by Jimmy Thomson Contributor, afr.com
The backlash against uncontrolled numbers of holiday lets in cities and tourist towns is gaining momentum.
This week, City of Melbourne council voted to impose a $350 registration fee and a limit of 180 nights a year on Airbnb-style short-term holiday lets, which will predominantly affect apartment blocks.
Melbourne is far from alone. As AFR Weekend reported back in June, there is growing consensus among policymakers that the benefits of additional tourism are outweighed by the economic and social cost of driving renters out of the places tourists frequent.
Or to put it another way, there’s something seriously wrong when tourists are taking up apartments while residents are living in tents and caravan parks.
Predictably, the short-term rental lobby predicts any clampdown will cost jobs, that “mum and dad” investors will suffer, and that there is no proof that holiday lets will be returned to the residential rental market. Pass the salt!
Melbourne is not the first municipality in Australia to attempt to impose restrictions on short-term holiday rentals.
Councils in Victoria, NSW and Queensland are discovering they have the power – and always have had – to regulate short-term letting.
Councils could not ban short-term lets, and we can’t assume they wanted to, but they have the power to regulate them.
Yet most haven't had the budgets or sophisticated knowledge of the holiday let market required to police them.
Now, registration fees will raise the revenue required while allowing local authorities to see what unrestricted holiday letting does to local housing markets.
The City of Melbourne voted last Tuesday to push ahead with registration fees and caps for 4100 listings, which account for 14 per cent of Melbourne’s total residential stock.
A consultation process that kicks off this week will report back by November to draft the law, with the aim of implementing it in February next year, minutes of Tuesday’s council meeting show.
A report prepared for the Melbourne city councillors ahead of Tuesday’s vote cited the experiences of Sydney, London, Vancouver, Denver, Amsterdam and San Francisco and said the economic costs of short-term rentals “likely” outweighed their benefits.
Read the full article by Jimmy at https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/expect-melbourne-city-s-350-airbnb-fee-to-spread-20230830-p5e0is
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