Holiday letting code delays betray long-suffering residents

It’s been more than two years since the NSW government first announced laws to regulate the short-term holiday letting industry. They included a proposed mandatory code of conduct to moderate the behaviour of hosts and guests.

While the laws covering Airbnb and its ilk came in, somewhat belatedly, at the end of April this year, the code of conduct was nowhere to be seen.

Why the delay? The code of conduct won't arrive until three years after the law was announced.Credit: Ryan Stuart

Meanwhile, foreign tourism may have dried up but pent-up staycationers are ready to rock, and this week we received the first instalment of the code, targeting the low-hanging fruit of “party houses”. Under it, hosts or guests excessively disturbing neighbours or damaging property more than once could be banned for up to five years from short-term holiday letting.

Most of us can sympathise with residents – whether seachangers or inner-city apartment dwellers – whose peace and quiet is disrupted by party animals who take over neighbouring properties for week-long parties that run all day and night.

Airbnb has certainly welcomed this down-payment on the code, but that’s hardly surprising since it announced its own ban on party houses two months ago.

However, the government seems to be engaged in “afterpay” politics – giving us laws in instalments as it reconciles the mutually exclusive demands of key players.

There are two critical aspects of the code locked in the octopus arm wrestle between the short-term letting industry, hoteliers, politicians, government departments and residents’ groups.

The proposed register of properties and hosts is now delayed until June next year. Why? If COVID-19 has taught us nothing else, it’s how to register on a database.

Perhaps it’s because the industry really doesn’t like registries. Almost anywhere they have been introduced they have flushed out illegal properties, tax-dodging hosts and illicit sub-lets, smashing revenue.

The code was also expected to contain extensive fire-safety measures, which could be life-saving when you have people in strange houses or apartments with, literally, no idea which way to turn if they wake up in a room filled with smoke.

The cost of installing the proposed exit lights, fire extinguishers and smoke and heat alarms would put many short-term lets out of business. But is the safety of tourists less important than the existence of cheap accommodation?

If the final and full version of the code of conduct does make its new deadline of next June, it will be exactly three years after it was first flagged in Parliament.

Let’s hope the firming up of the code isn’t, in reality, a watering down.

Jimmy Thomson edits the Flat Chat apartment living website and writes a weekly column for The Australian Financial Review.