by Cara Waters, published in TheAge.com.au
Resident complaints about raging parties, noise at all hours and overflowing bins have prompted Port Phillip council to consider tighter controls on Airbnb and short-stay accommodation.
A levy and registration requirements are among steps being considered to regulate and manage the short-stay industry at a City of Port Phillip meeting on Wednesday night. The area includes the Airbnb hotspots of St Kilda, Elwood and Port Melbourne.
A report prepared by the council highlights the impact of short-stay accommodation on the rental crisis, and reveals it has received 153 complaints from residents in the past seven years, with a surge in grievances in June.
Residents complained of “noise all hours”, “partying all night, drinking and using offensive language”, “shouting, clanging bottles and fire alarms going off” and “Airbnb guests ... walking down the street in their underwear with their trousers down”.
The report identified 774 short-stay properties in the City of Port Phillip area, through searches on platforms including Airbnb, Booking.com and Stayz, with 149 properties listed in St Kilda, 110 in Port Melbourne and 104 in Elwood.
However, one resident – who did not want to be named because of fear of repercussions from short-stay hosts in his building – said he believed the number was much higher, with open-source database Inside Airbnb listing 2740 properties in the area.
Inside Airbnb lists 22,245 properties across Melbourne, with 72.8 per cent of these comprising entire homes or apartments.
The resident said short-stays in his apartment block had affected his mental health. “We are mentally exhausted,” he said. “We don’t feel safe. There are buck’s nights, hen’s nights, drug parties, and they use the foyer like a nightclub.”
At the meeting, the council will consider five options including maintaining existing controls, using local laws to investigate residential noise complaints, introducing a new local law requiring compulsory annual registration of short-stay accommodation and payment of an annual fee, a 24/7 hotline and different rates for short-stay properties.
Read the full article at https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/resident-gripes-over-noise-parties-near-nudity-and-litter-prompt-airbnb-crackdown-20230801-p5dsxw.html
Editor's Note:
Do you have a view on the short term accommodation issue in Noosa? We would love to hear from you and are happy to post your contribution here anonymously. The more local stories we have the better. Please always cite sources whenever statistics are quoted. Email to: nnsnoosa1@gmail.com
Unfortunately, from a marketing research perspective the report and its data are very flawed and does not give a correct picture of the situation.
My main concerns with the data used is:
1) The way the council officer came up with the total number of 744 short term accommodations. Using real data from InsideAirbnb.com and AirDNA you can count 2692 Listing as of yesterday - And that is for Airbnb only, not taking booking.com and other platforms into account. This conservative number totals to 3.95% of the housing stock, 4 times greater than indicated in the report.
These numbers completely skew the Potential Costs to the council in the summary.
Based on the actual number of listings Council would turn…
yes, I read the report and its clear it was written to influence the crs to do absolutely nothing about the issue.
Seems that "Fear of repurcussions" is a common thread regarding objecting to/complaining about AirBNBs. So many Noosa residents have been subjected to harassment by STA owners following complaints, and publicly voicing criticisms of Noosa Council's elected representatives on this issue have resulted in legal threats and public vilification. Big changes coming in 2024 I hope.