The City and State of New York have been in a very public fight with homeshare giant Airbnb for what feels like the last decade (the current short-term leasing laws were passed in 2006, so it’s been at least that long), but they haven’t been the only ones coping with the impact of Airbnb’s business model. Co-op and condo boards and property managers have been fighting short-term rentals for about as long as the City itself has - perhaps even longer. It’s not only a matter of driving down property prices, in the case of co-ops and condos, or dealing with fines from the city and state, but it can be a comfort issue for residents themselves.

Homeshare Headaches

“What a lot of people start to realize is that Airbnb brings in a lot of noise, and it’s a liability since you’re giving strangers a key,” says Ari Teman, founder of SubletSpy, a company that combs homeshare sites on behalf of client communities that want to find – and put a stop to – illegal sublets and short-term rentals. While most buildings--co-ops and condos especially--don’t want a parade of people from all over using their building as an illegal hotel, they don’t have the time to actively look for and take care of any postings made on websites such as Airbnb or Flipkey.

“They also treat [buildings] like a hotel,” says Teman. “They leave towels all over the floor, they don’t know how to shut off the bathtub properly and you get flooding, then there are bedbugs. If you take a map of bedbug [infestations] in NY and take a map of Airbnb listings, they often line up, since people are coming with suitcases from all over.”

“No one wants a hotel next door to them and that’s exactly what’s coming in,” Teman continues. “So condos and co-ops get a lot of complaint. Sponsor units are also an issue; if you catch [an illegal subletter] in one of those units, you can evict them and get a shareholder who’s paying their dues and taking care of the building. So that’s a huge incentive.”

While it's theoretically possible for a property manager or board to fight against unwanted short-term sublet without a service, Nicolas Larsen, the CEO of STR-Monitor, points out the issue is one of time. “The property managers are so busy and don’t have time to go and check 15 web pages every day,” he says. That’s where services like STR-Monitor and SubletSpy come in; they automate the process for a fee.

“I’m the president of a building in Miami and I worked with the management company, who told me it was a huge issue for them,” says Larsen. “They were combating short-term rentals, but that it was very time consuming. So we came up with the idea, presented it to them and went from there.”

How It Works

Using computers, internet searches, and image recognition Teman found a way to track down listings for buildings, “We match the kitchen and bathroom to a kitchen and bathroom from, say, StreetEasy.com when the broker put the listing up. Then we send out alerts and send out messages saying, ‘Here are 10 unit listings in your neighborhood from these sites where the images match the site,’ and also when the resident’s faces match the profile, or the profile details match the resident,” he says.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be complex though, as Larsen has found success using the building’s address, he says, “We check the major websites,” he says. “Every 24 hours, an automated service we developed ourselves checks the building address. We take that information, compile it, and deliver it to the building manager. The system crawls the biggest listing sites every 24 hours, but they only get an e-mail if there is a new listing. If people are taking their listings down and no new listings are put up, they won’t be getting an e-mail, but if something happens they’ll be notified.”

Larsen says that his system will alert either the property manager or the board, depending on who wants the notification. “Whenever there is new movement in the building they get an automated email from us.”

Teman explains that when a match is found, “We send the client a PDF with the dates, times, and amounts that have been spent, all of it to prove these are illegal sublets. This also includes pictures and social media accounts of the hosts if they’re available as well.”

When it comes to this sort of information, it’s the property managers and boards that want to decide what to do with it. Sometimes they might not care and just want to keep track of what’s going on, while in other situations they will want to take action.

“The manager would normally tell us that they would allow it in some instances, but they want to see the listings anyway. Most buildings just want to see what’s going on in the building and deal with it themselves,” says Larsen.

At times managers and boards will want to watch specific units, like sponsor units, to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up. “We filter stuff for co-op and condo units all the time, mostly because they want to monitor the sponsor units,” says Teman.

Services like these aren't limited by geography. Much like the services they monitor, since they’re internet-based, they can generally handle a client from anywhere. And it’s not just Airbnb that managers and boards have to deal with either – though it's the figurative 300lb gorilla in the room. The success of Airbnb has led to a slew of copycats and other companies looking to claim a piece of the homeshare pie.

“Airbnb’s success has been so overwhelming that it changed an industry – and a lot of people are tagging along,” says Larsen. “We don’t have anything against them; we’re just looking to help the building managers do their job.”

John Zurz is a staff writer and reporter with The Cooperator.