› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Airbnb and holiday lets › Definition of a ‘Short Term Lease’ in a by-law › Current Page
Fred11
There has already been an instance where the NCAT has overridden a by-law which tried to outlaw short-term lets on a property at Pyrmont. Under current legislation, such a by-law won’t hold up in the Tribunal.
JimmyT is correct – in NSW it all boils down to the exact wording in your Determination of Development Consent or DA.
NSW Fair Trading has and will recommend introducing a by-law which calls for compliance with the DA on your building i.e., a by-law which calls for adherence to a ‘higher law’.
There is NSW Land and Environment Court case law, Foster v Sutherland Shire Council which mentions a residential lease being six months in duration however, under the current NSW Residential Tenancies Act there is officially no ‘minimum duration’ on a Residential Tenancy Agreement. Note well – as per Proud Sceptic’s advice, a short-term letting agreement, be it Airbnb or one of hundreds of other Internet providers, does not classify as a Residential Tenancy Agreement under Sections 7 and 8(h) of the Residential Tenancy Act.
Quoting JimmyT again: “once our MPs have handed the golden egg to short-stay letting agencies by making holiday lets partially exempt from planning restrictions, all our protections will evaporate.”
Our State MPs, during the course of their Inquiry into short-term letting very much failed to obtain any Legal advice (according to someone who presented themselves at Parliament and asked the question directly), and they also failed to consult the Land and Environment Court (LEC) case law which was provided to them, they ignored all requests to consult with NSW Fire & Rescue, the National Building Codes of Australia and National Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Representatives from Social Housing, they also ignored data supplied from the Financial Controllers of the City of San Francisco, an Australian Criminality Report on ‘mixed use’ in High Rise Buildings, etc, etc. There’s no doubt that our Pollies want to gift our housing to Airbnb/Stayz/Expedia etc, etc – that was very evident during the course of the Inquiry into short-term letting.
For links to NSW case law which makes very, very clear that short-term lets are not considered/classified as “Permanent Residential Occupation”, click here.