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Williamsburg Bartender Was Making $45K A Year On Airbnb Before Attorney General Came Knocking
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 28, 2014
Modified Apr 28, 2014
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Airbnb
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 28, 2014
Modified Apr 28, 2014
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Depending on who you listen to, Airbnb's most popular hosts are either shadowy corporate slumlords rolling in used prophylactics and tax-free cash or salt of the earth freelancers who need the extra income to pay for grandma's surgery and a few more solar panels. Two of the hosts profiled this week embody the more seemly side of the side hustles.
Queens resident Michael Naess is the ideal Airbnb host: a bedroom in his Astoria apartment (that has two full bathrooms) costs $85, he frequently gives his guests complimentary tickets to events at Carnegie Hall, and he uses the extra income to pay half the mortgage on his mother's home in Virginia. Naess is the poster boy for The Sharing Economy, the New York Welcoming Committee you wish you had, which is why The New York Times essentially wrote a glowing 1,500-word review of his services:
His only rules are that you smoke only on the balcony (and deposit butts in the coffee can) and refrain from drugs and late-night parties. He tells renters to go ahead and indulge in his groceries. Make coffee. Use his milk. Eat his English muffins. (Most guests replace what they consume, though he doesn’t mandate it.) He leaves a snack basket in the spare room with granola bars, peanuts and almonds.
He avoids showering at the same time as guests, so as not to reduce their water pressure. One frigid night, the heater went on the blink in the spare room when a pair of English travelers were there. Mr. Naess traded rooms with them.
Naess makes almost $18,000 a year from renting his spare bedroom on Airbnb. Peter Chen, a 30-year-old bartender who was identified by by the Attorney General as one of the site's top five most popular hosts in the city, makes $45,000 by acting as the agent for 38 of his friends' rooms. While the other four popular hosts appeared to be tied to real estate companies or boutique hotels, Chen used the site to pay his rent.
Chen explained to New York Magazine how his business worked:
His client list grew by word of mouth. “Friends wanted to list their places but didn’t want to start at the very beginning,” Chen says. “Because I already had a hundred reviews, it would be easier for me to just manage it.”
As the agent of others’ rooms, Chen made anywhere between $7 to $8 per night (rates varied by the type of room and the time of year). He handled all his agent duties on his smartphone, fielding a batch of emails in the morning and another at night. But it wasn’t lost on him how much more he could make if he rented more rooms of his own. In time, he left his Williamsburg place (renting it out to full-time tenants, not on Airbnb) and started renting a four-bedroom in Southside. He moved into one of those rooms and listed the other three on Airbnb. The fees from those three rooms “basically covered my rent,” he says. The money he made from his friends’ places was profit.
Thanks to the Attorney General's subpoena and all the negative press, Chen's crawling back to Craigslist:
Now, for better or for worse, Chen’s agenting career is over. His friends, he says, just have to put up their own Airbnb profiles now. He is picking up more bartending shifts and throwing ads up on Craigslist for the three vacant rooms in his apartment — just looking for regular monthly rent-paying roomies. “I mean, that’s the only way I can have a place,” he says. "I’m not going to be able to afford a four-bedroom myself.”
If politicians really don't want New Yorkers to use Airbnb to earn the extra income necessary to make ends meet and pay rent, then perhaps they should use their power to enact meaningful legislation that would help make the city more affordable for everyone.
Tagged
affordable housing
airbnb
eric schneiderman
The Sharing Economy
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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