Understanding New York City’s Short-Term Rental Regulations

New York City has strict short-term rental and Airbnb regulations to ensure hosts share their home responsibly while helping ensure housing affordability throughout New York City’s five boroughs. New York City defines a short-term rental as a rental that takes place for less than 30 consecutive days, with the city’s regulations focused on ensuring that short-term rentals are about hosts sharing their home with guests rather than using multiple properties as unlicensed hotels.

On New York City’s website, you can find an outline of the key regulations around short-term rentals. 

Summary of New York City’s Airbnb Regulations

• An entire home or apartment cannot be offered for short term rental, even if one owns or lives in the building.
• When short-term renting a private room in an apartment or home, the host must be present during the stay.
• A host may have up to two paying guests in their household and every guest must have free and unobstructed access to every room and each exit within the household.
• Internal doors cannot have key locks that allow guests to leave and lock their room behind them. All occupants need to maintain a common household, which means, among other things, that every member of the family and all guests have access to all parts of the dwelling unit. Internal doors with such key locks create barriers to escaping in an emergency and may result in the issuance of a temporary vacate order. 
• Property owners are responsible for ensuring their properties are maintained in a safe and code-compliant manner at all times. Property owners can and will be issued the violation for any illegal short-term rentals at their property, even if it is conducted by tenants living in the building.
• New York State law prohibits the advertising of an apartment in a Class A multiple dwelling, (a building with three or more permanent residential units), for rent for any period less than 30 days.

New York City’s Short-Term Rental Regulations

New York City strictly prevents short-term rental hosts from offering their entire home for short-term rental, with hosts required to be present for the guest’s stay when hosting a private room short-term rental. Hosts are limited to a maximum of two paying guests in their household at once, and each guest must have free and unobstructed access to every room and exit within the property. Due to this, internal doors cannot have locks that allow guests to leave their room locked while out, in order to ensure that emergency escapes are accessible at all times.

Property owners are responsible for ensuring properties are safe and code-compliant, even if tenants in the building are hosting short-term rentals. Those living in a coop or condo will need to ensure they have permission from their landlord or property owner, as these buildings will often restrict tenants from offering short-term rentals. Along with this, if you are a tenant renting your property and not the landlord or property owner, it is advised that you check your agreement and contract about if short-term rentals are permitted on the property, and receive permission from the landlord or property owner to offer short-term rentals.

Short-Term Rentals in Class A Multiple Dwellings

A recent amendment to New York City’s Multiple Dwelling law declared that short-term rentals cannot be advertised in Class A Multiple Dwelling buildings. This means that if you live in a building with three or more permanent residential units, it is highly unlikely that you are permitted to operate and host a short-term rental. To check whether you’re permitted to operate a short-term rental in your building, you can look up your building’s Certificate of Occupancy on the New York City Buildings Website. If your household is in a building that’s classified as a Class A Multiple Dwelling and you would like to host short-term rentals, you can contact the City of New York about possibly amending your building’s zoning classification.

Short-Term Rentals in Rent-Stabilised Buildings

Rent-stabilised buildings have restrictions on what residents can legally charge on sites like Airbnb and Booking.com to prevent unproportional generation of income. While a host can short-term rent a private room in a rent-stabilised building, they cannot charge more than the room’s proportional share of rent. Proportional share of rent is calculated by dividing the total rent of the apartment or dwelling by the amount of people living in it.

Example of Short-Term Renting in a Rent-Stabilised Building

If your rent is $4,500 a month in a three-room rent-stabilised dwelling, and you want to short-term rent the two spare rooms you’re not using, you would not be able to charge more than $1,500 per month per room. This would mean the most you could charge would be $50 per night for each room. (Total monthly rent = $4,500 → $4,500/3 = $1,500 monthly rent per room → $1,500/30 days per month = $50 per night per room)

We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the regulations discussed in this article. Regulations often change on a regular basis, and we advise you to research the current regulations for your location. While we do our best to keep the information updated, if you find an error, omission, or something that needs an update, please let us know.

Helpful Links About Airbnb Regulations in New York City

While this article covers a lot of information about operating vacation rentals in New York City, you might still have additional questions or uncertainties. Below is a list of some helpful links to websites which contain additional information.

City of New York – Information about Short-Term Rentals for Hosts: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/stay-in-the-know/information-for-hosts.page 

Airbnb – Hosting in New York, NY: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/868/new-york-ny

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