> If anything, I'd expect it to drive rental prices down because there would be fewer owner-occupied units and more rental units as investors rent out. There's

> If anything, I'd expect it to drive rental prices down because there would be fewer owner-occupied units and more rental units as investors rent out. There's a phenomenon which is (I think) unique to New York. Many newly-built condos are purchased by foreign owners[0] who buy them literally sight-unseen. For them, it's strictly a financial investment, as high-end New York real estate is a relatively safe investment (in the long run, not the short run). We're talking people who have the cash to buy a $10MM condo[1] (or even penthouse, for far more) from halfway across the world, so they're not interested in the hassle of renting the unit out. As a result, they literally sit vacant. You can see these unoccupied "ghost apartments" in buildings really clearly at night in buildings that have no units available for purchase or rent. These investors go to great lengths to keep their identities concealed, but the practice itself is not secret at all. There have been a number of exposes about this recently in New York publications (New York Times, New York Magazine, etc.), so it's pretty well-known. It's a particularly hot issue because, due to loopholes, these foreign investors pay essentially no property tax (literally a few hundred dollars per year on units worth several million). However, this has relatively little to do with the current discussion, because these are not the types of units that would be listed on AirBNB anyway (both because they would be way outside the general price range, and also because these buildings are far, far more strict about these matters than the typical rental unit). Furthermore, I don't think the number of these vacant sales is particularly high compared to the real estate market in NYC in general; they are so valuable that the missing tax revenue is incredibly large, even if the number of units is relatively small. We also have a situation in which most rental buildings are purchased by foreign owners, who do actually rent them out through the normal legal means (through management companies), but there is nothing new about this. Almost anybody who rents in NYC pays their rent to an LLC named after the building (e.g. 100 W 21st St., LLC), and this LLC is bought and sold by (usually) foreign investors who don't want the hassle of the public eye, and use the LLC as an easy means to transfer ownership without any filing requirements[2] [0] These days it's usually Gulf oil money, though ~10 years ago it was East Asian billionaires, and ~10 years before that... you get the picture. [1] More likely a co-op, actually, so for the buyer, they are literally purchasing shares in a corporation. The fact that those shares are backed by some highly-valued real estate is a mere detail, the way algorithmic day-traders buy and sell futures and derivatives without thinking about the underlying assets! [2] IIRC, property sales require certain public filings, but because the unit is owned by an LLC, and the LLC is what's being sold (not the property), these filings are avoided.