Re STL taking properties out of the rental market: A reduction in rental bonds is just the tip of the iceberg.
In an apartment building I manage at Pyrmont NSW we have shut down 27 STL’s since 2014. Only one of these was hosted by an owner. The remaining 26 were hosted by tenants/lessees (22 entire apartments and 4 where the apartment was also the hosts principal place of residence). ALL 26 of these STL’s were done without the host seeking permission from the owner, leasing agent, owners corporation or the council (and STL was against the council development consent for this building; now overturned by NSW parliament in August)
So 26 out of 27 properties had a rental bond lodged but were used for STL; where’s that is AHURI’s statistics?
Airbnb listings are split roughly 50/50 between entire homes and spare rooms.
Generally, spare rooms are less desireable for privacy, not available all the time, are more likely to be an owner occupied property and not overcrowded. Apparently there are many dormant spare room listings on Airbnb, which are used to distort statistics to their advantage.
Entire homes are mostly hosted by lessees (tenants not in residence), without owners consent, by commercial operators hosting multiple properties, are available all the time and usually with high occupancy rates and with naturally with higher nightly rates because it’s a whole property. ALL the listings in my building were advertised for overoccupancy (like one bedrrom unit to accommodate 6 or 8 persons); this is Airbnb’s price advantage over hotels.
From all this, it’s obvious that Airbnb would be deriving probably 80 or 90% of their commissions from entire home listings hosted by commercial operators, and without being detected through the rental bond data base.