Brokers Strike Unregistered From Listings

A grace period to allow time for owners of rental properties to comply with a new town law requiring them to register with East Hampton Town and obtain a registry number expired on Sunday.

As of yesterday, the town’s Building Department had issued 1,895 rental registry numbers, according to Ann Glennon, the chief building inspector, who said numerous last-minute applicants have been in the office recently. “The last few days they’ve been flying in here,” she said. In addition, about 75 applications per day have been arriving by mail.

Because it is illegal under the new regulations to advertise a rental property without a registry number, local real estate brokers have removed unregistered listings from their websites, several agencies said. The law went into effect earlier this year, but town officials had said that enforcement would not begin in earnest until this month.

Brokerages report a mixed response to the new law.

“Most agencies have said, if you don’t have a rental number as of May 1, we can’t list you,” Tom MacNiven, a Compass broker, said. He said he has fielded inquiries about the registry process from a number of homeowners, but has heard “no real backlash.”

“It’s just a part of doing business,” he said.

Others, such as Mason Horstmann of Main Street Properties in East Hampton, have seen property owners decide to pull rentals from the market rather than comply with the law. “I think some people just don’t want to do it,” he said. For others, “it’s too much trouble,” he said. “I think a lot of people are saying, ‘I’ll just take my house off the market for this year.’ I think it will catch on as time goes on, but right now I think there are a lot of people who are saying ‘I’ll just use it myself’ ” rather than rent their house.

A group of clients who have not yet registered their rentals are “scrambling” to get it done, Mr. Horstmann said. Then there are a few who have told him, ‘It’s against my Constitutional rights — let them sue me.’ ”

Based on legal advice, his brokerage, like others, is deleting unregistered properties from its website. For owners who have not registered, “that’s having an effect on their exposure,” he said.

“It’s definitely affecting things. Numbers are down, for sure.” But, he said, “I don’t know how much of that is Airbnb.” That online listing service, which by all accounts has played a part in the proliferation here of illegal short-term rentals and is a focus of town enforcement efforts, has dampened the last couple of rental seasons, in Mr. Horstmann’s estimation. “Now, the rental registry — it doesn’t really help things, for sure,” he said.

On the plus side for brokers, though, the time owners must take to comply with the registry law “weeds out certain owners that aren’t necessarily committed to renting their houses,” the broker said.