NYC is flooded with illegal short-term rentals that do not comply with New York City law or building board guidelines. But a new effort to block illegal short-term rentals is launching January 9th. That’s when a new law, Local Law 18, goes into effect requiring owners and renters to register their short-term rentals with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. Hosts will get a registration number to display in listings. Sites such as Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and others will be prohibited from posting listings for unregistered short-term rentals.

Over 10,000 Airbnb listings for NYC short-term rentals “are likely to disappear” when the new rules go into effect, from an estimate of nearly 40,000 total Airbnb listings in the city.

The new law is intended to address the disconnection between empty NYC hotel rooms and the number of listings for entire homes on Airbnb (nearly 20,000), many of which may be illegal and exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. 

“Housing should be for New Yorkers. Hotels should be for tourists. We need every apartment being listed illegally on Airbnb back on the legal rental market to help our affordable housing crisis.”

(source: brickundergorund.com, picture: Luke Stackpoole)