Byron Bay Shire chases 60-day cap for holiday rentals in effort to solve housing crisis
One of Australia’s most popular tourist hot spots will make a push to limit short-term rentals, like AirBnbs, in an effort to fix the area’s rental crisis.
Despite the fact his district is one of Australia’s major tourist hot spots, Byron Shire Mayor Michael Lyon says the impact of short-term rentals is causing more harm than good, with the council looking to place a 60-day annual cap on all short-term rentals in the area.
The cap is tipped to be in place by June 2024, with the hope operators will move to renting their properties full time, in a bid to address the region’s rental crisis.
While short-term rentals in Byron generated $189m in 2022, Mr Lyon says businesses were struggling to employ workers in the area, due to a lack of long-term accommodation.
“Honestly, we don’t need any more tourism at the moment. Right now, all the sectors of our economy need housing for workers,” he said.
“Leading into the summer, we saw multiple hospitality businesses on reduced operating times because they didn’t have the staff.”
Pending approval from the Department of Planning and Planning Minister Paul Scully, the proposed plan would require unhosted short-term rental operators to apply for a development application (DA) if they want to exceed the 60-day cap.
Mr Lyon said the council had already begun engaging with legal experts and planners to fine tune the plan to present to the Department of Planning, however operators are already taking note.
“There’s been a signal to the market that reform is on its way, and investment decisions are already changing,” he said.
“We need to be creating a strong signal to the market that there is no investment pathway to buying a home that could be used as a long-term rental, and instead using it as an unhosted holiday let.”
Fuelled by tourism and the catastrophic 2022 floods which affected more than 2000 properties, figures from the council report rental vacancy rates across the shire averaged between 0.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent.
Despite this, there are currently 1429 active unhosted holiday rentals, where the entire property is used as a short-term rental, such as holiday accommodation, Mr Lyons said.
“That represents 8.4 per cent of a total of 16,996 dwellings,” he said.
The mayor said ideally that figure would sit closer to 5 per cent, however the exact goal would require further discussion and need to be revised every three years.
Consultation would depend on factors like vacancy rates and the percentage of household income which was being spent on rent.
“Many people in our community would like to have no unhosted holiday lets. That’s not the stance we’re taking, but we don’t want to see an expansion of it; we don’t want to see any housing lost to more short term rentals,” he added.
“We’d need to create a basis for (a 5 per cent goal), but maybe once we have a DA process, not as many would apply.”
In April this year, the NSW independent Planning Commission (IPC) released 12 recommendations on planning rules around short-term rentals for the Byron Shire.
They included reducing the short-term rental cap from 180 days to 60 days across the local council, plus greater support from the NSW government to release land for housing development, and encouraging industry compliance and aiding worker accommodation requirements.
Mr Scully has previously described the issue of accommodating short-term rentals in Byron Bay Shire as “complex”.
During question time in May, he acknowledged that “housing market pressures are different in Byron Shire than in any other Australian market,” and in turn, the impact of short-term rentals was “more significant”.
“This is a complex interplay of issues where we must strike a right balance for local residents, businesses and visitors alike,” he said.
Mr Scully’s office was approached for comment.