ASTRA joins debate over short stays and housing supply
ASTRA chair Yoav Tourel says the short-term rental debate is an important one, responding to Trevor Rawnsley’s recent AccomNews article with a call for balanced, state-based regulation
Australia and New Zealand Short Term Rental Association (ASTRA) chair Yoav Tourel has weighed in on the debate over short-term rental accommodation and housing supply, following a recent AccomNews article by Australian Resident Accommodation Managers Association (ARAMA) CEO Trevor Rawnsley calling for councils to ban short-term letting in detached suburban homes.
While Rawnsley argued that Class 1 houses should remain in the long-term housing pool, Tourel said the policy discussion should also recognise the varied and often changing ways residential property is used in practice.
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Tourel said short-term rental accommodation (STRA) reflects the reality that homes are not always used in a single, fixed way. A property may at different times serve as a primary residence, a holiday home, a temporary base for work or family reasons, or an income-producing asset that helps a household manage mortgage costs, rising living expenses or retirement planning.
“This flexibility is not a flaw, it is a feature of a functioning housing and accommodation system, and it should be recognised as such,” he said.
Importantly, Tourel pointed out that the role of STRA extends beyond leisure travel. In regional and growth areas in particular, it can provide practical accommodation for tradespeople, teachers, healthcare workers, contractors and project teams who need somewhere to stay for weeks or months, especially where dedicated medium-term accommodation is limited or does not exist.
In many locations, he said, alternative medium-term accommodation “simply does not exist”.
At the same time, Tourel made clear that flexibility should not mean a lack of oversight. In his view, the sector benefits from “clarity, consistency and appropriate regulation”, with an important distinction between professionally managed properties and more occasional hosts.
Where a property is managed on behalf of others, this should continue to sit within existing licensing frameworks under state-based consumer and fair trading laws. For other hosts, he pointed to lighter-touch tools such as registration, certification or accreditation as ways to improve transparency, minimum standards and understanding of who is operating in the sector and at what level.
Tourel also argued for a more coherent state-based approach to STRA, including registration, data and enforceable codes of conduct, stating that ”governments first need to understand the sector through data to enable evidence based policy decisions”.
That marks a different policy emphasis from Rawnsley’s article, which centred on restricting detached suburban homes from short-stay use in order to improve long-term rental supply. Rawnsley also argued that strata apartments are better suited to move between short-stay and long-stay use depending on demand.
Tourel said it was also important to be precise about the role of residential property. Residential dwellings, he argued, are designed to accommodate people and may, over time, be owner-occupied, rented long-term or used more flexibly to meet changing household and community needs.
That flexibility, he said, is a fundamental characteristic of residential property and should not be undermined by broad or poorly targeted policy responses.
Where issues do arise, they should be addressed through proportionate, evidence-based measures rather than blanket restrictions that fail to recognise how housing is actually used in practice.
While the two perspectives differ on where limits should apply, the exchange highlights an increasingly important policy question: how to balance housing supply pressures with the varied ways residential property is used by owners, workers, visitors and communities.
Tourel said the debate was worth having if it helped reinforce a more balanced and practical policy framework, one that recognises the diversity of the sector, supports professionalism and preserves the flexibility that communities, workers and households increasingly rely on.
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