If you’ve tried to book a short-term rental in New York City recently, you already know the problem. The listings that used to fill Airbnb and VRBO have largely disappeared — not because the apartments are gone, but because the law made it nearly impossible for platforms to list them. Since New York’s Local Law 18 took effect in 2023, available short-term inventory dropped from roughly 40,000 listings to fewer than 10,000. Hotels, already at capacity during peak periods, absorbed some of that demand. The rest simply went unmet.
New York isn’t alone. Cities from San Francisco to Honolulu have moved to restrict short-term rentals, each with its own version of the same tension: tourism demand that isn’t going away, housing concerns that are politically difficult to ignore, and platforms caught in the middle. The result, in city after city, is a market that looks closed to travelers who don’t know where else to look.
Demand Remains
What regulation killed wasn’t demand — it was visibility. The travelers still come. New York drew roughly 65 million visitors in 2025, and the World Cup is expected to add another surge the city’s strained accommodation infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle. The hosts are still there too: homeowners who travel for work and need to offset carrying costs, artists and freelancers for whom a few weeks of rental income is the difference between staying in the city and leaving it. The market didn’t contract so much as it went looking for a new shape.
That shape is still forming. Outside the major platforms, people have found ways to connect with spaces that never made it onto Airbnb — private arrangements, smaller services, host communities that operate more like networks than marketplaces. These options are harder to find, less visible by design, and often cheaper precisely because they don’t carry the overhead of a platform taking a cut of every transaction. They exist in the gap between what the law prohibits and what it doesn’t — and for travelers willing to look beyond the familiar search bar, that gap is real and navigable.
Finding a Workaround
The short-term rental market didn’t disappear in New York — it adapted. When the major platforms were effectively pushed out, a different kind of operator moved in: one that understood the rules well enough to build around them. The key insight was a legal one. The regulations that shut down Airbnb targeted booking platforms — services that process payments, handle transactions, and take a cut of every stay. They said nothing about services that simply connect people.
That distinction opened a door. CasaVoya, a New York-based service built explicitly around this model, was among the first to walk through it. “We provide introductions, we verify properties, we verify identities, but we connect a guest and host directly and allow them to arrange a stay off platform,” says Sasha Ramani, board member and AI advisor at CasaVoya. The platform charges no commission on either side. Hosts who want priority placement, damage protection, and other services can pay for a featured listing tier; everyone else pays nothing.
The experience on the guest side looks similar to what Airbnb once offered — a verified property, a confirmed host, a place to stay — but the legal architecture underneath it is entirely different. And because no platform is taking a cut of the transaction, the price the guest pays is exactly what the host actually receives: no middleman receiving commission. On a typical New York stay, that difference can run into the hundreds of dollars.
Before the Rush Hits
The 2026 soccer championships arrive in New York this summer, and the accommodation math doesn’t work. The tournament runs from June 11 to July 19, bringing an estimated half a million additional visitors to the New York area at a moment when hotel inventory is already strained and short-term rental options on major platforms are a fraction of what they once were. Average hotel rates in the city have already exceeded $400 a night — and that’s before tournament demand kicks in.
“That gap is real, and it’s only going to widen during the 2026 soccer championships, where hotels hit capacity and visitors have nowhere to turn,” says Ramani. For travelers who wait, the options will narrow fast. For those who start looking now, the picture is different. The inventory that exists outside the major platforms — in services like CasaVoya and in direct host networks — is available today, at prices that reflect what hosts actually want to charge rather than what a platform needs to extract. The travelers who find it first will be the ones who aren’t scrambling in June.
The broader lesson extends past this summer. New York’s accommodation gap isn’t a temporary condition — it’s a structural one, and it’s being replicated in cities across the country. Travelers who learn to look beyond the familiar platforms won’t just be better prepared for this summer. They’ll be better prepared for every major city, every major event, and every market where regulation has quietly closed the door on the options most people assume are still there.
About the Expert: Sasha Ramani is a board member and AI advisor at CasaVoya, a New York-based vacation rental introduction service that connects travelers with hosts in markets where traditional booking platforms no longer operate.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
