New York governor Andrew Cuomo today (Oct. 21) signed into law some of the toughest restrictions on short-term apartment rentals in the country, a decision with dire implications for Airbnb. 
 
 Under the new rules, which were passed by the state legislature this summer, it is illegal for residents of “Class A” multiple dwellings in New York City—buildings designed for three or more families—to advertise their full home for rent for less than 30 days. (Renting a shared or spare room is perfectly fine). Violators will be fined $1,000 for the first offense, $5,000 for the second, and $7,500 for the third. 
 
 The legislation was fought bitterly by Airbnb, the home-sharing company valued at $30 billion. In July, Airbnb poured $1 million into Stronger Neighborhoods, a political action committee created to advocate for its peer-to-peer rentals. The company last month also held a summit for its New York City hosts, where it handed out postcards and encouraged them to write the governor a message “about why you love hosting.” 
 
 It was already illegal in New York City to rent out an entire apartment for less than 30 days, but Airbnb built the city into its biggest US market largely by ignoring the rules. The company has repeatedly characterized New York’s illegal hotel law as outdated and refused to help regulators police its bookings. The bill signed today by Cuomo is a workaround. Rather than having to figure out when and where illegal rentals are happening, regulators can now simply watch Airbnb’s site for any listings that break the rules. 
 
 “This is an issue that was given careful, deliberate consideration, but ultimately these activities are already expressly prohibited by law,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said. 
 
 The bill sets a devastating precedent for Airbnb, whose business is under siege across the US. This June, Airbnb sued its hometown of San Francisco for fining hosts who have failed to comply with regulations that took effect last year, which Airbnb itself helped get passed. In Los Angeles, the city council is moving toward new rules that would legalize some rentals of less than 30 days but also require Airbnb to turn over significant amounts of data. In Miami, Airbnb has spent close to $1 million on a TV ad campaign amid a city crackdown on short-term rentals that has imposed $1.6 million in fines over the last five months. 
 
 Airbnb had threatened over the summer to sue should the bill become law, and the company said today it had made good on that, filing claims against the city of New York and state attorney general Eric Schneiderman in federal court. The company has requested a temporary restraining order against the implementation of the bill as well as a formal injunction from a judge. 
 
 “In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest—the price-gouging hotel industry—and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” Josh Meltzer, Airbnb’s head of public policy for New York, said in an emailed statement. “We will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful.” 
 
 Airbnb’s stubborn refusal to comply with apartment regulations in New York has alienated a vast array of special interests, including the hotel industry and unions, affordable housing advocates, and tenants’ rights groups. Those groups cheered the governor’s decision to sign the bill. 
 
 “Airbnb thought they could come into New York, break our laws, and bully our leaders like Governor Cuomo and legislators, who have stood up to protect the affordable housing supply for millions of New Yorkers,” Peter Ward, president of the powerful New York Hotel Trades Council, said in a statement. “Today, we see they were wrong.” 
 
 Cuomo had until Oct. 29 to sign the bill after it was sent to his desk earlier this week. On Oct. 19, Airbnb proposed cracking down on its own hosts in New York City in a last-ditch attempt to mitigate its situation. In a column in the New York Daily News, the company said it would limit hosts in the city’s five boroughs to renting a single home, a proposal designed to protect the residential housing supply and deter property owners from running illegal hotels. Airbnb also offered to create a hotline for neighbors, who have complained in the past that Airbnb guests disrupt the “quiet enjoyment” of their apartments. 
 
 But rather than help Airbnb, the proposals only rankled its political opponents more, who said the company had taken its ideas straight to the press instead of trying to negotiate in good faith. 
 
 “In spite of Airbnb’s misleading statements to the contrary, those who want to legally use sites like Airbnb—for example by renting out a spare room while they remain in residence—are still free to do so, as they have always been,” Linda Rosenthal, the assembly member who sponsored the bill, said today. “Those who are breaking our laws and disrupting their neighbors and communities will now face stiffer penalties.” ||||| The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company. 
 
 A thin trail of documents associated with the sale led first to a second-story office on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, of Michael X. Tang, a lawyer who represents Trump Birth House. In the cramped and bustling office, which, according to its website, specializes in facilitating Chinese purchases of American real estate, a woman at a desk welcomed visitors. 
 
 “Oh, about the Trump house,” she said. She continued: Mr. Tang declined to comment. 
 
 Documents show that Mr. Tang was also the lawyer for a seemingly unrelated transaction on a palatial home in Old Westbury, N.Y., which sold for more than $3.6 million in 2014 to a person named Jiying Wei. The redbrick mansion, tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac and abutted by a private tennis court, is a far cry from the modest butter-colored childhood home of Mr. Trump. But, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, the mansion’s owner is a relative of the woman from China who bought the Trump family home. 
 
 Standing in the collonaded entryway of her home a few doors down in Old Westbury, a neighbor, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, deepened the mystery: The only person who lives in the mansion, she said, is the family’s son, a local college student; the rest of the family lives in China. 
 
 The trail dead-ended at the cul-de-sac: The house was empty and the owner could not be reached. 
 
 “I did have some expectation that the purchaser would be a huge Trump supporter from within America,” Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said of the Jamaica Estates home. He declined to reveal the identity of the buyer. “But it is entirely possible that the purchaser is a huge Trump supporter from outside of America,” he said. ||||| The house at 85-15 Wareham Place, where Donald Trump lived as a boy, was sold for $2.14 million last week. View Full Caption Paul Brainard 
 
 QUEENS — A real estate mogul who bought President Donald Trump’s boyhood home in the affluent Jamaica Estates neighborhood for $1.39 million in December flipped it at an auction for three-quarters of a million dollars more than what he paid, auctioneers said Monday. 
 
 Manhattan real estate investor Michael Davis sold the property at 85-15 Wareham Place — where Trump was born and lived until he was 4 — for $2.14 million last week. 
 
 “This is a house that would otherwise be worth about $1 million dollars, and we sold it for over twice that price," Misha Haghani, owner of Paramount Realty USA, which handled the auction, said Monday. 
 
 Some speculated ahead of the auction that the property which — as President Trump’s boyhood home might become an official historic site one day — would fetch as much as $10 million. 
 
 “This property is so much more than just real estate,” noted Haghani, who closed the sale last Thursday. "It’s the childhood home of the 45th President of the United States. That intangible value makes it a perfect example of why special properties are appropriately sold by auction, just like art is.” 
 
 Haghani declined to reveal the name of the buyer who snatched up the 2,500-square foot brick-and-stucco house, but he told DNAinfo New York that the name of the entity that purchased it is Trump Birth House LLC. 
 
 The five-bedroom Tudor which also features four-and-a-half bathrooms, a living room with a fireplace, a five-car driveway with a two-car garage, was auctioned in January after Davis bought from previous property owners, the Kestenbergs, who are restaurateurs in Manhattan. 
 
 Initially, the Kestenbergs listed the house on the market last July for $1.65 million, but then reduced the price twice, first to $1.399 million and later to $1.25 million, according to the property's listing broker Laffey Real Estate. 
 
 They then planned to sell the property at an auction last October — the night of the third debate between then candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — but postponed it at the last minute to give prospective buyers more time to see the home amid media attention surrounding the sale. 
 
 In December, however, they decided to sell it to Davis who carried out the original plan to auction it after the election. 
 
 The Kestenbergs, who purchased the house in 2008 for $782,500, sold it to Davis because they were getting divorced and were satisfied with the price offered by the buyer, Haghani told DNAinfo in December. 
 
 Donald Trump's father built the house in 1940. The family later moved to a larger house on nearby Midland Parkway. 
 
 Trump himself joked on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" last year that he was interested in the property. 
 
 "I wanna buy it, it's beautiful," he said.
– Someone has agreed to hand over $2.14 million for President Trump's childhood home in Queens—and an unnamed neighbor tells the New York Times she's witnessed suited-up people pulling up to the Jamaica Estates home in black luxury SUVs and speaking Chinese since the secretive deal went down. She says she wants to know why they're so keen on the president's boyhood residence, built by his father. "What do they want?" she muses. Although the LLC that bought the Tudor-style abode at auction is listed as "Trump Birth House," someone who's said to know details of the deal tells the Times the buyer behind the LLC is a Chinese woman. "Trump is a very popular kind of character in China," a New York real estate agent says, noting she's not surprised someone with ties to that country would purchase the home. DNAinfo documents the home's paper trail over the past decade or so: It was first purchased by a married couple in 2008 for close to $800,000, then sold to a real estate investor for nearly $1.4 million in December—meaning he made about three-quarters of a million dollars on his quick flip. The owner of the realty group that closed the deal last week says the lucrativeness of such a transaction is the "perfect example of why special properties are appropriately sold by auction, just like art is." Meanwhile, in Trump Tower, a woman who owns an apartment there was fined $1,000 by the city for advertising her 30th-floor digs for rent through Airbnb, Quartz reports. Lena Yelagina was hit with the penalty due to a recently passed NYC law barring ads that rent out a full apartment for fewer than 30 days. (There's been some grumbling about Melania Trump choosing to stick around NYC for now.)