New services eliminate the hassle of listing a short-term rental, but not necessarily the risk

By Virginia K. Smith | June 22, 2015 - 2:18PM

Even as the Attorney General tries to make it harder than ever to list your apartment on a short-term rental site, a growing number of services are aiming to make the process as easy as possible, the New York Times reported over the weekend. For hosts willing to pay fees that can vary anywhere from three to 50 percent of their profits, a variety of services are now available, offering to handle everything from cleaning your place to getting guests your keys to storing valuables you don't want accessible to strangers.

OneFineStay, for instance, lists your apartment on a variety of different sites, photographs all your belongings, and swaps out everything right down to the linens and the toiletries, for fees that range from 20 to 50 percent of your profits. Other, similar options include Guesty (which specializes in managing Airbnb listings specifically), Flatbook (which is more geared towards sublets a month or two long), and Proprly, which focuses on a la carte options like key delivery and cleaning services.

Many of them have minimum requirements that must be met for an apartment to be featured on their sites (meaning would-be renters know they've been vetted to varying degrees). Nonetheless, as always with short-term rentals, the usual caveats apply. You're putting yourself at legal risk if your building doesn't allow short-term sublets or you're listing your rental in violation of the Multiple Dwelling Law, which prohibits renting out an entire apartment for 30 days are less.

And as most renters' insurance policies won't cover you in the case of short-term sublets, you'll want to check with any potential listing service about what, if any, kind of protection they offer. Still, if you're in the clear and still want to list your place, it might be nice to have someone else worry about the logistics.

That Airbnb orgy victim? He now says he's "homeless" and on the tenant blacklist

SF landlords sued by city pay $276,000 for short-term renting: are NYC landlords next?

There are probably going to be a lot more Airbnb sting operations

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