New York City is an expensive place, whether you're looking to buy a new outfit or a pack of cigarettes. It's also an expensive place if you're looking to rent-- a Citi Bike, an apartment, or a hotel room.
So it's no surprise that plenty of New Yorkers have turned to Airbnb to short-term rent an empty room for a little extra cash.
But what about when it's not just a little extra?
What about when those individuals are potentially driving up property costs in the City overall by illegally renting entire properties for less than 30 days at a time-- reaping upwards of a hundred grand per year?
That's an entirely different story from someone simply sharing a room for a weekend once or twice a month while that person is out of town.
In response to tremendous pressure from New Yorkers and people around both the country and the world, Airbnb recently released a heap of data aimed at absolving them from accusations of facilitating New Yorkers misusing their service to the end of massive, minimally taxed profits.
Airbnb's head of global policy and public affairs Chris Lehane recently told the New York Times that, "Our hope is that people will understand that 99% of people on Airbnb in NYC are using it as an economic lifeline."
[anad]
The catch is, their own data incriminated them; rather, it confirmed exactly what they had been accused of.
Problematically, that percentage is actually closer to 70%.
While 38,000 hosts earned less than $10k through Airbnb during the period the data is concerned with, 10,000 hosts had earned between $10k - $50k per year off their rentals.
airbnb Because there’s nothing more patriotic than traveling to parts of the country you’ve never visited. Happy Fourth of July. Photo cred: @sernastudios See the link in our bio for listing details.
Apparently a large portion of renters on Airbnb are either sharing more than one property at a time or entire properties at a time, and reaping huge profits illegally.
The top range of Airbnb earners-- 127 of them to be exact-- raked in anywhere from $100,000 to $350,000 renting on Airbnb.
Fishy? We think so. More fishy than the a Canal Street sidewalk at sundown on a weekday.
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[via Huffington Post] [Feature Image Courtesy The Wall Street Journal]