A former real estate agent has been charged with illegally occupying two apartments at the site of a stalled hotel project in West Chelsea and renting them out on Airbnb.
Largo Development, the owner of 540 West 29th Street, filed a lawsuit this week against tenant Ethan Noorani for allegedly breaking in and encroaching on the building, then offering a 2,000-square-foot apartment and listing it on a short-term lodging platform for exorbitant nightly fees.
“This is another Airbnb opportunist who broke into the apartment and is now using the court system to avoid eviction,” said a lawyer for Lago. Nurani denied the allegations by phone, but declined to go further. comment.
The lawsuit comes after a New York City law requiring apartment owners to register short-term lodging listings was delayed and is the latest in a battle between tenants, landlords and authorities to regulate rental platforms as the travel industry suffers. The disruption of the new crown pneumonia and the epidemic. Housing shortages lead to higher living costs for urban center dwellers.
Largo told a Manhattan court this week that as part of its weekly inspections to ensure the building remained vacant, it found that Nolani had illegally entered one of the apartments and offered it to short-term tenants.
The developer has denied leasing it to Noorani or anyone else since acquiring the three-story building in 2019, when it partnered with Dutch hotel group PPHE to develop 98 rooms on a complex on West 29th Street. Hotel rooms and 55 apartment units. The site applied for a demolition permit in 2018. But five years later, it’s still standing.
Lawyers for Largo declined to comment on the stalled project, which may require city council approval as new citywide hotel licensing rules are passed in 2021.For the record, no new hotels have been approved since the rule went into effect real deal Reviewed.
Noorani listed the property on Airbnb and it has since been taken down take it down, containing comments going back to at least December 2022, which is inconsistent with the timeline Largo said Noorani first entered the building in May. When Lago asked for a police standoff, Nurani offered a two-year lease that ended in June 2024, the lawsuit said.
Largo claimed the lease was fraudulent and falsely stated that the address of the building owner on the lease traced back to a grocery store in Brooklyn. In fact, the landlord’s address on the lease is 185 South Fourth Street, which is the location of a rental building Largo owns in Brooklyn.
lease signed Tenanted by Noorani; abbreviated as “DB” by Owner’s Row. On June 13, Lago told Noorani to move out of the apartment within 10 days. He hasn’t vacated yet.
Lago’s lawyer described Nurani’s actions as “blackmail” because he said an offer to settle the dispute was made soon after the lawsuit was filed.
“It was an unintended consequence of protecting tenants,” Largo’s attorney said. “Some people should be protected, while others can be exploited.”
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Airbnb is proposing to offer hosts a cut of short-term rental revenue, though the program only covers a small portion of the rental inventory on the platform. Landlords have sued tenants in order to take a stand on the short-term rental ban.
The company recently denied data that suggested its revenue was falling significantly, even as its growth rate slowed.
