Despite the rough history Airbnb has had with New York City regulators, they have begun sharing data on the ways that people share their homes with guests in the 5 boroughs of Manhattan, including statistics like host earnings, types of listings and how often people rent out their homes. In an article for The New York Times, Mike Isaac (@MikeIsaac) shares the story.

This marks the first time Airbnb has voluntarily shared city data on how the hosts use the platform. This move follows a public pledge made last month to build an “open and transparent” community. Chris Lehane, head of global policy and public affairs, said “Our hope is that people will understand 99 percent of people on Airbnb in New York City are using it as an economic lifeline.” This action is part of the company’s effort to convince regulators that Airbnb is not a platform for illegal operators who use it to skirt housing laws and hotel restrictions.

A report last year by the New York State attorney general’s office said almost ¾ of Airbnb rentals in the city were illegal. State law mandates a short-term entire-home rental is illegal if an apartment is rented out for less than 30 days. This landed Airbnb in court, and last May, Airbnb agreed to hand over anonymized data on the platform’s hosts in the city to the New York State attorney general.

This newly released data (only available by making an appointment to visit Airbnb’s NYC office) shows that a majority of NYC hosts do not have numerous properties to rent out. From November 2014-2015, 75% of revenue earned by hosts in NYC who share their entire home came from people who only have 1 or 2 listings on the platform. Airbnb projects that this number will rise to 93% in the coming year. The data also shows that the typical annual host income is roughly $5,110.

Despite the increasing regulations, Airbnb is still growing, valued at about $24 billion and just recently closed another $100 million in venture financing. The company states it will expand its data-sharing efforts beyond just NYC as it hopes by sharing anonymized data, regulators will work to draft more up-to-date legislation that deals with the short-term rental phenomenon that is taking over the way people live.

As Chris Lehane said, “Today is really the first example of us walking the walk. It’s important for us now, especially in New York, to start having this conversation.”

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