› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Airbnb and holiday lets › Definition of a ‘Short Term Lease’ in a by-law › Current Page
Proudsceptic says: “One of the reasons why this issue is tricky is that there is case law which indicates that short term rentals do not necessarily trigger a ‘material change of use’. Therefore Councils cannot ban them in every instance.”
(Proudsceptic, did I see in an earlier post that you are a Queensland resident?) Would it be possible to have the reference to the case law mentioned please – is it NSW case law? In the case of Dobrhotoff v Bennic, the Judge in that matter said, among many things: “Inherent within the term “domicile” is, as a long line of authority in this jurisdiction has established, the notion of a permanent home or, at the very least, a significant degree of permanence of habitation or occupation…Tenancies of no more than a week are antithetical to this concept.”
NSW Land and Environment Court Judges have been very clear in their Judgements to date on the issue of short-term letting of residential housing. For other examples of NSW case law which state that short-term letting is “fundamentally incompatible” with permanent residential occupation go to the Neighbours Not Strangers website.
I believe the argument that by-laws (inferior in law to the Determination of Development Consent on a property) could/should be used to decide whether or not short-term letting is permissible in a residental property is critically dangerous territory. We are talking about the homes and home lives of residents. Why should owners, having purchased into a residential property, find that at a General Meeting the next week a gang of other owners vote to turn their home into a cheap, quasi-backpackers’ establishment? This proposition goes against every fundamental element of good, social Planning and protection for the rights of Residents.
Individuals absolutely have the right to short-term let property; they should purchase/invest in serviced apartments, hotels, motels, other such establishments.
Residential Housing is for the housing of Residents.