Illegal Midtown Airbnb Owner Faces Lawsuit From City, Mayor Announces

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The owners of a Midtown East brownstone home have been hit with a lawsuit from the city for allegedly renting it out as an illegal Airbnb, city officials announced Tuesday.

The suit is a milestone in the city's fight against Airbnb and other short-term rental operations, since it is the first one to be identified through a new law that requires rental platforms to regularly report their data to the city.

The building, 344 East 51st St., is a four-story townhouse between First and Second avenues. It has had a checkered history: before its current owner bought the building in 2016, it had already been issued six summonses for illegal transient occupancy in 2011, according to the city.

That use continued in the ensuing years, with 311 complaints and inspections frequently revealing tenants staying in the building for short periods — violating the city law that requires all rentals to be 30 days or longer.

The 51st Street townhouse was advertised on Airbnb, which in turn sent more than $2 million in payments to Arron Latimer, a real estate broker who handled the listings, according to the city's lawsuit. Latimer used fake names, host descriptions and stock photos to book more than 2,200 reservations in the brownstone, the lawsuit alleges.

But in online reviews, guests reported that the building's interior was "astonishingly dirty," with blood stains, soiled linens and mold, the suit alleges. Others reported having received misleading information about the building's location, and messages from the host that appeared to be robotic, the city alleges.

Besides Airbnb, the townhouse was also advertised on TripAdvisor and a Wordpress website written in Italian.

The lawsuit was filed against Latimer; the building's owner, Apex Management; as well as its managing member, Esther Yip. None of the defendants could immediately be reached for comment.

Mayor Eric Adams announced the lawsuit in a news conference outside the building on Monday, saying the defendants in the city's lawsuit used Airbnb to "deceive and lure unsuspecting guests into paying for substandard lodging at illegal rental listings.

"Not only did they unlawfully pocket millions, but they endangered guests and deprived New Yorkers of an entire building’s worth of long-term housing," Adams said.

In a statement, an Airbnb leader praised the city's action, saying the company had "banned the host in question months ago.

"We commend Mayor Adams for taking swift action on illegal hotel operators who flout the rules," said Airbnb public policy regional lead Nathan Rotman. "Airbnb currently shares information with the City, and looks forward to working with the City and State to build an effective and transparent regulatory framework to differentiate between the responsible Hosts who should be protected under the law and operators of properties like this who have no place on our platform.”

Airbnb had also sent a cease and desist letter to the townhouse host in 2021 and removed all associated accounts and listings from its platform, according to the company.

The city's rental reporting law took effect in 2021, requiring platforms to periodically report the physical address, listing URL, stay details, and host identities for many short-term rentals.

A separate law, passed last year and taking effect in 2023, will require all of New York's rental hosts to register with the city, preventing Airbnb and other platforms from processing any transactions unless the registration matches a city database.