ALL BY-LAWS restricting Airbnb and other short-stay letting in residential-only apartment blocks are invalid, according to NSW Fair Trading.
Only weeks before the discussion paper on new holiday letting legislation is released, Fair Trading has modified its Strata Living handbook to warn strata committees and owners corporations that they can’t pass by-laws restricting holiday lets.
“Strata laws prevent an owners corporation restricting an owner from letting their lot, including short-term letting,” says a recent amendment to Strata Living. “The only way short-term letting can be restricted is by council planning regulations.”
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And that, says a government spokesperson, means by-laws telling owners that they must abide by local council zoning restrictions are invalid as only local councils can enforce their zoning.
By-laws supporting local zoning have been used by some strata schemes as a way around the restrictions on by-laws directly banning short-term letting.
However, a spokesperson for Innovation and Better Regulation Minister Matthew Kean, who has responsibility for Fair Trading, this week confirmed that they are invalid.
“The local council ‘owns’ the zoning regulation,” the spokesperson told Fairfax Media. “Only they can enforce it.”
“Section 139 (2) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 states that no by-law can prohibit or restrict the devolution of a lot or a transfer, lease, mortgage or other dealing relating to a lot,” the Fair Trading spokesperson said.
Airbnb said it welcomed any such moves that protected the rights of people to share their own homes.
“It would be unfair to discriminate against apartment dwellers, and prevent them from participating in the sharing economy in the same way house dwellers can,” Head of Public Policy ANZ at Airbnb Brent Thomas said.