Since late 2015 the number of short term holiday rentals listed in Mosman (such as Stayz and Airbnb) increased from 200 to over 430. Council continues to receive enquiries from Mosman residents and property owners on this issue, with concerns about amenity impacts as well as questions about permissibility.
What is happening right now?
The Department of Planning and Environment is working on a recommendation to the State Government on how to proceed with a regulatory framework for Short Term Holiday Letting. An Options Paper has been released, which includes discussion of options being considered. These include industry self regulation, strata regulation, planning regulation and registration of short term holiday rentals .
The Department is seeking feedback to inform their recommendation. Click here to read the paper and have your say.
How could your submission help?
Based on your experiences with short term letting, you can explain what you think the best option is for managing short term letting, disagree with an option and/or provide valuable insights.
Now is the time to ensure that you share your views on how you think these potential options would work (or not work) in a Mosman context.
Examples of questions to ponder
- Do you think regulations should be different for strata schemes vs single houses?
- Is it necessary to introduce provisions such as – maximum days per year, maximum number of bedrooms, length of stay – and can this be policed? How would it be policed?
- Would you like these properties to be registered? How do you think it would work? Do you think this would resolve/minimise the negative amenity impacts of their use?
History of STHL Reforms
- Our last blog post on this issue was in March 2016 – Emergence of the Sharing Economy – Inquiry into Airbnb
- October 2016 – inquiry made a number of recommendations in a 70 page document. 12 recommendations and 7 findings were made.
- April 2017 – State Government responded, expressing general support for the findings of the enquiry.