New York state senator Michelle Hinchey last week introduced legislation (S885) to compile a statewide short-term rental (STR) registry to answer the million-dollar question of how many properties have been taken out of the long-term rental market for short-term renting.
The most recent data released from the 2021 American Community Survey records 86,177 housing units in Ulster County. It’s estimated that 13 percent of those 11,124 units – mostly seasonal ones — are vacant. Of the remainder, 74 percent are owner-occupied, leaving just 26 percent of the housing stock available to renters.
Of that number of units available for rent, 19,206, the number drained off by short-term rentals is unknown. The largest booking services for STRs, AirBnb and Vrbo, haven’t been eager to share this information, suing large cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles that have attempted to compel them to do so.
Transparency is lacking. Data analytics companies like Airdna use a combination of scraped data and partner-shared data to present the best picture of the situation at this time that we have.
In the summer of 2022 the Ulster County comptroller’s office released a snapshot of the housing picture in Ulster County which estimated the number of short-term rentals at three percent of the housing stock, or 576 units. The number could be much higher.
Ascertaining the amount of properties taken out of circulation for short-term use would be enlightening, A state registry could also identify those letting out their properties as short-term rentals.
Speculation about how many of these properties are owned and operated by hedge funds, investment firms, LLCs or other legal entities is rife. The squeeze on rental prices as a result of reduced housing supply is considerable. Pew Charitable Trusts reports that investors bought nearly a quarter of all U.S. single-family homes sold last year.
“Myself and my office have done a lot of work over the last year and a half to really educate my colleagues on the situation that’s happening in our community,” said Hinchey. “About the importance of helping our towns and communities and cities get a handle on what’s happening.”
The cities of Kingston and Hudson were top Hudson Valley destinations people moved to during the pandemic. An unknown number of those people have now returned to where they lived previously, but have held on to the properties they bought for use as vacation rentals.
“Clearly, they are part of our economy,” said Hinchey. “They’re actually one of the big reasons why so many of our main streets and small businesses survived the pandemic, by bringing people into our community, and they gave local people some extra money in their pocket. This is part of our tourism economy. However, this quick proliferation of short-term rentals has strangled an already limited housing market.”
A state registry would provide improved data and enforcement mechanisms. An improved tax structure would assist municipalities in getting the money that they are owed.
“To be clear, we believe the towns should be the ones to really regulate this,” said Hinchey. “But if they don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money on hiring an outside third party to create a registry, we’re empowering the state department to oversee this. We’ve been working on the bill for over a year.”
State senator Liz Krueger, who chairs the state senate finance committee, is a co-sponsor, “It sends a big signal that this is a bill that is ready for prime time,” added Hinchey
The proposed legislation has teeth. Any person operating a short-term rental unit who fails to register with the Department of State or a locally operated registry could be fined $200 a day.
Municipalities with their own short-term rental registration systems may continue to use them, and short-term rentals in those municipalities do not need to register with the state.
Currently most municipalities in Ulster County have adopted short-term rental regulations of some kind, though many must rely on information collected by the county to assess their individual housing situations.
Municipalities known to have adopted short-term rental regulations include Esopus, Ellenville, Gardiner, Hurley, Kingston, Lloyd, Marbletown, Marlborough, New Paltz, Olive, Rochester, Rosendale, Saugerties, Shandaken and Woodstock, Shawangunk has debated doing so. The status of short-term regulation laws in Denning, Hardenburgh, Plattekill and Wawarsing are unknown.
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