Nearly 1,500 Buildings Have Already Banned Short-Term Rentals

Local Law 18 — an initiative praised by co-op and condo advocates — is off to a roaring start, with nearly 1,500 building owners moving to ban short-term rentals in the law's first week, Crain's reports.

The city's registration portal, which opened on March 6, offers two options: a required registration for owners who wish to offer their apartments for short term rentals, and another for property owners, including co-op and condo boards, that want to ban short-term rentals. Local Law 18 does not change the underlying rules governing short-term rentals. In buildings with three or more units, it remains illegal to rent housing for fewer than 30 days if the owner or lease-holder is not present during the entire rental period.

Between the banned building list and the host registration requirement, the process is likely to shrink the number of short-term rentals available in the city when enforcement begins later in the year.  At that point, platforms such as Airbnb will no longer be able to process bookings attempted for unregistered units.

Under the new law, residents will be required to certify that they are the legal owner or tenant, to certify that hosting does not violate the terms of their lease or the law, and to provide the URL for any listings. The city has begun creating a “prohibited buildings list” where short-term rentals are forbidden.

“In essence,” says Stuart Saft says, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight and the chairman of the Council of New York Cooperatives & Condominiums “co-ops and condos can opt out of the system.”

Dennis DePaola, an executive vice president at Orsid New York, predicts that the vast majority of the 200 co-ops and condos in the management company’s portfolio will do just that. “This law has been a long time coming, and our clients welcome it,” he says. “Critics feel it’s a law for the rich, but residents of all classes don’t want to endure living next to a hotel room.” And the law has teeth: fines can range from $1,000 to $5,000 or three times the revenue from illegal rentals.

Enforcement of Local Law 18 officially begins on May 9.