Civic News

Renting out your apartment via Airbnb is illegal in most of Philadelphia

We hate to rain on your Airbnb parade, but...

A screenshot of an interactive map of city properties where short-term rentals are permitted. (Screenshot via newsworks.org)

We hate to rain on your Airbnb parade, but if you’re renting out your apartment to tourists or vagrants on the popular website, there’s a good chance it’s illegal.

There’s only a few spots in the city that are zoned to allow people to offer short-term rentals, NewsWorks’ Zack Seward recently reported, and even if you live in those spots, you need to have a special short-term rental license. Still, the city has yet to come after anyone for renting their apartment via Airbnb, NewsWorks reported. The folks from on-demand car service app Sidecar, which recently expanded to Philly, haven’t been as lucky, as we’ve reported.

Beyond that, remember that to operate any business in Philadelphia — any operation in which you exchange goods and services for money at all — you technically need a business privilege license to operate legally because, of course, you should be paying taxes on that income.

Read (or listen to) the whole NewsWorks story here.

And while we’re on the subject of renting your place out to strangers, here’s a cautionary tale (plus an update) from City Paper that illustrates how hard it is to legally get someone out of your house once you’ve taken money from them (and they legally become “a tenant”).

This may still be early on in the pipeline of consumer web services that reduce so much friction to transactions that they fly in the face of local regulations. Think about Gov. Tom Corbett’s testy relationship with eBay and sales tax, or how Craigslist had more than a decade of community listings before a slate of governmental crackdowns around it being a forum for unlicensed transactions.

Airbnb, Uber, Sidecar and others are meeting that very fate now. At best, it’s disruptions being brought into the mainstream to save us from outdated policy. At worst, it’s another roadblock to innovation in our economy across any number of industries.

Companies: Airbnb

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending

Election results: Live updates on presidential, Senate, House and PA races

Technical issues at the polls hit Pennsylvania, county extends voting hours

Philly's indie turnout tracker crashes on what could be a record-breaking Election Day

Hispanic tech workers more than double representation in key US cities

Technically Media