If your personal definition of property is such that property has never existed anywhere (except maybe early medieval Iceland) than you don't have a very useful definition.

The standard conception of property in American legal thought is the 'bundle of rights' metaphor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_of_rights

There are two reasons it's not as simple as that.

The first is that there are a ton of rules about owning property, and (for the most part) nobody thinks that any of those other rules mean that it's not really the owner's property. There are zoning laws, for instance: if I own a house, I can't run a business there. If I own an office building, I can't live there. If I own a three-story building, I probably can't knock it down and replace it with a forty-story building. There's the rule of law: if I run a suspected meth lab in my basement, or harbor a suspected criminal in a spare bedroom, the state gets to barge in. There's taxes: if I don't give the state money merely for the privilege of owning property, it gets to take the property back. There are rent control/stabilization laws: depending on what my property is, I can't charge more than a certain amount to rent it out, even if the tenant is willing to pay. There are certainly political theories under which all of those mean that I don't really own the property, but those aren't the theories we live under. Airbnb shouldn't get an excuse just because we want to start theorizing at that particular point.

The second is that, for most rental property in New York, the state is already involved. There are tax exemption programs, subsidies, city services and infrastructure, and all sorts of things without which the building would not have existed in the first place. The state is more than free to set conditions on buildings where it helped with the construction, even if that condition is "We get to set rules arbitrarily forevermore" - if an owner doesn't want to agree, they're welcome to try building without the state's help.

The thing is you DONT own your property. Think you do? Don't pay propert tax and see what happens.

Think you do? Do you have an alodial title for your property?

No? You are a serf who rents the privilege of a roof over your head from the state. The illusion is nice but it's not real.

For others who want to be lazy, but not that lazy to forego knowing what that word means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allod (so it seems to be allodial, not alodial, though dictionaries know both)

Please elaborate. I don't follow you. Are you arguing that if I own an apartment, I should be able to rent my apartment out for any purpose? Can I rent it out as a party venue? Can I rent it to 50 people at once? Are you just saying that regulation shouldn't be at the state level?

Can you rent it out to a nice family of 5 who are clean, drug fee, relatively intelligent, quiet, and get along with the neighbors?

Did you say yes to that particular leading question?

Then why say no to renting it out to that same father for 10 days?

Exactly. The properties are being used for exactly what they were meant to be used for, living space.

Your statement amounts to

"can I run around in my backyard firing my weapons off in random directions? Well then why would you expect them to allow me to live there quietly?"

People staying somewhere for only 10 days have less concern about the neighbours, the building and the community.

The father probably wants his children to be able to sleep without interruption at the weekend, but is more likely to clatter up the stairs drunk at 3am during his 10-day business trip.

There are two different propositions here:

1. "If the state has a say in renting a property then it's not really the proprietor's property".

2. "If the state has a say in renting a property in a way which has no effect on neighbours then it's not really the proprietor's property"

The person you replied to was arguing against proposition 1. You seem to be arguing in favour of proposition 2. Perhaps you are both correct?

That second one isn't living space; it's being a hotel.

Property rights do not exist without the enforcement of the state. Property is essentially a limited contract between the owner and the state, so of course property owners cannot go against the will of the state.

There are many different types of properties. Condominiums and co-ops work very differently. If you are a condo owner and you give someone else your keys for 2 nights, you are violating the contractual rights of everyone else that owns property in the building and putting them at financial risk. The proprietor and state are the not the only parties involved.

that is definitely true for a co-op, and whether or not it is true for a condo is more up in the air. but I suspect you meant to say "co-op" where you said "condo".

Everything I've come to understand as a condo board president is that it is not "up in the air". Court cases have established precedent and we have reasonable by-laws. If we all collectively don't want it, we don't have to have it. Our lawyers tell us what we are doing is perfectly within our rights.

You depend on a state (or an entity functionally equivalent to it) to enforce any conceivable definition you have of property.