Speaking of VRBO, wasn’t that supposed to be different from Airbnb? I haven’t used either one all that many times, but lately they seem pretty similar, and even have some rentals listed on both sites. 
Late-stage capitalism: it’s not profit unless it’s maximum profit.
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Can’t the cops just rent an uninhabited apartment, then prosecute Airbnb and the renter? I’m guessing Airbnb would even have to give the rental money back.
I can’t imagine it would take more than a few times before people began dropping out of the rental game.
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That’s how it is in Paris – you can rent your place a maximum of 180 days/year. My understanding is that they arrived at that number because it’s short enough to discourage people from buying apartments with the intent of solely renting them out to tourists (and thus driving up already high rents for permanent residents), but long enough to help alleviate the shortage of hotel rooms in the city. I have a neighbor who lives in his place about half the year and this rule suits him just fine (though he still makes a feeble effort to hide the fact that he frequently has “friends” stay in his apartment).
Attempts to evade this regulation occasionally lead to scammer-like behavior, where people who have exceeded their 180 days will ask potential renters to cancel their AirBnB reservation and pay them off the books. I think most of those people are not actually trying to scam anybody, but some scammers operate in exactly that manner.
Then there are the scammers that rent a place on AirBnB, list the place on a local apartment rental site, show it to prospective renters, and ask for a deposit from anybody serious about renting the place. Then they abscond with the deposits at the end of their rental – and if they get more than one deposit in a single stay, they definitely turn a nice profit. But I digress…
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Is it just me, or does that sound like a game show hosted by Howie Mandel?
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Airbnb was supposed to be like BnBs… owner-occupied places renting out spare rooms (basically short-term sublets). VRBO has always been about short term rental of entire units of housing (whole apartments, cottages, etc). Of course, when AirBnB got into the whole short term rental market thing, they started looking very similar. You still get a lot of sublets on AirBnB, though, especially in big cities (here’s my closet for $200 a night!)
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For many years the rule in NYC has been that you can rent out an extra room while you’re still living in the rest of the apartment, but you can’t rent out the whole place for less than 30 days.
Airbnb, however, completely ignored that rule and still allowed people to list entire apartments/homes for less than 30 days, because it was the host who was violating NYC regs, not Airbnb, so Airbnb didn’t care.
Likewise, even if the owner/manager of an apartment building told Airbnb that short-term rentals weren’t allowed in their building, Airbnb would still allow individual residents to list their apartments, because Airbnb didn’t care if the residents were violating their leases–there was no consequence to Airbnb. This was especially frustrating for the managers of big buildings, as when the city DID do enforcement, they’d fine the building owner, not the individual resident, and the building owner would then try to pass the fine on to the resident, sometimes leading to expensive fights that were a waste of everyone’s time and money (except Airbnb’s).
The new rules implement two changes:
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There’s now a registration system for hosts and the city can go after Airbnb itself (not just the host or building owner) if they allow a host to list on Airbnb without a current registration, and the city can revoke registrations if the hosts aren’t following the rules (e.g., if the hosts rent out an entire apartment rather than just a room).
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The city created a Prohibited Buildings List in which the city won’t issue any registrations. After years of playing whack-a-mole with residents who try to list their places on Airbnb, buildings like my coop can simply submit an application certifying that the building prohibits short-term rentals, and nobody at that address will be able to get a registration, keeping them off Airbnb.
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FTFY
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