The Facts About Short Term Accommodation in Perth

Our latest intel is most major councils within the Perth area are now reassessing short term accommodation requirements.

The major culprit fuelling this is the way of online internet providers such as Airbnb make it so easy to rent out a room (or two) within you own home. There have been dozens of article published on people cashing in on Short term accommodation. Simply sign up, post your photos and your effectively exposed to thousands of customers. There is a real trend from the semi-retired to the fully retired who have spare rooms with their home setting up short term accommodation. Given they are retired, they are able to be there to clean rooms and hand the key over due to spending most of their time at home.

Another major influx of demographic/Trend we are seeing are families struggling with their mortgage. An Airbnb can create up to a $1000 a week which and has the added benefit of very minimal running costs. Running a short term accommodation from home means the owner can avoid staff and commercial rents. There is  also the ability to select what time of the year they don’t wish to work, effectively wiping dates off their calendar that their accommodation when they will not be available.

The problem is most people running this form of business are technically flying under the council radar. Like all good things the day of reckoning seems to be coming to an end. Perth councils are now in the process of making sure the owner is meeting basic regulations.

As an example if one wanted to run any  Business from home (that involves people coming and going ) there would be a council planning application required. The neighbours would have to be consulted, parking would have to be shown on a plan indicating where guests would park. Plus opening hours would need to generally fall between the 9 to 5 business hours model, plus the number of people you intend on having on a daily basis would have to be applied to and adhered too. Council across Perth have a responsibility to look after the public within their locality. Imagine if every home in your street had a home business and there were no rules….! There would be cars parked out on the streets, people leaving at all times of the hours. There could be dozens of people coming and going on a daily basis making a neighbour upset to say the least.  

Short-term accommodation is no different, it is a running business from home that is effectively operating on a block with a residential zoning. The reason there are commercial zones and residential zones is so we don’t end up building our home next to a factory.

As a recent example the ABC news reported there are only 15 registered Short Term accommodations registered within the council, but there are 95 active rentals registered on Airbnb….! As a provider of dual occupancy, multi-generational or secondary accommodation under the main roof of a home, we recommend to every customer that they must have their “dual-zoned” home Council approved. The approval in Western Australia is referred to as Ancillary Accommodation. Why do we recommend this? In a word public liability. As an example, if a patio caught fire and the house was also destroyed, the first thing an insurance company would check on was if the patio was council approved. If the structure that started the fire had no approval then the insurance company has a way to not pay out on the damages. The same is pertinent to a any form of dual style accommodation. Because dual-zone style homes are not termed as strata, they have no protection under the strata laws. Every owner needs to understand the importance of getting full planning approval and ancillary accommodation permits for their new home. Until recently the only people who could use a dual-zone area was family of the house hold owner (typically the grandparents). This rules in Perth changed to allow the secondary area to be rented out to non-family members. With the added growth of Airbnb there has been an influx of people wanting to take advantage of the additional accommodation for either, their family, or as a form of rental accommodation.

What is really fuelling growth is number people to the number of homes ratio. 30 years ago the number of people in one home was around 2.8 people per house-hold. Today it is closer to 1.8 and the 5 to 10 year predictions are it will level out at 1.1 people per  household. This may be why the rise of apartments is still maintaining strength across Perth despite a flat to moderate market. Basically every home in Perth with a lot over 450m2 now has the opportunity to create a brand new dual-living-style home via a demolish and build or to build a granny flat in the back yard behind the existing home. Either way the demographics are changing and strongly supporting the growth.

The question then is if you don’t do this, your neighbour or someone in your street will. If you choose to build, do you really want another person living on your block of land sharing your space?? If you build a granny flat we can almost guarantee it will be in the backyard and crossing paths with a renter will be unavoidable.

If the home is old we would suggest a “Demolish and Build”. We remove the old home, design up a new dual-living style home design, seek all the relevant council approvals and then start construction with a target date of having everything completed in under 12 months. A new property has state of the art electrical and communications, latest hot water systems and a home that comes with a  7 year transferable warranty. If you select the right builder you will also get acoustic insulation for the dividing walls plus sub meters so water and electricity can be tracked. You then have the option to offer legitimate short term accommodation or allow your family to stay. Either way you have a legal property that can accommodate for additional income or allow family to stay in their own sectioned off area.