Even before Local Law 18, the city was cracking down on illegal short-term rentals.
Between 2012 and the end of March, the city has scored $16.3 million in settlements from lawsuits related to such rentals, Bisnow reported. That number is subject to change as some of the 25 lawsuits accounted for haven’t reached final resolutions.
The most public case involved the $845,000 settlement by Mega Home and broker Katherine Cartagena, who allegedly raked in $2 million by converting apartments into illegal short-term rentals. They settled in March and the operations were shut down.
Outside of the grand total, the city also issued a $1.2 million fine against LuxUrban Hotels for illegal short-term rental operations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In 2022, the city adopted Local Law 18, colloquially known as the “Airbnb ban,” which restricted short-term rentals in New York. Hosts were forced to register their units and agree to abide by all regulations, while the enforcement power of the government was increased.
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If the goal was to rid the city of its short-term rental options, that has largely been a success. Since the enforcement of Local Law 18 began on Sept. 5, short-term listings have declined by more than 80 percent. There were slightly more than 3,000 units left by the start of October, with only 417 in the process of being registered.
As of the end of last year, a mere 1,337 applications for short-term rentals had been submitted to the city. But in the spring that number increased significantly, with more than 6,100 applications having gone through the process as of May 6.
If the goal of the legislation was to lift the hotel operators of the city, that has been a success, too. Hotels have surged in demand and profitability at the end of the year, recording a jump in average daily rates of 10 percent year-over-year, according to CoStar. Nationwide, that metric jumped by approximately 3 percent.
Correction: An earlier version of this story attributed the lawsuit settlement to Local Law 18, based on new reports. The settlements were unrelated.