Just in time for Christmas, New York State has announced a registry to keep track of short-term rentals county by county, across the state. Led by state senator Michelle Hinchey, and assemblymember Patricia Fahy, the legislation signed into law December 23 is the first registry of its kind in the nation.
The law’s intention is to help communities manage housing availability and affordability while allowing them to get a lock on the revenues they are owed from sales taxes and hotel and motel occupancy taxes.
The law goes into effect April 21, 2025. Booking platforms will have to report quarterly to the New York State Department of State (DOS) disclosing the number of bookings it facilitates in each county: rental locations, occupancy nights, guest counts, and taxes collected. Counties which have chosen to create their own local registries will also receive quarterly reports from the booking platforms.
The registry will be a breakthrough for New York’s housing future and a first-in-the-nation effort to hold billion-dollar booking platforms accountable in the communities in which they operate, said Hinchey. “For the first time, communities will have the tools to grasp the true scope of short-term rentals, empowering them to develop strategies to expand stable housing options, increase affordability, and unlock untapped revenue.”
While noting the economic boon that short-term rentals have brought to communities, Hinchey also noted that the conversion of housing into short-term rentals has “caused an already precarious housing market to become nearly non-existent and has since turned good housing stock into vacation rentals taking these homes off the market indefinitely.”
Language in the justification for the law explains that New York State is facing a dire shortage of housing supply, especially affordable and workforce housing, in part because of the extreme proliferation of short-term rentals.
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