New York Now Has More Airbnb Listings Than Apartments for Rent

Part of the problem would be long term tenants are facing is of their own collective making. Well, that and regulations. That being the difference in experience when dealing with short term Airbnb tenants who are often on vacation, and long term tenants. The attitude is completely different. Unfortunately, long term tenants are too often adversarial. They feel entitled, and are apt to pursue litigation against you. They too often will attempt to dodge their liabilities, and leave them with the property owner &/or landloard. Short term, vacation, tenants appreciate the business. They even occasionally buy gifts, and send thank you cards. On top of that, they have a reputation at stake. Airbnb insulates the landlord from some issues. I know of landlord who had little, but noticeable, damage done to a nice couch by an Airbnb tenant, and one photo and email to Airbnb had the full price to replace to couch reimbursed. It couldn't be any more different in trying to be made whole by ex-tenants without Airbnb in the middle.

Bad landlords get annihilated in real estate. Airbnb has solved a lot of issues for them. Unless an owner, or location/property, precludes Airbnb for whatever reason, there isn't a compelling case to not rent through them.

Maybe there is a market opportunity for a similar company but for long term rentals.

The title is trying to imply that airbnbs outnumber apartments, but directly comparing airbnb listings with apartment listings doesn't really make sense. There's basically a one to one relationship between an airbnb listing and an apartment that's used for airbnb. On the other hand for every apartment listing there might be tens/hundreds of apartments being used as apartments (because an apartment that's occupied tends not to be listed). In a tight rental market, each apartment gets snatched up sooner, which exacerbates this. A far more honest representation would say how much housing units are in NY, and how much % of that are being used for short term rentals (eg. airbnb), but that gets you a mundane number (eg. 10%) rather than a shocking headline.

Good luck enforcing that

Wonder how this works with the FHA underwriting requirement that mortgages in multifamily properties can only be written if 25% or less of the units are rentals. Having a revolving door of short term guests in a building upsets some long term residents but causing them to be unable to sell their property to anyone using an FHA loan is economically damaging.