The number of apartments being used as pieds-à-terre and short-term vacation rentals in New York City has spiked by over 20,000 in the last three years, and such apartments now make up 2.1 percent of all housing in New York City, according to census data recently released by the city.
The number of apartments listed on the most recent Housing and Vacancy Survey as vacant because of "seasonal, recreational, or occasional use" is now 74,945. This is the highest since the Regional Plan Association started keeping track in 1991 and, as the group's director of community planning Moses Gates notes, more than enough to house the city's entire homeless population. A Department of Housing Preservation and Development spokesman says that the agency can't parse from the data how many of these 75,000 apartments are being rented out on sites like Airbnb versus how many are being used as pieds-à-terre, and indeed there may be some overlap. Still, it's clear that the gain of 69,000 newly built apartments since 2014 is dampened by the simultaneous removal from of nearly a third of that number of apartments the sales and traditional rental markets.
Gates argues that the numbers show the urgent need for the city to create a pied-à-terre tax, so that wealthy people have incentives to sell their apartments or rent them to full-time tenants rather than keeping them empty or occasionally renting them to tourists.
"You're taking housing off the market during a housing emergency," he says. "That should be good enough" for the city to take action. Pied-à-terre owners, he adds, are "not paying city income taxes, but you're using city services to protect your tax investment."
12 comments:
We should consider a "money laundering tax" -since that is what a sizeable portion of the new "luxury" condos are used for.
A report released in 2016 showed that around 40% of recent condo construction, primarily here in Manhattan, was bought by foreigners and often for all-cash.
The Paul Manafort types have been busy fronting for a lot of dirty money.
Rob in Manhattan.
Yes they should! If the rich can afford them then let them be taxed. Why should the rest of us have to subsidize a privileged class. Let them pay their own tab!
Taxing is not fare because a lot of people who come to New York for a week or so want to rent them because 7 days hotel and eating out costs over $3000.
Hey taxing means books, and that leads to more big brother bullshit.
Why would people in Queens give a shit because from the looks of things, like all the dirty streets, garbage blowing around Grand ave only Manhattan and homeless shelters gets those tax dollars.
My parents stay in Condos when they visit, its the only way they can afford it. People need to F Off !!!.
Z :):)
Why don't you go visit your parents instead of vice versa
they are already paying property taxes that the city has been obviously wasting on paying triple the market rate for hotels for homeless-----
Pied a terre owners are already paying property taxes and are barely using any of the services. They're net contributing to the system, which is more than I can say for a lot of the residents.
"Why don't you go visit your parents instead of vice versa"
Thats easy: Because they like NYC vacation's, who the hell in a right frame of mind wants spend summer vacation in boring Ohio.
Id love to see the people around here react to waking up in the morning, get into a freezing car, warm it up and drive 10 or more miles for work or even a newspaper, coffee and donuts. --shitty stale donuts at that! Half the neighbors are trash alcoholics, meth heads or skin heads.
Trust me, Queens is paradise despite its problems!!
You New Yorker's dont appreciate how lucky and easy you have it, you dont have a clue what hard living is.
I'd like to have a second...maybe third home.
It's called a LUXURY. Tax 'em up the wazoo!
There are people who are lucky to have one residence. Hmmmm....and then there are the homeless. If you can't afford your luxuries then FUCK YOU!
I ain't payin' for 'em !!!!!!
I don't see why not. Those apartments could be housing people who work in NYC, who pay income taxes in NYC. If they're going to get themselves a vacation apartment in the tightest real estate market in the country, they should be paying the City as a whole for the privilege, and not just their landlord.
Place is so upside down. The city takes over hotels to place the homeless permanent residents. Tourists don't have a hotel to book at a reasonable price so they go to AirBnB and rent an apartment for a week. The city is after the owners of the AirBnB properties, but the tourists have no place else to go. On top of all this the city is loosing hotel taxes because the hotels are occupied by homeless.
Did that dumbass Zoe really just say new Yorkers got it easy cause we got donuts? Are you fuckin kidding me. Meanwhile she's braggin about where her parents stay when they visit. Wow, wish my parents could afford a vacation.
Hey Zoe, try working your whole life away in NYC to find out you can't afford it anymore cause some bitchy Ohio transplant decides they want the NYC "experience". See how easy it is then.
Yes- please go back to Ohio, Zoe!!!!
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