Airbnb Study Shows 63 Percent of Manhattan Listings Could Be Illegal

If you're looking for an Airbnb listing in Manhattan, there's almost two-thirds of a chance it is illegal, according to a new joint study by MFY Legal Services and Housing Conservation Coordinators.

The study shows 63 percent of listings in three Manhattan regions, deemed "macro-neighborhoods" in the study, are Entire Apartment/Home listings. According to New York State's Multiple Dwelling Law, which says a permanent resident must be present during a rental period less than 30 days, these constitute illegal listings.

The study does point out that if these are residential buildings with fewer than three units, then renting would be legal. Considering the makeup of the neighborhoods, and Manhattan in general, that likelihood is very small.

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The three "macro-neighborhoods" studied in Manhattan were East Village/Lower East Side, Chelsea/Hell's Kitchen and West Village/Greenwich Village/SoHo.

The number of Entire Apartment/Home listings in Manhattan was higher than in the Brooklyn "macro-neighborhoods" of Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant/Crown Heights, where 42 percent of listings failed the Multiple Dwelling Law. All told, 55 percent of the listings found in the study did not meet legal standards.

The same study showed 53 percent of all Airbnb listings in New York City were located in the five macro-neighborhoods in the study.

And these are generally not random listings by your neighbor.

Over 30 percent of the listings in the study are classified as Commercial based on the number of units controlled by an individual and the length of time the dwellings are listed. And 70 percent of the listings in New York City have more than one reservation per month.

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