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[Jimmy-T]

Forget the buck’s night strippers’ glitter clogging up the lifts, the weekend footy fans vomiting in the stairwells and the country kids doing cannonballs in the communal spa, there is a much more serious consequence of illegal short-term lets.

Every unit in a residential-only building that’s set aside for holidaymakers is another home that isn’t available to long-term tenants, pumping rents even higher just so an absentee landlord can maximise their investment.

This newspaper recently reported on an apartment block in Sydney where about one-third of the units are let for periods as short as one night, despite the local council DAs specifically forbidding holiday lets.

That’s nearly 60 units in one building that aren’t available to tenants because it’s more convenient and/or lucrative for the owners to rent them to tourists and business people.

So how widespread is this? Does your apartment block have holiday lets in defiance of local zoning, planning approval or even its own by-laws?

Email us at rentals@flatchat.com.au.  We’d love to know the number of units in your building, the number of illegal short-term lets and the suburb.

We won’t publish any details but it’s time someone took a long hard look at how illegal short-term lets are distorting the rental market.

A version of this article has also appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald’s online pages and in the print edition of Domain.

 

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