Mayor Adrian Schrinner says property owners would now need appropriate planning approvals, body corporate support and a 24-7 property manager for short-term rentals
Hard to argue tbh… Is there a negative to something like this I’m not aware of?
Personally I think Airbnb is the stupidest thing going. You pay more than hotel rates, to live in a house you have to clean and tidy yourself and then pay cleaning fees on top, and its often a hassle if anything goes wrong as there’s no responsible party you can approach - Airbnb shrug their shoulders, and the host just hides behind a mobile number they can conveniently turn off.
Have used them a couple of times in the past purely because we had pets and I hated it.
Needing proper planning approvals is a no-brainer. Technically, this has probably always been required, but they never bothered enforcing it. It’s nice to see that that’s going to change.
I strongly oppose the idea that it should need body corporate support. The body corporate should function to maintain and upgrade the property and its facilities. They shouldn’t be able to tell you how you use your own apartment. They already have too much control over such things. My body corporate is actually really good, but our by-laws theoretically give it the power to say you can’t dry your clothes on your balcony, and that’s just not ok in my opinion. Allowing the body corporate to tell you what you can do with your apartment is very in keeping with the LNP’s paternalistic attitude, and it’s gross that they’re using the current anti-Airbnb zeitgeist as an opportunity to reinforce that.
I don’t know what I think about the property manager requirement. Guests at short stay should absolutely have someone they can call if something goes wrong. If that’s all this means, no issue. But if there’s some specific qualification or accreditation that person needs, or it has to be anything more than “phone number of a person who can authorise emergency repairs”, it seems unnecessary.
As a separate point, my biggest question is: how is any of this going to affect temporary Airbnbs? The original selling point of Airbnb was that you can rent out your place while you’re away on holiday, to help subsidise your trip. The article gives no indication of how people who use it in this way will be affected. I don’t think it should mitigate the requirement that a guest be able to call someone in an emergency, but it should mean you don’t need the same kind of planning approval and don’t pay a higher rates fee. And it’s a situation where the body corporate should absolutely have no control, even if someone were willing to give them power over more permanent Airbnbs.
I’m dubious this will have any effect, but at least it’s trying something. I’m sure other cities & states will be watching…
With the nation wide housing issues, it can’t be solved with one silver bullet, it needs many policies to work together. Every little thing helps.
Yeah completely agree. There are a wide range of policies that can help out with our current housing crisis. Many of which will have varying impacts depending not just on how they themselves are implemented, but on which other policies are enacted alongside them, with some policies helping to reinforce each other as more than the sum of their parts.
This one I think is worth doing, because it will help. But it’s also likely to be one of the smaller impacts of the various things I can think of. The article says that they are aware of just 400 places right now. Doubtless it will end up being more than that, but that still gives you the sense of just how small it’ll really be.
It really feels like a ‘Do something, anything!’ situation.
To use a cricket analogy, take any easy singles now, and you can hit the boundaries when(if?) they come.
Maybe, except I’m not convinced there’s any desire with the LNP especially to actually hit those boundaries. They’d rather hit a couple of singles to get people off their back, and leave it at that.
