(2020) cite the example of Port Fairy, Victoria, in which residents lease their homes to patrons of the local Folk Music Festival to take advantage of the “cash cow” caused by sudden flows of visitors to the town during the festival weekend.26 Airbnb and other short-term rentals are criticised for intensifying gentrification and housing unaffordability, with the growth of year-round, entire home l. [...] In Hobart, where Airbnb had a larger share of total dwellings, a decline in Airbnb use was attributed to over half of the share of rent decreases in Hobart during the pandemic.37 Regulation of Short-Term Rentals in Australia Most states and local councils in Australia have taken a more laissez-faire approach to regulating Airbnb and similar online short-term rental platforms. [...] 15 Light as Air – Regulating Short Term Rentals in Australia The Landscape of Short Term Rentals in Australia To explore the landscape of short term rentals, the following section uses a snapshot of Airbnb, using the Inside Airbnb dataset.47 This dataset scrapes all the available data about listings on Airbnb at a particular point in time. [...] This represents 22.15% of active listings in the Byron Shire and was surprisingly a higher proportion than the overall Northern Rivers region, despite a lack of regulation in the rest of the region (excluding the Clarence Valley area). [...] The city was visited by over 20.7 million tourists in 2022, bringing with them $7.6 billion in expenditure.85 Sydneysiders were early adopters of Airbnb, while a number of inner-city councils were some of the first in Australia to raise the alarm about the over-saturation of short-term rentals in residential areas.86 Sydney has the highest median rent of any Australian capital city, reaching $778.
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