In the largest deployment yet, about 20 enforcement officers descended on the Atelier condo on West 42nd street and issued 27 summonses for illegal rentals to 20 different owners, including two members of their condo’s Board of Directors. The City is attempting to crack down on illegal rentals and this is the biggest effort yet but may been an indication of things to come. There is a new law that will force sites such as AirBnB to share the information of their hosts with the City which could go into affect as soon as February.
WSJ coverage
The Author- 
Brian Silvestry , a licensed real estate broker, has been selling residential and commercial real estate since 1999. He has sold in every neighborhood from Battery Park City to Washington Heights.
The Real Estate Board of New York(REBNY) fully supports a proposal of the City Council to mandate that home sharing sites like Airbnb share their users’ information with the City.
REBNY believes that Airbnb is one of the main reasons that rents have risen in the last decade in New York City while Airbnb maintains that home sharing is not even among the top 20 reasons that rents have risen. They do acknowledge that there needs to be measures to ensure that landlords maintain control over their buildings and is in favor of measures to eliminate abuse of the site.
Some regulation is definitely needed as there is a security issue with the rampant use of home sharing sites as not only buildings but blocks become more transient due to the widespread use. Landlords do have a right to better enforce the abuse of the sharing economy.
REBNY opinion here
Airbnb side here.
Previous coverage
The Author- Brian Silvestry , a licensed real estate broker, has been selling residential and commercial real estate since 1999. He has sold in every neighborhood from Battery Park City to Washington Heights.
According to a report by the NYC Comptroller’s office, which analyzed data from 2009 to 2016, rents are rising in NYC due to the “Airbnb effect.” Citywide, the number of listings on the home sharing site have increased from 1000 to 40,000 in the time period. The report analyzed what the rent increases would have been in these neighborhoods with what they actually were and attributed the difference to the Airbnb. Their analysis concluded that roughly 9.2% of the citywide rent increases were attributed to airbnb.
I am not sure if I agree with their numbers but I do see apartments that are pulled off of the regular rental market to be used solely for airbnb rentals. I even went to recent open house in Harlem where the agent mentioned that the apartment was netting the owner approximately $2k per month over the normal rental price due to posting it on the Airbnb site. Apartments like that do come off of the market. Also, on the upper west side in one luxury rental building, landlords have reportedly been looking the other way, while tenants are using the listings site to rent out their apartments to tourists and as a result, the landlord receives a higher monthly rent that they would have otherwise.
City Comptroller Report on Airbnb effect
The Author- Brian Silvestry , a licensed real estate broker, has been selling residential and commercial real estate since 1999. He has sold in every neighborhood from Battery Park City to Washington Heights.
News about the NYC real estate residential and commercial markets provided and interpreted by an industry veteran licensed since 1999. Brian Silvestry of BSRG Inc. Licensed real estate broker