A Victorian ruling that strata block owners corporations can’t create rules (by-laws) prohibiting apartments from being let short-term could have a devastating effect on high-rise residents across the country.
The Victorian Civil Administration Tribunal (VCAT) finding over the Watergate building in Melbourne’s Docklands, cited a NSW strata law that owners corps may not pass any by-law that interferes with an owner “dealing” with their property. And it may even extend into areas such as by-laws banning pets.
The Watergate, once known as Partygate because of its former use for bucks parties and hens nights, complete with hookers, strippers and snowdrifts of drugs, wanted to enforce its rules against the tenant of several properties who was sub-letting them short-term to holidaymakers.
But VCAT said that their rule over-reached into areas of town planning and was therefore invalid. Boom! A basic pillar of building strata communities is blown away.
Pity help the long-term residents of Watergate when other owners realise there is a motza to be made with holiday rentals. Party on, dudes!
The decision late last month came in the same week that City of Sydney handed residents of the Bridgeport, in Sydney’s CBD, a Land and Environment Court ruling prohibiting short-term lets there.
The Bridgeport, which has no by-law banning short-term rentals, still has many of its apartments listed online on Airbnb, Gumtree and Stayz and the like, despite the LEC ruling that they are illegal under council zoning regulations.
There, far from fighting short-term lets, its executive committee – which contains current and former Coalition state MPs – has as yet failed to inform owners who are letting their apartments short-term that they are breaking the law, and meanwhile whistleblower owners have been threatened with financial ruin through legal action.
Just as an aside, I wonder if “Team Bridgeport” as they apparently call themselves, are hanging out for the Liberal Coalition wet dream of a government stooge replacing Clover Moore in Town Hall after the next council elections.
Having one of their own in charge might lead to a subtle “adjustment” of zoning and suddenly everything would be copasetic after all.
Conspiracy theorist? Who says I am?
Will the Melbourne verdict have implications here? There is so much money to be made through holiday lets that it will be worth someone, somewhere, challenging by-laws. But it won’t be the Bridgeport rule-benders: the last thing they need is a High Court verdict that owners corps can’t create their own rules.
Meanwhile, the NSW government, while steadfastly turning a blind eye to the Bridgeport scandal, is looking closely at online letting agencies and how they impact on everything from planning to tax and tourism.
Here’s hoping they loosen up the rules for inviting paying guests into our homes but come down hard on the airheads letting entire apartments illegally, turning our homes into hotels. There’s a lot more on this on flatchat.com.au.