Airbnb and Vrbo hosts under new restrictions as short-term rental rules kick off in NYC

The enforcement of rules coming from a local regulation on short-term rentals has commenced in New York City.

That effort by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement kicked off Tuesday for Local Law 18. It also goes by the name Short-Term Rental Registration Law.

Under Local Law 18, anyone who offers short-term rentals has to become registered with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. It also bars hosts from renting an “entire registered dwelling unit” for less than 30 days and mandates that they give renters “access to all parts of the dwelling unit,” the rules said. 

The regulation also prohibits booking platforms from “processing transactions for unregistered short-term rentals,” according to a page on the NYC government’s website.

The Manhattan skyline is seen at sunrise from the 86th floor observatory of the Empire State Building on April 3, 2021, in New York City. – The Empire State Building, a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, opened during the Great Depre (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

In a statement to FOX Business, Office of Special enforcement Executive Director Christian Klossner said the “initial phase” of enforcement “will focus on collaborating with the booking platforms to ensure they are using the city’s verification system, that all verifications are occurring correctly, and that the platforms have stopped processing unverified transactions.” He said OSE “will continue to meet its enforcement responsibilities with a focus on responding to submitted complaints of illegal occupancy.”

The city first took up the law in early 2022.

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“New York’s new short-term rental rules are a blow to its tourism economy and the thousands of New Yorkers and small businesses in the outer boroughs who rely on home sharing and tourism dollars to help make ends meet,” Airbnb Global Policy Director Theo Yedinsky said Tuesday in a statement to FOX Business. “The city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: You are not welcome.”

In this photo illustration a Airbnb logo seen displayed on a smartphone.  (Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)

New York City gets tens of millions of visitors each year. Times Square, a popular tourist destination at the heart of the Big Apple, averages almost 360,000 pedestrian visitors on a daily basis. 

Yedinsky also said it has “long been our goal to work with New York City to create sensible home-sharing regulations for our Host community, and for the better part of the last decade, we have worked hard to find a path forward.”

FOX Business also reached out to Vrbo for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

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Klossner said registration “creates a clear path for hosts who follow the city’s longstanding laws and protects travelers from illegal and unsafe accommodations, while ending the proliferation of illegal short-term rentals.”

The start of Local Law 18 enforcement comes roughly a month after Airbnb and a few hosts lost bids to challenge the rules in state court.

As of Monday, people have sent in over 3,800 short-term rental registration applications since May, with August seeing almost 50% of those submissions, according to Klossner. He said the OSE has looked at 896, giving approval to 290, declining 90 and asking for “additional information or corrections” on 516. 

The sun sets on 432 Park Avenue, the Empire State building, One Vanderbilt and the Chrysler Building on the midtown Manhattan skyline on Jan. 25, 2022, in New York City. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images / Getty Images)

For hosts that breach provisions of Local Law 18, penalties as high as $5,000 could get issued, depending on the number of the violation, according to the rules. For the platforms, it can run $1,500.

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Shares of Airbnb, which will start being included in the S&P 500 later this month, finished Tuesday’s trading day with their price having climbed over 7% from where they started. Vrbo owner Expedia Group was roughly flat, experiencing a lift of nearly 0.6%.