Short-term housing in New York City and the 30-day rule

A conference, a three-week collaboration, a month of archive work, a house-hunting trip before a longer appointment. New York makes all of those unexpectedly hard, and the reason is a rule most visitors have never heard of.

The rule, in one paragraph

Under New York State's Multiple Dwelling Law, a class A multiple dwelling — which is what almost every ordinary apartment building is — may be used only for permanent residence purposes. The statute defines that as occupancy of a dwelling unit by the same person or family for thirty consecutive days or more. New York City then layers its own registration law on top: short-term rental hosts must register with the city, and platforms may not process transactions for unregistered listings. The city says it cannot approve a registration for a listing that offers an unhosted stay, an entire unit, or occupancy for more than two guests.

Put those together and the practical position is stark. For a stay under thirty days, a whole apartment to yourself is not something a host can lawfully offer you in a normal residential building.

What is still lawful under thirty days

• Hotels and other class B buildings. Buildings the city has approved for legal short-term occupancy are outside the registration requirement. This is what hotels, hostels and some residence buildings are.
• A hosted stay. A registered host renting a room in the unit they actually live in, present during your stay, with no more than two guests. The host has to be a permanent occupant of that specific unit — a boarder or lodger does not count — and it has to be the unit they live in, not another one in the same building.
• Institutional guest accommodation. Universities and research institutes are the obvious answer for a short academic visit and the one people forget. Rockefeller has campus guest rooms described as available to official visitors invited to collaborate with a department or laboratory. Mount Sinai's visitor housing runs up to ninety days with no stated minimum. These need a host department to ask on your behalf, so start there.

What is not lawful, however it is advertised

A whole apartment for a fortnight, with the "owner" out of the country and a key in a lockbox, is the thing the city's enforcement arm exists to stop. Rent-regulated units and public housing cannot be registered for short-term rental at all, and building owners can put whole buildings on a prohibited list.

The city publishes its registration dataset, and you can check a listing against it. Note the warning that comes with it: even if a listing appears in the dataset, if it offers you an unhosted stay or a stay for three or more guests, the host is operating outside the rules. And if you booked a listing in the dataset but were sent to a different address, the city asks you to file a complaint.

None of this puts *you* at legal risk as a guest — the obligations fall on hosts and platforms. The risk to you is practical: a booking that gets cancelled at short notice, an arrival where nobody answers the door, or a place that turns out not to be the one in the photographs.

Why thirty days is often the cheaper answer anyway

Run the arithmetic before you assume a three-week hotel stay is the frugal option. A month in a furnished room, a coliving room or a sublet is frequently less than three weeks of hotel rates in Manhattan, and it comes with a kitchen, laundry and an address you can use for a bank account. Several operators set their minimum at exactly thirty days for precisely this reason.

If your work is twenty-three days long, booking thirty is often both cheaper and legally simpler. It also removes the worst version of the problem: arriving with nowhere confirmed because everything short is either a hotel or a listing you should not trust.

If you genuinely cannot stretch to thirty days

• Ask your host institution first, and early. Guest accommodation on a campus is the cleanest short-stay answer that exists, and it is usually invisible unless someone inside asks for it.
• Ask about the university's negotiated hotel rates. Columbia's visitors centre, for instance, publishes discounted rates at nearby hotels bookable through its own travel portal. It is not glamorous, but it is real money.
• Look at a hosted room rather than a whole apartment. A room in someone's home, with them there, is the lawful shape of a short stay in New York — and it is often a better experience for a first visit anyway.
• Be sceptical of anything that solves your problem too neatly. A whole apartment for two weeks at a good price, available immediately, from someone who cannot meet you, is the shape of a scam more often than it is a bargain.

One more thing for people arriving to start a longer position

If your appointment begins in three weeks but your lease starts on the first of the month, do not try to bridge the gap with a series of short bookings. Bridge it with one thirty-day booking that overlaps the start of your lease. It is less work, it is usually cheaper, and you will not spend your first fortnight in New York moving your suitcases every four days.