› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Living in strata › Why you need to fine landlords who don’t register tenants › Current Page
It seems I have been leading everyone up the garden path (again!). So if short-term lets can’t be defined as tenancies (and I don’t dispute any of the above advice) what are they?
The obvious answer would be a change of use to a commercial let. But our councils, terrified that they might have to spend money on policing this, refuse to admit it’s a change of use, so we are back where we started.
And now we find that NCAT has no power to impose financial penalties, as prescribed in the strata Act, so there isn’t much point in creating the kind of by-laws described by the former Fair Trading Commissioner in this thread (item 7) .
Your best bet may be to find a strata insurer that will include a clause that massively increases premiums if the building has holiday lets in it. Those additional premiums can be passed on to the holiday let hosts – it’s the law, not a by-law, and it’s a charge, not a fine.
All of this is a result of strata being an adjunct of a side-street of a strand of a tangle of unrelated legislation that we call, without a hint of irony, Fair Trading.
Better regulation? SOME regulation (and clear thinking) would be a start.
Am I the only person who foresees the NSW government being taken to court (as occurred with the council amalgamations) to overturn any decision that means our most attractive apartment blocks will be turned into holiday hotels?