Wednesday, April 4, 2018

AirBnB couple on the hook for big fine

From The Real Deal:

A pair of illegal hotel operators need to pay the city $1 million as part of its crackdown on converting housing units into hotels.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement received the $1 million judgment against Mina Guirguis and Szilvia Patkos, who used services like Airbnb to market at least seven units in 5 West 31st Street and 59 Fifth Avenue, according to Politico. They operated as City Oases LLC and marketed the units as “Urban Oasis” and “the Contempo Design Suites.”

The city sued them in 2014 and previously received a $1 million settlement in November with property owners Majid and Hamid Kermanshah. However, the Kermanshah’s ultimately will only need to pay the city $201,500.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Air B&B has become a hoax.
It's creating another set of problems that NYC doesn't need.

Anonymous said...

That was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Landlords also don't reside in the buildings they one, have the building registered with LLCs plus the building have more the 3 units. How do such stupid people have money to buy such expensive Manhattan property? Smuggle diamonds or drugs?

It says the 2 landlords advertised on a public "home rental platform" but why no description or disclosure of where? I'm guessing it was a public platform (like Citi-data forum) meaning they also broke AIR-bnb peer to peer private membership rules.
These 2 Dumb Greeks deserve a Darwin award.
Its stupid greedy people like this that give AirBnB a bad name.
I get to pick and view the people on Skype, I need at least 4 stars in feedback history, no more then 2 with 1 backpack each. Its very low key and selective.

Anonymous said...

You call other ppl dumb so easily but can't process and comprehend a short article yourself. Nowhere does the article say the landlords operated the short-term rentals or lived in the premises. The operators did so, according to this article.
Also, Airbnb does not have a bad name anywhere else but in New York City, because politicians in favor of the hotel lobby gave it a bad name. It's the same old story, everything for the big fish nothing for the small.
If you are so smart why don't you ask your representative why in the past 7-8 years, in times of alleged housing crunch, the big majority of buildings springing up in Manhattan were hotels?? Because it's more lucrative for investors, too? Yeah?