AirBnB is Killing it in Miami Despite Patchy Legal Landscape

May 5, 2016

A Miami AirBnB

Miami is AirBnB’s fifth largest market in the U.S. The short-term home rental app is killing it down here, where hundreds, possibly thousands of small South Beach apartments are rented out on a nightly basis to tourists from across the world. It’s not just the beach that’s raking in the dollars though. “Miami is one of our largest U.S. markets and certainly a broader part of our strategy,” Christopher Nully, a spokesperson for Airbnb, told The Real Deal, which took a deeper look into the future of the company’s presence in Miami. “We really see increased growth in the market, but not just along the beach.” And this is all happening despite a patchy legal landscape, where short term rentals are allowed to varying degrees in various South Florida municipalities, and enforcement is highly uneven.

So, is the AirBnB landscape really as much like the Wild West as it sounds? Well, kind of yeah. It’s a system so unstreamlined that “I’m not sure anyone knows how to deal with it,” said Joe Hernandez, head of the real estate group at Weiss Serota also told Real Deal. Meanwhile, the hotel industry feels “under attack,” as Russell Galbut, partner in hotels such as the Gale, and the Shelborne, said while at a panel recently.