Half Of Airbnb’s New York Listings Are Illegal

The popular apartment rental site Airbnb is under fire again after skift.com revealed that thousands of Airbnb’s listings for New York City are comprised of illegal residences.

In June 2010, the state of New York passed a law that banned a certain type of short term rental – stays of less than 30 days where the owner of the property is absent – but search for a place to stay in the Big Apple on Airbnb and about half of the results that come up fall afoul of the law. According to Skift, many of the company’s other popular destinations such as San Francisco, Paris and Hawaii also yield illegal listings.

This isn’t just a problem for Airbnb, but for users of the site as well. Hosts that rent out rooms or apartments illegally could face fines of anywhere from $1000 to tens of thousands of dollars, while travelers who stay in these apartments risk penalties of $1000 and up.

Since its launch in 2008, Airbnb has grown into a popular means of finding accommodation. The site helps visitors find a place to sleep at a fraction of the cost of a hotel, many of the residences have additional amenities you can use (like kitchens), and you get the benefit of a local host with insider tips on what to see and do.

More than ten million night’s worth of bookings have been made through the site, but the company has been through its share of PR nightmares over the past few years. First there was this story about a host’s house that was trashed by guests and then there were the apartment owners in Sweden who were shocked to find their home was being used as a brothel.

As for the illegal listings, Airbnb believes the law regarding them is unclear. “Even for full apartment listings under 29 days some are legal,” the company told Skift.

So how can you make sure the NYC rental you’re booking is legal? If the listing is for a room and the owner will be in the house or apartment with you, that’s completely above board. But, if you see a vacancy for an entire “Class A” apartment, you’re staying for less than 30 days, and the owner won’t be around – steer clear.

[Photo Credit – Flickr user Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta]

5 reasons you should use AirBnB

I lived in New York City for over eight years. I spent many months out of those eight years traveling. With expensive rent due in each month I was away, I quickly mustered up the temerity necessary to regularly relinquish my apartment to a subletter from Craigslist. Craigslist did the trick well enough to keep me afloat and mobile all of those years in NYC, but Airbnb.com is better. At least for subletting arrangements. Here’s why:

1. Airbnb has profiles. Instead of opening up your house to, or crossing your fingers and staying with, total strangers, Airbnb has a profile system for users that allows you to take a closer look. You can read friends’ recommendations of users and you can check out reviews other folks they’ve worked with from the site have left. Granted, you’re still hosting or staying with complete strangers, but being able to scope their photos and interests will at least give you a better idea of who you’re going to stay with or host.

2. Airbnb pays you. If you read the above paragraph and thought, “Well, couchsurfing.com has profiles, too”, you’re right. Couch Surfing does have profiles. But with Airbnb, you can actually rake in some dough. List a room or two in your house, or the entire place, for whatever amount you want per night. And people pay to come stay with you–people who you get to look over and approve as guests first.
3. Airbnb allows you to be a guest. If you sublet through craigslist, you’re a subletter. If you travel using Couch Surfing, you’re a couch surfer. But if you accommodate yourself while traveling with Airbnb rooms, you’re a guest. Each host is different, but you can at least count on breakfast, clean sheets, and clean towels.

4. Airbnb is a good place to make real-life friends. You can also make friends using the popular sources I’ve been citing, like Craigslist and Couch Surfing, but why not make some more?

5. Airbnb backs you up. They might not be obligated to protect you when things go wrong, but they have practices in place that will help out along the way. From setting up a security deposit to having staff readily available to mediate any situation that goes sour, Airbnb just feels a little more reliable to me.

[photo by Elizabeth Seward]

Ten real budget travel tips

Do you continually feel wanderlust’s pull but fear that you don’t have enough money to see the world?

Your fears, thankfully, are misplaced. Despite the mainstream travel media’s concerted, ongoing effort to make you think that travel is solely the domain of the rich, it is actually possible to travel well for surprisingly little money–and not just in those places where good deals are plentiful.

If saving money is your first goal, always do advance research by perusing published articles and guidebooks covering your intended destinations. Also be sure to take a look around the budget-oriented travel media. The Guardian’s budget travel guide is very likely the best English-language newspaper for budget travel advice. The Guardian does an especially great job of focusing on budget travel itineraries and showing readers, step-by-step, how to travel well while remaining on a tight budget.

Following are ten general tips to help you travel for far less than you think you’ll need to spend. Later this week I’ll look at some local budget travel techniques that are little-known outside of their home territories, which will provide a useful supplement to this post.

1. Hostels and low-price hotel chains. Increasingly these days, hostels boast individual rooms, some with their own toilets and showers. So even if you’re no longer interested in early morning dance parties, don’t write off hostels. Many of these new hostels are also quite stylish, which means that in many locales ratty, filthy hostels are finally facing price point competition. Also of note are the newish budget hotel chains, like Tune Hotels (Indonesia, Malaysia, UK) and easyHotel (UK, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates). With advance booking, these no-frills hotels can be huge money-savers.

2. Empty university dorm rooms. Many universities offer their rooms for very affordable rates during those stretches of time when there are no students around. Some of these rooms show up on booking sites and others can only be reserved through the universities themselves. During the summer of 2007, I stayed in a university dorm in Vienna for €19. My private room was clean and spacious, with appealing modernist touches.

3. Private home stays. Airbnb is the newest and slickest arrival on the scene, a well organized and very attractive listings site that allows proprietors and guests alike to comment on each other’s performance as hosts and guests. This social media function makes Airbnb especially useful for quality control. In many destinations, tourist boards organize private home stays; in some others, guest rooms are advertised by locals. Guidebooks should help you figure out the best way to go about securing reservations in private rooms. As always, use common sense.

4. Volunteer tourism, or Voluntourism. This tourism/volunteering hybrid has taken off in the past decade. To give but one example, Andaman Discoveries’ volunteer gigs in southern Thailand charge around $210 for a week of on-the-ground volunteering. That charge includes accommodation, many meals, and airport transfer. Check out VolunTourism.org for more information.

5. Couchsurfing. This free accommodation option is the ideal recession-era budget travel trick. It’s a free and very popular way to bed down. Though there are a number of couchsurfing sites, CouchSurfing is the granddaddy of the movement. Couchsurfing fans get starry-eyed when discussing the practice, which depends on peer review and typically prompts guests to contribute something (like meals or a service) to their temporary hosts.6. WWOOF. This strange acronym stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This is a fantastic organization that pairs up farm hands with work opportunities on farms, providing room and board in exchange for labor. WWOOF currently lists farms in 100 countries and territories around the world. Many people get involved with WWOOF in a kind of quasi-apprenticeship manner, though the organization is open to travelers.

7. Social media. Travel bloggers are notoriously friendly and forthcoming with their tips and their time. Reach out to travel writers whose articles you’ve liked and strike up a friendly rapport. Approach them respectfully and you’ll usually find that travel writers love to share their knowledge. Scour Twitter for interesting people in the destinations on your itinerary. Be friendly and make contact. The likelihood that you’ll meet someone who will give you some tips for interesting local action is high. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet someone who will show you around, treat you to a meal, and drink a cheap bottle of something or other with you.

8. Supermarkets and street food. You don’t have to eat in restaurants while you’re on the road. Supermarkets, public food markets, and street food can all help you save money while traveling. In many places, you will find fresher produce in markets than in restaurants. Public food markets and street food provide a route into local culture and are usually quite inexpensive. Follow the crowds for the freshest and tastiest grub.

9. Hitchhiking. All the caveats apply. Be prepared, be careful, use your judgment, and embark on your hitchhiking adventure with a friend. Beyond the shared cost of fuel, hitchhiking is more or less free. It is a great way to meet locals and learn about the places you’re visiting.

10. Home exchange. Swapping your residence with another is far easier than it sounds. Home exchange networks charge an annual membership fee, which allows a place of residence to be listed. Once a listing is in place, members organize exchanges with each other. The net result? Free accommodation. And sometimes intercontinental friendships. Home exchange networks include HomeExchange.com, INTERVac, and International Home Exchange Network. See this article (written, to be fully forthcoming, by my first cousin!) for one family’s experience with home exchange.

[Image: Flickr / ArchiM]

Airbnb founder to eat his own dog food

Couch surfing – or whatever else you’d call the hitchhiking equivalent to sleeping – might work for a few nights, but can you make a career of it? The founder and CEO of a spare room rental service is about to find out.

Brian Chesky, one of the minds behind Airbnb, which helps people rent out their spare rooms to strangers, is going to spend the rest of this year using Airbnb to find places to lay his weary head. Chesky’s a victim of his own success: the company has effectively taken over his office, according to a post on the company’s blog, leaving him with the choice of getting a new place or proving the Airbnb concept in a most unusual and effective manner.

He explains:

Anyone else would have started the hunt for a new place to live. However, that’s when the idea struck me. Why not just live on Airbnb? Instead of getting a new apartment, I decided that I will live the remainder of 2010 on Airbnb. I will stay 2-3 nights in homes and apartments on our website, across San Francisco. Originally I wanted to stay in every place available in SF on Airbnb. But, with 650 listings, that would take me a couple years. Still, by Christmas, I will likely break a record for living in the most homes in a single city. The benefit is clear; the best way to make a great product is to design something for yourself. By using Airbnb everyday, I will get to know the product and the people like never before.

In all fairness, this is the sort of eviction every entrepreneur hopes for! Aggressive growth and successful execution are the reasons for Chesky’s unique homelessness.

[via VentureBeat, photo via Airbnb blog]