New data shows more New Yorkers are taking advantage of legal home-sharing, with 76% of short-term rental registrations issued to homeowners & majority registered to 1- or 2-family homes.
September marks three years since online booking companies came into compliance with Local Law 18, which created the city’s short-term rental registration system to enforce longstanding housing and safety laws & to protect NYC housing stock.
Report details Office of Special Enforcement’s actions to hold illegal operators accountable for converting permanent housing to rentals, with 67% of summonses issued to corporate entities.
NEW YORK – The New York City Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) released new data Tuesday that highlights the effectiveness of Local Law 18 (LL18) in protecting the city’s housing supply, neighborhoods, and residents, three years after online booking companies began complying with the city’s short-term rental registration law.
Despite false claims that the registration law is a ban on short-term rentals, the annual LL18 report – along with complimentary report, LL87 – reveals OSE granted more than 460 new registrations in FY26 (July 2025 through June 2026), raising the total number of active approved hosts to over 3,500. In addition, 82% of denied applications were only denied after the applicants received detailed instructions and at least 90 days to correct deficiencies – but were unable or unwilling to demonstrate the ability to host legally.
Illegal short-term rentals have been linked to rising rents and the removal of homes from the local housing market that would otherwise be available to New Yorkers seeking long-term housing.
LL18 established a registration system that gave the city the tools to enforce New York’s preexisting and longstanding housing and safety laws and prevent online companies and illegal operators from ignoring them.
“Local Law 18 is achieving what it set out to do: prevent illegal activity while allowing hosts to know for sure what they allowed to do, ensure online companies can verify the legal status of the transactions they facilitate, and reduce the size of the illegal short-term rental problem to one that can be handled with direct enforcement.” said Christian J. Klossner, Executive Director of the Office of Special Enforcement. “Local Law 18 is not a ban; it simply prevents rentals that were already illegal.”
“The Office of Special Enforcement’s work has established a clear regulatory system that allows new short-term rental registrations where legal, while keeping important housing opportunities on the market for New Yorkers, in line with local law. My thanks to OSE and other City partners for their guidance and support for New York homeowners, and their clear data updates in these new materials,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg.
The new reports show:
- More than three-quarters (76%) of hosts owned their registered units, triple the number who are renters (24%).
- One- and two-family homes made up more than two-thirds (68%) of registered units.
- Sixty-five applications for rent-regulated units were denied, bringing the affordable housing units protected by the registration law to 618.
- Seventy-four percent of applications denied for not making necessary corrections involved applicants failing to prove they were the permanent occupant. Two-thirds (67%) of summonses for violations were issued to corporate entities (such as an LLC) that owned the properties (compared to 33% issued to individuals).
- Sixty percent of violations were issued for violations in buildings with three or more units.
Data also shows that the registration system continues to keep rent-regulated units out of the short-term rental market. Attempts to register rent-regulated units, which is prohibited by LL18, fell compared to the previous year. FY26 saw 65 attempts to register rent-regulated units, down from 86 in FY25.
OSE is committed to working with potential and registered hosts to achieve compliance before denying applications or taking enforcement action. FY26 marked the first wave of revocations, with 17 registrations revoked and another 15 pending. Each of these actions involved registrants who made false statements in their applications.
The Office of Special Enforcement’s FY26 annual report on LL18, the Short-Term Rental Registration Law, as well as the annual report on 2025 short-term rental complaints and enforcement, LL87, are available to the public and will be posted today at https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/about/data-reports.page.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the eligibility requirements to become a registered short-term rental host?
To be eligible for short-term rental registration, a host must be a natural person and the permanent occupant of the dwelling unit. A host must not be prohibited by the terms of a lease or other agreement from conducting short-term rentals in the unit. Applicants will be required to certify that they meet these requirements and provide documents to prove their identity and their occupancy status.
You are not eligible for registration if the building’s owner has put their building on the Prohibited Buildings List, which is maintained by OSE and searchable as a database, or if the unit’s rent is regulated (e.g., rent controlled, rent stabilized, under a regulatory agreement).
I live in a rent-stabilized unit. Am I eligible for short-term rental registration?
No. Tenants in the following unit types are not eligible for short-term rental registration:
- New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) apartments
- Rent-controlled apartments
- Rent-stabilized apartments
Similarly, tenants in buildings where building owners have notified the City of New York that short-term rentals are not allowed in their buildings are ineligible for short-term rental registration. To find out if short-term rentals are prohibited in your building, search our Prohibited Buildings List database.
Do I have to provide OSE with my short-term rental listing?
As part of the application process, hosts that use a booking service platform (including but not limited to Airbnb, Booking.com, and VRBO) must provide the uniform resource locator or listing identifier and the associated booking service name for all existing listings of the dwelling unit. To add a listing after registering, use our Short-Term Rental Registration Portal, and click “Add or Correct a Listing.”
What do booking services need to do to comply with New York City’s short-term rental laws?
Booking services have two main obligations under New York City’s short-term rental laws. They need to submit quarterly reports and verify registration status:
1) Booking services, or online platforms that provide short-term rental booking services for a fee, must verify the registration status of a short-term rental listing using an application programming interface (API) maintained by the Office of Special Enforcement. The verification process will confirm that a short-term rental transaction is either for a dwelling unit on the Class B Multiple Dwellings List or is associated with a valid short-term rental registration. For information on how to conduct verifications, contact OSE at [email protected].
2) All booking services must submit a quarterly report that includes details for all rental transactions for each qualifying listing. A “qualifying listing” is a listing or advertisement that offers or appears to offer a short-term rental of either “an entire dwelling unit or housing accommodation,” or “for three or more individuals at the same time.”
Additionally, booking services are required to report to OSE the public uniform resource locator for the listing or another identifier and the unique confirmation number obtained from the electronic verification system for each transaction.
Listings that “appear to offer … an entire dwelling unit” can use various terms to imply that the entirety of a housing type is being rented. Examples may include “apartment,” “condo,” “house,” “studio,” or “townhouse,” “condo,” etc.
For information on how to comply with reporting requirements, contact OSE at [email protected].
About Local Law 18
Since the late 1960s, New York City’s laws have restricted rentals of less than 30 days in homes to two guests staying with permanent occupants. OSE estimates that by 2018, as many as 18,000 units of permanent housing were being used as illegal short-term rentals. In 2022, Local Law 18 created a new registration and verification program to protect New York City’s housing stock.
The law: 1) requires hosts to register with OSE and operate the rentals in compliance with the city’s existing laws; 2) prohibits registration for rent-regulated and NYCHA units; 3) created a mechanism to prevent registrations from being issued in buildings where short-term rentals are prohibited by the owner; and 4) mandates that booking services verify the status of a registration before processing transactions.
More than 3,500 host registrations have been granted, and more than 14,000 property owners and managers have placed their buildings on the prohibited list. The full text of Local Law 18 can be found online at https://www.nyc.gov/assets/specialenforcement/downloads/pdfs/LL18-of-2022.pdf and downloaded as a PDF.
About the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement
The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) is an innovative task force that addresses public safety and quality-of-life issues related to illegal and unregulated industries. The multi-agency team is currently comprised of legal, inspection, and investigation team members from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (which oversees OSE), the Law Department, the Department of Buildings, the Fire Department, and the Sheriff’s Offices.
The office’s main focus has been preserving New York City’s housing stock, which has a vacancy rate of 1.4%. OSE also conducts illegal massage parlor inspections and has handled enforcement of an array of special projects, such as overseeing programs to ensure compliance with COVID-era health and piloting a rate-cap on online food delivery companies. For more information, visit nyc.gov/ose.