There are a dozen Airbnbs on Aaron Webb’s street.
He and his partner – a teacher at a local school – rent metres near the beach on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
In June, there were 13,000 short-term stays in the region but fewer than a thousand homes for rent, according to data from Queensland University and SQM Research.
Mr Webb fears they will be evicted when their lease expires.
Planner and social economist Peter Phibbs describes it as “the worst of both worlds” – a holiday destination with a year-round job market.
Eacham Curry, Corporate Affairs Director at Stayz, calls it the “coal front.”
Mr Webb says the houses around him are empty out of season, which is hard to imagine in such a competitive rental market.
“Politicians have to decide what kind of place they want to make it. Should it be a pure tourist destination like in Europe?” he says.
“Or do they really tighten up the regulations and say, ‘Wait a minute, you can’t just leave these houses empty for months out of the year when people are struggling to find somewhere to rent.'”
Across Australia, renters are facing record-high rents and low vacancy rates, but how much of the blame lies with platforms like Stayz and Airbnb depends on who you ask and how you interpret the data.
“The worst of both worlds”
According to SQM Research, there were only 754 job vacancies on the Sunshine Coast in June this year.
That same month, Airbnb had 5,974 entire homes listed, according to data compiled from the company’s website by Inside Airbnb, a data project that tracks the platform globally.
“It’s probably the worst of both worlds: it’s the holiday market and a lot of people live there,” says Peter Phibbs, emeritus professor at the University of Sydney and board member of the Housing Justice Data Lab.
“So when there is a shift from the long-term to the short-term market, that means that vacancy rates tend to go down and rents tend to go up.”
According to a study by the University of Queensland, short-term rentals account for about 8 percent of the housing stock on the Sunshine Coast.
Urban geographer and Associate Professor Thomas Sigler says this is in line with other tourism hotspots such as the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, the Central Coast in NSW and Margaret River in Western Australia.
At the national level, it is around 2%, although this also includes many purpose-built holiday homes.
It comes down to philosophy
The number of short-term rentals on the Sunshine Coast has fallen since 2019, says Dr. Sigler.
The vacancy rate on the Sunshine Coast reached a record low of 0.4 percent in 2020, compared to 1.4 percent in June this year.
Dr Sigler says the housing crisis has deeper roots than new platforms promoting short-term rental offers.
“It goes right down to the philosophical underpinnings of homeownership and whether a person should be allowed to own one or even two or three properties,” he says.
“The problem is the financialisation of housing and the fact that we have allowed housing to become a speculative financial product when it should actually be a social good, as is the case in Europe.”
Dr Sigler’s research found that there are more than 13,000 short-term rentals on the Sunshine Coast, including approximately 11,500 entire homes.
A population boom has seen 80,000 people move to the Sunshine Coast in the decade to 2021, most of them from Australia. To keep up with demand, the region needs about 3,300 homes per year.
Dr. Sigler says if every single home was converted for short-term rentals, it would only cover three years’ growth and “kill the tourism economy.”
Noosa town planner Richard MacGillivray says short-term lettings are “absolutely” impacting the rental market.
In the two local government areas of the Sunshine Coast, the number of new rental deposits has decreased while rents have increased.
It also frustrates the people who live there year-round, says MacGillivray.
“Vacation rentals have been around for some time. With the advent of Airbnb and Stayz, we have seen increased usage, especially in our residential areas,” he says.
“In some areas this has actually led to conflict, particularly in areas where residents feel that the social fabric has been eroded by the influx of holiday rentals.”
In 2022, Noosa Council enacted a local short-stay law which requires that short-term tenancies require council approval and be renewed annually.
Some rental agreements also have a maximum duration of 60 days – as is planned for Byron Bay, for example. However, unlike in NSW, this limit is not enshrined in law and does not apply retrospectively.
Higher rates apply to short-term rentals in the Sunshine Coast administrative area, which accounts for about 4 percent of the housing stock.
The council says it is also looking at options for social housing and affordable housing on council land, as well as a new planning scheme that addresses housing affordability.
Mr Curry says renting out properties on the long-term market will not improve their affordability.
“Properties like the ones we rent are rented at prices that wouldn’t make it into the affordable housing market, so if you try to close them down, you’re just reducing the economic benefit,” he says.
But Professor Phibbs disagrees, saying that even luxury properties coming onto the market have a “filter-down effect.”
“If you offer expensive stocks, it still has an impact on the bottom of the market because if you’re locked out, it goes down,” he says.
Coal mining on the coast
Both Airbnb and Stayz support government registration of short-term rentals, which the Queensland Government has committed to.
However, they do not support limits on the number of nights a property can rent for, as is currently required by law in New South Wales.
“I have a lot of sympathy for the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast councils because they are on the front line and have to get to grips with these new issues. That’s why we are working with them,” says Curry.
Mr MacGillivray wants the larger platforms to be “good corporate citizens” and give their money back to the communities where they have the strongest presence, such as in the form of affordable housing or housing for key workers.
When there is a “social need,” such as flooding or fire, Stayz encourages owners to hand over their property but cannot “tell” them what to do, Curry says.
In 2020, Airbnb launched a global community fund that donates to groups selected by a “host advisory board.” Previous causes include the Great Barrier Reef and the Asylum Resource Centre.
“It is important to find the right balance to address the core issue of housing affordability without jeopardising the economic benefits that come from short-term rentals,” says Michael Crosby, Head of Airbnb Australia and New Zealand.
Dr Sigler says companies like Airbnb are an “easy target” in a tight market, but the Sunshine Coast has always had plenty of second homes – they’re just more likely to be empty.
“It’s really easy to hate Airbnb. It’s a big American private equity-backed company from Silicon Valley,” he says.
“But the ironic thing is that it gives you more power. Before Airbnb, if you had a second home and you weren’t renting it out, it was actually empty and now at least someone is using it.”
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