Dear Forum,
What's your thoughts on this recent notice from Owners Corporation:
The following rule forms part of the caveat on title and reads as follows:
36 SHORT-TERM LEASE 36.1 A proprietor or occupier of a lot must not: (a) grant a lease, licence or other right to occupy that lot or any part of that lot for a period of less than three months, except where the occupier is overholding under the terms of a lease, licence or other right to occupy that had a term of at least three months.
With the support of the recent new State laws to be introduced, the Owners Corporation will be identifying all apartments within the building that are operating short term stays to issue a notice of breach and that all bookings are to cease, and the web link be removed from websites.
We strongly recommend that short term stay operators discontinue taking bookings immediately as you will not be allowed to honour any future bookings.
Under the reforms, for the first-time apartment owners could be liable for any damage, noise or loss of amenity caused by their guests.
VCAT would also be given new powers to award compensation of up to $2000 to neighbours and ban short stay apartments which are repeatedly used for unruly parties.
Guests could face fines of up to $1100 for a range of conduct breaches, including:
• creating unreasonable noise or behaving badly
• causing a health, safety or security hazard
• damaging common property
• obstructing a resident from the using their property.
Short stay apartment owners may be ordered to pay neighbours’ compensation and any damage caused by their guests to common property.
I am interested to get together with a group of residents, owners, tenants who perform Airbnb to have a class action against this and any future issues.
Thoughts?
You'll need a lawyer for this - may as well start talking to one sooner rather than later if you're serious about it.
Not being familiar with SA law (where your profile says you are) or Victorian law (since you mention VCAT), or the "reforms", I've no idea if these rules are even valid. I know that in the states I am familiar with, they're of arguable validity (Owners Corporations can't interfere in an owner's use of their property in a way that doesn't affect others to an unreasonable degree).
Again, talk to a lawyer, but I feel like this is also/still the case here, as:
This would be redundant if Strata already had this power. Also, the clause is just really poorly drafted - not all short-term accommodation involves a lease or licence or any other "right to occupy". There's certainly nothing of that sort involved when you stay in a hotel, for example.