If you are in the accommodation industry and have not heard of Airbnb you must have been living under a rock.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco-based home sharing juggernaut just keeps growing. It is affecting accommodation supply worldwide, but also in our little part of the planet.<\/p>\n
An indication of how quickly Airbnb has arrived is reflected in the most recent BCCM review recommendations. We received the recommendations<\/a> last month to an issues paper released in December 2014<\/a>. The topic of short term letting restrictions would have been a perfect addition to that options paper, but Airbnb was simply not on the radar when it was published. This is yet another example of the pace at which technology is moving.<\/p>\n Disruption can mean many things, and there are always unintended consequences. If you are interested, have a look at this article<\/a> from a tax perspective for property owners using Airbnb.<\/p>\n But back to our question.<\/p>\n What can a Queensland body corporate do about it?<\/p>\n We won\u2019t keep you all in suspense. The answer is nothing.<\/p>\n For us, it all starts at a very macro level.<\/p>\n What right has a body corporate got to interfere with what goes on inside a lot?<\/p>\n One of the most misconstrued aspects of strata living\u00a0is the ability of a body corporate to come inside people\u2019s front doors and impose rules.<\/p>\n What matters for a body corporate should be:<\/p>\n A body corporate has no ability to dictate what happens inside a lot outside those parameters.<\/p>\n This is supported by the BCCM Act which very simply provides<\/a> at subsection 180(3) that if a lot may\u00a0be used for residential purposes, the by-laws can not restrict the type of residential use to which it is put. And yes – that catches all of those \u2018no lettings under three months\u2019 and \u2018no schoolies\u2019<\/em> by-laws.\u00a0These are simply unlawful and unenforceable.<\/p>\n Some jurisdictions allow that type of by-law.\u00a0Queensland doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The next issue then\u00a0is conduct.\u00a0If an occupier is causing such havoc that their conduct interferes unreasonably with the use and enjoyment\u00a0of others, then there is a (long winded) process with respect to by-law enforcement that can be undertaken.\u00a0The conduct obligations and enforcement process applies to everyone; owner occupiers, short term and long term tenants.<\/p>\n The other thing that people need to make careful note of is the level of conduct needs to interfere \u2018unreasonably\u2019 with others. “Reasonable” interference is therefore not something that is actionable.\u00a0Community living involves compromise.\u00a0There are going to be moments where your amenity is disturbed.\u00a0This is no different to living in suburbia.\u00a0It happens.<\/p>\n When we are advising on these styles of matters the issue is never the law.\u00a0It is the burden of proof.\u00a0Anyone alleging unreasonable interference needs to be able to make that out via evidence.\u00a0A \u2018he said, she said\u2019<\/em> diatribe generally won\u2019t cut it.\u00a0The best example is always smoking<\/a>.<\/p>\n That is all a body corporate can do if an occupier causes grief. It comes down to is conduct, not tenure of the occupant.<\/p>\n This leaves aside planning rules and permissions.\u00a0Those are issues for the respective local authorities based on the approval they have given for the use of lots.\u00a0Our experience is the approvals are usually pretty open and don\u2019t restrict short term use, but that can vary from building to building.\u00a0A body corporate cannot enforce the council\u2019s requirements, but it can complain to council about the lack of compliance with the planning approval.<\/p>\n The building classification<\/a> argument has been run and done too.\u00a0It has been confirmed that there is nothing in the residential classes which preclude the short-term use of lots.<\/p>\n Them’s the breaks. If you want action, talk to your local councillor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are in the accommodation industry and have not heard of Airbnb you must have been living under a rock. The San Francisco-based home sharing juggernaut just keeps growing. It is affecting accommodation supply worldwide, but also in our little part of the planet. An indication of how quickly Airbnb has arrived is reflected in the most recent BCCM review recommendations. We received the recommendations last month to an issues paper released in December 2014. The topic of short term letting restrictions would have been a perfect addition to that options paper, but Airbnb was simply not on the radar when it was published.Read More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1074,"featured_media":445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mbp_gutenberg_autopost":false},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theonsitemanager.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n