peaceful coexistence and does not completely surrender the residents of Terézváros to business interests”, but according to the municipality’s claim, no meaningful response has yet been received from the government.
“Since the Airbnb service, which is strengthened by summer tourism, is at the expense of the peaceful life and nights of the residents of Terezváros, the municipality has set up an inspection team that will at least filter out those who carry out this activity without notice, at the expense not only of the residents, but also of the taxpayers is pursued,” the municipality wrote.
For the first time, the inspection team inspected eight apartments advertised on accommodation rental portals, of which five were operating illegally, so-called without NTAK number.
Official proceedings were immediately launched against the owners, and the mayor’s office also informed the partner authorities about the “black” operation, so accommodation providers can expect to be fined from several places.
In Terézváros, the conflict of interest between the district’s residents and Airbnb hosts has been causing tension for years. Last year, the municipality said that they would introduce new, strict regulations so that “the people of Terezváros have more peaceful and quiet nights and days”, and “it never occurred to us to make it impossible to rent out private accommodation as a business, since properly operated airbnb accommodations are families they serve his livelihood”.
