A short-term rental, for registration purposes, is a rental of fewer than 30 consecutive days in a private dwelling, a class A multiple dwelling, or a class A unit in a mixed-use building. Class A means a unit intended for permanent residence. On OSE's own FAQ, three conditions apply at once:

1. The host stays in the unit during the rental. No unhosted stays. Not "the host is in the building", not "the host is next door" — the same dwelling unit.
2. No more than two paying guests at a time. A registered host with three approved listings still may not host more than two guests simultaneously, as OSE spells out on its registration data page.
3. A common household with the guest. Under § 21-10(12) of the registration rules, a common household is deemed to exist only if every member of the household — the guest included — "has access to all parts of the dwelling unit", and lack of that access "establishes a rebuttable presumption that no common household exists."

That third condition is the one hosts underestimate. A locked bedroom door, a sealed-off floor, a private entrance that partitions the apartment into two independent halves: each of those is evidence against the common household the rule requires. § 21-10(13) closes the loop by stating that a registered host "shall not offer, arrange for, or allow the short-term rental of an entire registered dwelling unit."

Add the layers underneath and the practical envelope gets narrower still:

• Entire-unit short-term rentals are not permitted in one- and two-family homes either. OSE's FAQ is explicit: under the Building Code those homes are "exclusively for residence purposes on a long-term basis for more than a month at a time."
• No sleeping space where sleeping is illegal — attics, cellars, garages. Basement listings need a certificate of occupancy, a Letter of No Objection or equivalent proof of approved residential use.
• Uncorrected Department of Buildings, HPD or FDNY violations for conditions that endanger occupants block a registration. § 21-08(2) of the rules lists violation types OSE has already determined qualify.

Two consequences follow for anyone running this as a business. A co-host cannot be the registrant, because the law limits registration to a natural person who is the permanent occupant of the unit — which also means a property manager cannot hold a New York registration on an owner's behalf. And a compliant registered rental has no room for self check-in as a product: the host is physically there, so the lockbox is not the constraint, the host's calendar is.

To be eligible, a host must be a natural person and the permanent occupant of the unit, and must certify that no lease or other agreement bars short-term rentals there. Ineligible outright: NYCHA apartments, rent-controlled apartments, rent-stabilized apartments, and single-room occupancy units.

Then there is the Prohibited Buildings List. Any building owner — including a co-op or condo board, a manager or an agent — can certify that leases and occupancy agreements throughout the building forbid short-term rentals, and OSE must then refuse registrations in that building. It works only for whole buildings, never for selected units or floors, and if a building is added after a registration was granted, OSE can move to revoke it at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. Per OSE's announcement of the FY25 report, the list had passed 21,000 buildings, with more than 14,000 owners and managers having opted in.

The mechanics:

• Fee: $145, payable at submission and explicitly non-refundable — including if the application is later denied because the unit turns out to be rent-regulated.
• Documents: one proof of identity plus two proofs of permanent occupancy, and the two must come from different approved categories. Tenants also submit the portion of the lease showing dates, address, parties and signatures.
• Landlord notice: OSE is required to notify the owner of record that an application has been filed. If you rent, your landlord finds out.
• Listings: every listing URL or listing ID, with its platform, must be declared, and any listing added later must be reported to OSE before the next booking.
• Ongoing duties under § 21-10: post an exit-route diagram and a copy of the registration certificate inside the unit; put the registration number in every advertisement; keep a record of each rental for seven years (listing identifier, start date, nights, number of guests, rent received); produce those records within 15 business days of an OSE request.

Registrations last up to four years — or, for a tenant, until the end of the lease shown to OSE. OSE expects the first renewal applications in October 2026, and it can refuse a renewal on any ground that would support revocation.

For the host, § 26-3104 and § 21-13 of the rules set the ceilings:

Revocation is separate from fines. A registration must be revoked, after notice and a hearing, where the unit was used in violation of the underlying occupancy laws, where the application contained a material false statement, where the host commits three or more violations within 24 months, where the building lands on the Prohibited Buildings List, or where OSE later learns something that would have blocked the registration.

For platforms, § 26-3203 prices each bad transaction: up to $1,500 per transaction processed without valid verification, or three times the fee collected if the platform can establish that fee. Failure to file the required monthly transaction report carries a penalty per unreported transaction, capped at the greater of $1,500 or the platform's total fees for that listing over the preceding year. That asymmetry — per transaction, at scale — is why the platforms built the verification integration rather than litigate it.

Enforcement is no longer theoretical. OSE began issuing Notices of Intent to Revoke in late April 2025; it estimated that as of early June 2025 about 20% of registered listings were offering illegal occupancy, and started sending warning notices; and on May 5, 2025 it filed its first Local Law 18 lawsuit, against Jane 8, LLC, over the Incentra Village House, an operation OSE says took 10 apartments out of the housing stock. The three revoked registrations in the January 2026 dataset are the visible edge of that programme.

New York did not ban short-term rentals; it made them a resident's side activity rather than an asset class. If you own or manage units in the five boroughs, the honest options are a hosted registered rental in the home you actually live in, stays of 30 days and up, or a class B building. Everything else is either unavailable or a fine waiting for an inspection.

Both surviving models are still service businesses. A 34-night corporate tenant asks fewer questions than eight weekend guests, but the ones they ask — heating, laundry, deliveries, the neighbour's renovation — arrive at inconvenient hours and in whatever language the guest thinks in. That is the part worth automating: Verto AI answers on WhatsApp around the clock in more than 25 languages, handles text, photos and voice notes, and resolves 85% of conversations on its own across more than 12,000 measured. It has nothing to say about your registration status, and it will not make an ineligible unit eligible.