Excerpted from Fairfax Media’s ‘Domain’:
The NSW government will be regulating the short-term letting service by way of a 180-night limit on the number of nights a property can be rented out on sites like Airbnb and HomeAway each year. The 180-night limit will apply to houses and apartments in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. If the host – either the owner or a tenant – is present then there is not limit …
The NSW cap is the most generous compared to other popular Airbnb markets. It’s 60 days longer than Paris, 90 days longer than London and a 150 days longer than Amsterdam, which will halve its limit down to 30 nights a year in 2019.There are 55,000 Airbnb listings in NSW, which is one of the biggest markets in the world for the global short-term letting company.
Airbnb didn’t agree that their business was exacerbating Sydney’s high rental prices …
NSW Tenants Union policy officer Leo Patterson Ross said the cap of 180 days was not enough to dissuade investors from renting their properties on platforms like Airbnb instead of offering them up on longer-term leases to those struggling on Sydney’s rental market.
He said the NSW government number defied international experience, research and even the union’s data that recommend a 60-day cap instead.
“The 180-day limit is far too long. You can let out your place every night in summer and well into spring,” Mr Patterson Ross said.
He said it would only get worse for people in regional areas where there was no cap on the number of days a home could be rented out.
“All along the coast tenants are given six or nine months leases and are evicted to put people through the summer,” he said.
Byron Residents' Group 