The salad days of Airbnb look to be over

Short-term accommodation platforms have had it all pretty much their own way since 2012, when Airbnb launched in Australia, but governments are coming for their piece of the action.

In NSW and Victoria, Airbnb and its competitors have had a notable impact on the property rental market. Local governments in both states have been forced to reconsider and adjust housing and zoning policies to address the shift in housing dynamics.

The rise of short-stay accommodation has reduced the availability of long-term rental properties, particularly in sought-after urban areas and tourist regions. This reduction has contributed to an increase in rental prices, making housing affordability a growing concern for both residents and towns, where expensive rents have scored an own goal and driven away workers who service the tourism industry.

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The Airbnb expansion initially saw homes listed as short-term holiday lets. This was often in defiance of planning laws, but local authorities frequently lacked the resources to police their own regulations in the face of the Airbnb tsunami. Now governments across the country, indeed around the world, are edging toward reforms, driven by diverse reasons, including the need to crack down on abuses, defend the amenity of existing homes and impose taxes to disincentivise owners.

The Victorian government last month announced a 7.5 per cent tax on short-stay rentals, the first such levy in Australia. The levy is part of a policy move to construct 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Others have already moved in different ways. Last June, Hobart City and Brisbane City councils voted to double rates for owners of short-term accommodation to drive investors back to the rental market. Queensland, as the other big short-term accommodation market, is advancing slowly after its Treasurer, Cameron Dick, was burned last year with a bizarre proposal to calculate the taxes of all Queenslander landholders based on their Australia-wide property holdings. Meantime, Noosa requires short-stay hosts to register and post the number of a 24-hour hotline on their front doors in case of antisocial behaviour by guests.

And now Airbnbs and other short-term rentals in Byron Bay owned by absentee landlords will be limited to operating for just 60 days a year, in a major policy shift aimed at increasing the supply of homes in the NSW north coast holiday hotspot, after homelessness jumped 117 per cent and research found unoccupied homes made up 13.9 per cent of the town’s housing supply.

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NSW’s holiday letting laws limit short-term stays to 180 nights a year and allow owners’ corporations to ban apartment lets, but only in greater Sydney and investment properties, not principal places of residence. The 60-day cap at Byron Bay is to be imposed because the social impact on the holiday home market was more significant than in other tourist towns. That won’t stop other councils lining up to acquire the same powers.

The Minns government, expected to introduce the regulations to cap the Byron Bay short-term accommodation market on Monday, is also eyeing the recent levy decision in Victoria. The rationale behind such a tax – increasing housing affordability and availability for long-term residents – has sparked interest in NSW’s corridors of power.

As policymakers grapple with the dual concerns of housing affordability and the broader economic implications of the short-term rental market, the potential for NSW to adopt a Victorian-style approach is a certainty.

This is no bad thing. But the impending policy’s primary focus should be about making more supply available for Sydney renters and owners, rather than taking advantage of a short-term tax haul under the guise of affordable housing.

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