› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Airbnb and holiday lets › Airbnb is back but registry will bite › Current Page
I too am responding to the article on STHL.
I have not looked deeply into the reforms and wonder if a problem I confronted a couple of years ago has been dealt with.
In short, my tenants rented a 2 bedroom flat and one day without informing me, decided to live in one bedroom and rent the other via ABB.
When they took vacation, they rented out the whole flat.
When I discovered this, I told them that such behaviour invalidates my landlord insurance and asked them to stop. They were unmoved.
I called ABB who replied: “in such cases we stand by the hosts, as they are the ones we contract with”. I made clear that the hosts have no legal basis upon which they can rent out such accommodation as it violates their lease, invalidates the insurance policy I have on the premises and most importantly, they don’t own the premises. ABB more or less told me to get lost.
Long story short: unless significant changes have been made to STHL, a landlord’s right to stop STHL is subordinate to a tenant’s desire to become a host, meaning landlords who object to STHL must scoot to NCAT and find a sympathetic Member who will insists that a tenant’s obligations under the Residential Tenancy Act cannot be unilaterally undone.
In my case I had such a Member who instructed the tenants to immediately cease STHL, which they did. But it should not have required a lot of legwork and investigation by me to get to that judgement.