Short and not so sweet

This column has long been a staunch opponent of the blight of short-term rentals in permanent residential buildings – why would you let anyone use your home as a hotel?
But there’s another twist: What happens when you invest in a building approved for short-term rentals only to discover you’re not allowed to live in it when you need to?
One distressed reader, a self-funded retiree, has been put through the mill by the shonks who sold her an investment apartment in the city, guaranteeing fantastic returns only to come up short by up to 50 percent on the promised “executive” rents.
When she and her neighbours demanded the guaranteed income, the management company promptly folded. Then exactly the same directors formed another company and had the nerve to offer to take over the running of the building … but at much lower rental guarantees.
Pausing to tell them where to go, our reader thinks if she can’t rent the apartment out, she’ll live in it. Ah, that would be a “No”. The building managers have told her she can’t live in her own apartment as it would be a breach of planning regulations.
Are these the same people who squeeze short-term rentals into residential buildings, and squeeze bona fide residents out? Could they be taking the high moral ground because they don’t get commission on apartments that aren’t rented?
And does anyone really care, anyway, if a couple of people choose to put up with the comings and goings of football fans, wedding parties and conventioneers? I’m reliably informed that there’s a very large building in the CBD that was zoned “commercial” but has been residential for years. Everybody knows about it but nobody says anything.
Our reader has been told by her estate agent that similar apartments to hers are earning double the rent she’s getting. Yet when she sells, as now she must, she probably won’t get anything like the extortionate amount she paid for the unit 10 years ago.
That doesn’t just reflect a drop in property prices, it’s a con, a rip-off and a national disgrace. If I were her, I’d move in there and make the bastards carry me out kicking and screaming.

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