A quiet revolution will take place across the Byron Shire next week.
More than five years after the state government famously promised to give Byron its own cap on short-term rental accommodation (STRA), it’s finally happening.
From next Monday (September 23) most of the shire will be subject to a 60-day cap on non-hosted holiday letting.
We will become the only council area in NSW with such restrictions, with much of the state either cap-free or limited to 180 days per year.
Only two small pockets in Byron Bay and Brunswick Heads will be exempted from the new rules.
The 60-day cap applying to the rest of Byron is supposed to encourage the owners of investment properties in the Shire to take their dwellings out of the Airbnb market and turn them into long-term rentals.
But will it work?
The NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) certainly thinks so.
It found that a 60-day cap would put the financial returns from non-hosted short-term rental accommodation on a more level playing field with long-term renting.
This creates an incentive for more owners to rent their dwellings out long-term, and discourages new investors from buying houses with the sole intention of renting them out on Airbnb.
Obstacles
However, there are a few potential flies in the aioli.
Firstly, don’t expect anything to happen quickly.
The new cap will not apply to existing STRA dwellings until after their next registration renewal.
That means that many owners of non-hosted STRAs will be able to continue renting them all day every day for up to a year.
Secondly, significant questions remain over whether the new cap can be enforced effectively.
It will be up to Byron Council’s already overburdened compliance staff to monitor the STRA register to establish when non-hosted dwellings exceed the annual day limit.
While it should be possible to set up software that automatically flags breaches when they occur, these will still need to be fully investigated before any action can be taken.
It will be interesting to see if our newly sworn-in councillors are willing to allocate precious budget resources to ensure the new cap is properly policed.
If they don’t, the new policy won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.
Given the price Council had to pay to get the cap in the first place, the pressure for it to succeed, is on.
Promises made
The state government only agreed to sign off on the STRA restrictions after Council promised that it would provide more than 4,500 new homes in the region by 2041.
This was a key part of the genesis of Council’s Residential Land Strategy – a policy that is set to fundamentally change the built environment and character of the Shire over the next 17 years.
We will be watching with interest over the next 12 months to see whether our new STRA policy is worth the sacrifices this shire made to get it.
Guest editorial by Paul Bibby,
News tips are welcome: [email protected]
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
