Very factual and concise (the report is 15 pages excluding appendices). As may have been known, the AG does not apparently care about users renting out shared rooms (or at least, one at a time). Some salient points below.
> 1,406 hosts (six percent) acted as "Commercial Users," running larger
operations that administered from three to 272 unique units
> In 2013, over 4,600 unique units were each booked as private short-term
rentals for three months of the year or more. Of these, nearly 2,000 units were
each booked as private short-term rentals on Airbnb for at least 182 days — or
half the year. While generating $72.4 million in revenue for hosts, this
rendered the units largely unavailable for use by long-term residents. [...]
Units dedicated primarily or exclusively to private short-term rentals accounted
for an increasing share of revenue over time.
> [The] 10 most-booked private short-term listings on Airbnb in 2013 [...] averaged
1,920 booked nights *each*.
....which works out to somewhere between one and two metrocard rides per city resident worth of annual lost tax revenue, and is only ~33% of the NYPD's annual settlement slush fund: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2j57fl/new_york_city_h... . This isn't buying us much in the way of services, I'm afraid.
Fellow NYC resident here, playing devils advocate: do you think the people renting these AirBNB units are contributing more or less than $33 million to the local economy by consuming local goods/services when they stay here?
"do you think the people renting these AirBNB units are contributing more or less than $33 million to the local economy by consuming local goods/services when they stay here?"
You could argue that NJ visitors add revenue to the NYC economy when they ride the PATH into NYC, but that doesn't mean they get to hop the turnstile and ride in for free. Airbnb either needs to change the laws, or abide by them. Rationalizing violations citing the "greater good" won't fly in a city where travel and real estate are such valuable components of the economy.
Fully agreed. (And for the record, I'm absolutely not rationalizing their violations - just pointing out that "we're out $33 MM USD because lost tax revenue" is the wrong way to be looking at this. I think we should have some sort of safe harbour provision for people making X dollars a year off AirBNB, personally - once you're making more than the cost of your annual rent, time to pay some taxes.)
Hypothetically: I have X dollars in my pocket for a trip to NYC. I can spend it on my hotel + the taxes that the hotel pays, or to an AirBNB host. All things being equal, let's assume AirBNB is cheaper for me because hosts don't pay these taxes, which means I get to keep a larger % of my X.
If I go for the hotel, I'm paying a larger % of my X for the rental (some of which is allocated to taxes), and less stays in my pocket, which means that less will be available for me to spend on the local economy (though it should be benefiting us locals indirectly via taxes, or so goes the theory.)
I'm not going to somehow magically find more money to spend in NYC if I choose to go with the hotel - I'm just going to spend less money, because I have less money, because I've spent more on my hotel.
Your math assumes that somehow I have the exact same amount of money to spend whether or not I choose AirBNB or a hotel, and also that the same number of short-term tenants will visit NYC regardless of the cost they realize paying for AirBNB vs. a hotel - and that further that these short-term tenants will spend the same amount of money on goods and services regardless of their rental costs.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's unlikely. :)
"...less stays in my pocket, which means that less will be available for me to spend on the local economy (though it should be benefiting us locals indirectly via taxes, or so goes the theory.)"
I'm not excluding it, just acknowledging that money paid to the city via taxation at best takes an indirect route to benefiting local actors.
Of course, just like my rent is not pure profit for my building management company. The real question is, at what price were these units put up for rent on Airbnb, and how does it compare to market rents? The GA report says they cannot know because of the data anonymization.
