New York City Hall sued on Monday a real estate group accused of illegally renting some 130 apartments on Airbnb, a new episode in the battle between the city and the platform and professional rental companies, accused of contributing to the surge in rents.
According to the complaint, the city accuses the Metropolitan Property Group (MPG), a large New York real estate company, five of its agents and 18 affiliates, of having rented apartments through Airbnb in at least five New York buildings – four in the heart of Manhattan, one in East Harlem – in violation of a New York law prohibiting rental for less than 30 days when the official occupant of the apartment is absent.
MPG, agents and companies would have received some 21 million dollars from the rental of these 130 apartments, corresponding to some 55,000 overnight stays, according to the text of the summons obtained by AFP, which presents MPG as one of the main platform rental companies in New York.
The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, claims that these apartments were offered through some 250 ads corresponding to 101 different accounts on Airbnb. While the names associated with these accounts differ, the phone numbers are often the same, the city says.
When contacted, an MPG lawyer refuted all charges. The city “has given itself a publicity stunt, but that’s just inaccurate,” Doug Pick said.
According to him, of the five agents incriminated in the complaint, three no longer work for MPG since 2017 and the other two are the owner of MPG and his wife, implicated in this capacity. And the 18 companies charged have no affiliation with MPG.
Why would a lessor like MPG “compete with itself by offering its apartments via Airbnb?” He said. “It does not mean anything”.
If the role of MPG is contested, the presence of professional rental companies on Airbnb is not, even if the platform ensures that they are marginal.
Like Paris, Berlin or Barcelona, New York is trying to crack down on the latter, accused of helping to reduce the supply of affordable housing, against the backdrop of complaints from residents facing a parade of tourists in their building.
“Illegal hotels deprive New Yorkers of precious housing and destabilize our neighborhoods,” Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement, saying he was determined to “crack down” on “professional operators”.
In early January, the city nevertheless suffered a defeat: a federal judge suspended the entry into force of a decree obliging Airbnb to communicate to the city the list of its hosts from February, deeming it unconstitutional.
A judgment is however still awaited on the merits.
– .
