[NathanKP]

In NYC its actually illegal to do a short term sublet of an entire apartment. So this is a common workaround so they can give you a short term sublet. They can claim that they just rented you some space from their office so they don't get fined for short term subletting. They can also tell you that the space is private (because by NYC standards it basically is private, you get desensitized to stuff like this when you live in close quarters with lots of people).

[valuearb]

I'm thinking AirBNB should be enforcing the accepted definition of private, not NYC's.