Many Airbnb owners say imposing stricter booking limits will not persuade them to convert their properties into long-term rentals, according to a survey of 1,000 hosts in Sydney and Melbourne.
Airbnb contracted YouGov to carry out the survey, which also found most owners were likely to just leave a property vacant—a finding that goes against official reasons to limit Airbnb activity.
The results come as Australian states and councils steadily ramp up regulation, restrictions, and levies on Airbnb—some authorities, like Labor Housing Minister Julie Collins, argues this will help alleviate the rental crisis by encouraging owners to let out their properties to long term tenants.
In terms of restrictions for example, properties in greater Sydney can be used as short-term rentals for a maximum of 180 days per year, though the holiday destination of Byron Shire in northern New South Wales has an even tighter limit of 60 days.
In January, Victoria began charging a 7.5 percent levy on short-term rental accommodation.
But capping or lowering the number of nights an address can be listed will only prompt about 1 in every 8 hosts to convert it to a long-term rental, YouGov found.
More than 40 percent of those surveyed said they would continue to rent short-term until hitting a cap and then leave their property vacant.
Owners Claim Properties Unsuitable
Two-thirds of those who said they would not rent the property long-term said it was because it was unsuitable, or that it was their second or holiday home. Most surveyed hosts had only one property listed on the short-term rental platform.Imposing further caps would likely not move many Airbnb listings into the long-term rental market, “which defeats the intended effect,” said YouGov public data director Paul Smith.
Airbnb’s public policy head, Michael Crosby, said the results showed that short-term rentals made up a small proportion of the nation’s total housing stock and that “draconian measures” such as caps and bans did not make housing more affordable.
“Harsh restrictions like night caps are not effective in solving our housing issues and simply hurt those trying to earn some extra money to offset the cost of living,” he said. “Homes would be far more likely to sit empty than become a long-term rental.”
“It’s not just a simple matter of putting a furnished property up for long-term rental and switching between the two,” the University of Sydney professor said.
“One of the recommendations that we made was that governments establish programs to facilitate that, particularly [for] homes that are well-located relative to housing need.”
