New york legal issues –

So, New York and Airbnb have had a love hate relationship, with New
York being one of the most challenging environments for Airbnb. In
fact, New York was biggest market for airbnb with annual revenue of
around $450 million. Now issues started cropping up when on one
hand, you've got a powerful hotel lobby that likes the shortage of
affordable rooms for rent. You've got an extremely high percentage
of landlords, most of whom forbid subletting without permission. On
the other hand, you've got a population of educated professionals
who travel a lot and are willing to rent out their apartments when
empty to make a few extra bucks on the side. All of this culminated
into a law passed in 2010 (Multiple dwelling law), that effectively
outlaws the majority of Airnb rentals in the city by making it illegal to
sublet a New York apartment for less than 30 days if the permanent
resident was not present.

What was airbnb’s response?

Airbnb launched a new advertisement, by the name of Meet carol –

African American widowed mother who turned to airbnb after she
lost her job. The message over here was that Airbnb was acting as a
means to help people make ends meet. Not everyone was earning in
six figures and airbnb was allowing users to use their greatest
expense – their house to make additional income. With the help of
number crunching, they also proved that their business model was
helping improve economic activity by bringing in more tourists.

Issues with New Yorkers

Now New Yorkers are quite particular about their personal space.
Granting access to residential buildings means people who haven’t
been vetted have keys to the buildings public spaces and will be able
to use the building facilities. So, invasion of privacy was a major issue
that came up due to Airbnb.

Due to this, short term rentals were forbidden by landlords and some
began implanting stricter protocols for having guests and adding
cameras as well.

So Airbnb came up with the Friendly Building Program: the owners

and landlords could sign up for a partnership with Airbnb. The
building would grant permission to tenants to rent out space in their
units. Airbnb allowed landlords to set the rules – check in, check out,
duration, etc and get a share of the revenue. The primarily goal of
landlords to fill buildings and to secure long term leases that
generate stable revenue was fulfilled. Making it legal for tenants to
share homes meant filling up the buildings quicker and with
additional revenue for tenants, landlords would also get a share of it.

Airbnb had worked with regulators to allow legal operations. But some places
wouldn’t let it go.

With use of internet, everyone was able to command triple digit nightly rates
and high occupancy levels.

Renting a room was legal, not the whole apartment. Eg – nigel warren

Hosts with 10 or more listings constituted 100 hosts. Top dozen hosts had 9 –
272 listings and made over a million dollars per year each. 272 listings made
$6.8 million/year.
Airbnbs strategy was to mobilize its hosts. Change the “slumlord law” which
failed to distinguish between commercial operators and everyday new Yorkers
seeking to rent out their home.