Skift Take
Last week San Francisco lawmakers gave Airbnb a huge break by legalizing some of its business and penalizing rivals. This week the New York AG is rebalancing the sharing universe with a report that undermines Airbnb's arguments about how its business operates.
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Today New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann released a report on four and a half years of Airbnb activity in New York that used the short-term rental site's own user data to argue that the majority of its revenue in New York is generated by illegal activity.
The report presents a picture of Airbnb's business and users that differs wildly from the portrait the company paints in interviews, advertising, marketing, and lobbying efforts.
Studies and data scraping commissioned by Skift, which the Attorney General used in April of this year to subpoena Airbnb, made a strong argument that a majority of available rentals on the site were in violation of the state's short-term housing laws. Data from Skift also suggested that a small group of hosts renting out multiple units were responsible for a disproportionate amount of activity on the site.
The Attorney General's study confirmed and expa
