Opinion
The global letting agency is promoting genuine sharing (again) as whole-home lets face increasing restrictions.
Jimmy ThomsonContributorHas Airbnb had a sea change? Has the ubiquitous holiday rental platform, confronted by complaints about homelessness, rising rents and plummeting availability, been forced to change tack?
You may have noticed an increase in glossy TV ads showing nice people moving in with even nicer people, usually somewhere exotic. Then the Airbnb logo appears, launching its “Rooms” concept.
In Byron Bay, the council is attempting to impose a 60-night limit on holiday lets. Kiara Bloom
Make that “re-launching”. This is nothing new, as writer Lee Tulloch pointed out in a recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald. In fact, renting a room in your house or apartment to a traveller was the original concept for Airbnb, rather than renting an empty home to strangers that the “host” need never meet.
So why the return to basics now? Airbnb founder Brian Chesky says he regrets the direction Airbnb took en route to building his $US80 billion global business.
Or is it that Airbnb has simply maxed out its whole-home potential and expects greater growth in its original, genuine sharing model, currently only a tiny part of its business?
The initial global Airbnb expansion had whole homes listed as short-term holiday lets (STHLs). This was often in defiance of planning laws, but local authorities around the world lacked the resources to police their own regulations in the face of an unforeseen tsunami of illicit STHLs.
In tourism-dependent Australia, the state governments’ response was to neuter planning regulations in policies that could only be described as “come on down”.
Now, amid affordability and homelessness crises, awkward questions are being asked, and some answers are not to Airbnb’s liking.
As reported in The Australian Financial Review last week, the city council in Hobart, Tasmania, has doubled the rates on holiday let properties in an effort to drive investors back to the residential rental market. Brisbane City Council has raised its surcharge on holiday lets for the same reason.
Airbnb has cried foul and says it would rather pay a single fee to state governments. Of course, it would. It was state governments that encouraged the spread of holiday lets in the first place, and it’s in local areas that resistance is growing.
In Byron Bay, that all-tourist town where service providers can’t afford to live, the council is attempting to impose a 60-night limit on holiday lets.
In Queensland, Noosa requires STHL hosts to register and post the number of a 24-hour hotline on their front doors in case of antisocial behaviour by guests.
Victoria’s super-weak STHL laws have led to serious problems in Melbourne apartment blocks and led to upmarket developers including “no-Airbnb” clauses in their sales contracts.
NSW’s holiday letting laws limit STHLs 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 new Labor government will eventually have to rule on Byron Bay’s proposed 60-night cap, knowing there are other local councils queuing up to acquire the same powers.
Meanwhile, Australia is not alone in giving powers back to local authorities. From next year, holiday lets in Scotland will need to be licensed, at uncapped fees set by local councils, and in England, STHLs will soon require planning permission.
As for Aussie investors, perhaps an increase in rates on holiday lets might take properties on the fringes of the hot spots off the tourist market as the income gap between STHLs and residential rentals narrows.
And your long-term tenants might get some relief from the constant churn of strangers and party animals in neighbouring flats.
Flat Chat, Flat Chat Wrap podcast.
Airbnb goes back to basics as local resistance grows - The Australian Financial Review
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment