AirDNA Sends Cease and Desist to NYC Comptroller

Industry-leading  short-term rental data provider AirDNA has sent a cease and desist  letter to the New York City Comptroller’s office regarding a report  released last Thursday, May 3rd, 2018 on the grounds of  misrepresentation of data and violation of AirDNA Terms of Service.

The report, which looked at the  impact of Airbnb on rental prices in New York City, cited AirDNA as a  source in the NYC regulation debate. In a previous press release  published on Friday May 4th, AirDNA spoke out against the Comptroller’s  misinterpretation of the data skimmed from the free overview page of our  MarketMinder  tool. In reality, MarketMinder, along with AirDNA’s raw data sets,  offers over 40 data points filterable by property type and neighborhood  that can be used to measure Airbnb activity in considerable detail in  over 80,000 markets around the world.

AirDNA is an advocate of short-term  rentals, and short-term rental regulation, when it is done right. And as  a data company, AirDNA values in-depth analytics and objective  statistical rigor. Despite its inflammatory headline, the Comptroller’s  report fails to establish a causal relationship  between an increase of Airbnb listings and a rise in rental prices. In  short, the Comptroller’s report is nothing more than hotel propaganda  released under the guise of economic research. 

The Comptroller also violated  AirDNA’s Terms of Service, which limits the use of AirDNA data to  “personal, non-commercial use” unless a specific license is obtained.  AirDNA has worked with and provided licenses to hundreds of researchers, destination marketing organizations and reporters in the past, who have utilized the full granularity of our data to study the presence, trends and impact of Airbnb. 

For the reasons above, AirDNA has sent a cease and desist letter to the New York City Comptroller’s office, requesting that they retract the report published.

AirDNA sent a cease and desist to the New York City Comptroller for the misrepresentation of its short-term rental data in the NYC regulation debate.