Okay, I admit it, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a parking levy in NSW, let alone that some areas and some buildings might be exempt.

In fact, when a notice of NSW government webinar about the issue popped up on the Flat Chat Forum, at first I thought it was a hoax – an April Fools trick in the middle of October.

But then I clicked on the website and, yes, a levy on visitor parking spaces is a very real thing and the government is hosting a webinar this month to explain changes to it.

And what’s been changed? Basically, buildings that are exempt from the charges no longer have to submit a return every year and there are a few new exemptions.

However, if your building owns parking spaces that aren’t used exclusively by residents, and you’re in City of Sydney or North Sydney, owners should be paying $3120 a year for each non-resident parking space. If you’re in Bondi Junction, Chatswood, Parramatta or St Leonards, it’s $1110 per space per year.

Individuals should pay a proportion of those figures for every day their space is used by someone who doesn’t live in the building, such as spaces rented to non-residents or provided as part of their holiday let packages. Buildings that have allowed residents’ spaces to be used for visitors for part of the year, also have to pony up.

It’s hard to assess how many parking spaces that means in these six areas of Sydney but the regulations apply to thousands of apartment blocks. There are exemptions, including the Central Park complex in Chippendale.

It’s complicated. If your block has mixed parking for residents, visitors and commercial customers, with no clear distinction made between them, all the parking spaces may attract the levy.

If your block has clearly defined visitor and resident parking, the spaces for residents are probably exempt but visitor parking isn’t and Airbnb hosts and owners who let their spaces to non-residents should declare and pay for their parking spots.

This could make a huge difference to non-residents renting parking spots from apartment owners in City of Sydney, including Pyrmont, Ultimo, Haymarket and the CBD, and North Sydney as $60 of their rent should be going to NSW Revenue. If the parking spot owner is honest with the Tax Office and declares the rent as income, the cost passed on to the parker could be prohibitive.

You’ll find maps defining the areas affected HERE. The idea is clearly to keep cars off the road as all the targeted areas are well-served by public transport, but if you have visitor parking in your block and you’re in one of the designated areas, your owners corp – and that means you, in part – should be paying the levy for each space.

Can you convert visitor spaces to resident-only? That would require council approval as it would be a change of use from what’s in your DA. It might be worth the hassle, though, as your building could sell the spaces or rent them to residents, earning money for the scheme and saving on the parking levy.

Councils across Sydney have been reducing the number of visitor parking spaces allowed in DAs in recent years so yours may be sympathetic.

Another way, which would smooth the conversion, would be to install EV charging in a couple of spaces, which most councils would gladly approve. These would be resident-only and the money you’d save on the levy would go a long way to paying for the conversion while boosting the amenity of the block and therefore the value of everyone’s apartments.

The state government will investigate buildings where they think false information about leviable parking spaces has been provided.  The triggers for investigations range from not registering any spaces in buildings known to have visitor parking to declaring an incorrect number of relevant spaces. This could result in a demand for back payments and financial penalties.

It’s all very confusing but one thing is for sure, if this is as new to you as it is to me, you should check out the NSW government information page and sign up for the free webinar at 4.30pm on Tuesday, October 27.