Restrictions coming for Queenstown Lakes holiday home renters

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

If new rules are adopted it will become more difficult to do short term rentals from residential areas such as Marina Heights, in Queenstown.

Airbnb will 'strongly resist' proposed restrictions on short term visitor accommodation in Queenstown homes.

On Wednesday the Queenstown Lakes District Council will consider a proposal to restrict short term rentals of houses in low and medium density residential zones to only 28 days a year with no more than three separate lets - a decrease from the 90 days currently allowed.

Anything higher would be non-complying and unlikely to get resource consent.

Airbnb head of public policy for Australia and New Zealand Brent Thomas has responded saying 'nanny-state policies, like caps or bans, would rob people of their property rights, hurt the tourism economy and cost local jobs.'

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'By constricting home sharing, these policies will dry up accommodation supply and allow the big hotels to price gouge making it even harder for people to visit.

He said Airbnb was an economic lifeline for everyday Kiwis and small businesses.

There were 2000 Airbnb properties listed in Queenstown and the average Airbnb host in NZ earned NZD$4,700 a year.

'Nanny-state policies, like caps or bans, would rob people of their property rights, hurt the tourism economy and cost local jobs. Our community will strongly resist any innovative-denying policies which rob people of their rights and would hurt the tourism economy,' he said.

A council press release said the new policy would enable short term accommodation in town centres, in higher density residential, mixed use areas and in visitor accommodation sub-zones. Those areas would need a consent above the 28 day, 3 separate lets thresholds but it would be less restrictive.

Homestays would be allowed in all areas all year round on the basis that the host is on site, with no limit to the number of lets, up to a maximum number of five guests per stay. The number of guests could be higher in town centres, higher density residential and visitor accommodation zones, with consent.

Council planning policy manager Ian Bayliss said home owners who were currently registered to rent a home for 90 days would be able to continue, if the new rules were adopted.

'It's trying to get a slightly better balance between…helping people pay their mortgage in a very expensive place to live and controlling the extent of growth of short term accommodation to visitors.'

The sector had undergone massive growth and about 14 per cent of housing stock was now being used for visitor accommodation.

About 5000 homes were let as the entire home via online businesses such as Airbnb, Book A Bach and Holiday Houses.

'It's actually taking quite a bit of housing stock out of the pool. The evidence we've got is that that's contributing to some of the difficulties of housing workers and families and allowing people to put down roots into the district.'

It was also having effects on some residential areas with short term visitors coming and going.

It was difficult to predict what impact the change would have on the level of housing stock available to long term renters as the policy would need to go through a public notification process and could be appealed.