Sydney Council Eyes Ban on Short-Term Rentals Without On-Site Hosts

At 10 a.m. on High Street in Millers Point, departing guests leave laundry bags on verandas for cleaners. Cleaners have laid out fresh towels on beds in neighboring rooms. Other guests head out sightseeing in 'I love Sydney' T-shirts.

The street offers enviable harbor views, but this is no tourist resort. Federation-era houses, once among Australia's oldest public housing, now host short-term rentals, many managed through Airbnb.

Leaves from plane trees pile up outside KU Lance kindergarten halfway down the street. The center opened as a supervised playground in 1912 and closed at the end of last year due to too few local children. 'Now we're a city without grandchildren,' says Cormac Champion, a Millers Point resident whose youngest child attended before class sizes shrank.

Kent Street, where Champion lives, tells a similar story. Every second Victorian terrace has a key-safe on the front door, signaling a short-term rental. The area sits beside the Harbour Bridge and holds Sydney's oldest pubs, drawing visitors.

The five-star Langham hotel stands quietly on the corner, but the suburb has turned into a giant hotel.

Last week, the City of Sydney passed a motion to study banning short-term rentals where the host does not live at the property. Options include tying a ban to rental vacancy rates or targeting the worst-affected suburbs. Millers Point is 'the canary in the coalmine,' says Greens councillor Matthew Thompson.

Thompson, who proposed the motion, says a ban could return as many as 5,000 properties to the long-term rental market. Last year, the council examined cutting the statewide 180-day annual cap for short-term rentals to 60 days, following Byron Shire's move. That region, covering Byron Bay and Mullumbimby, has New South Wales' second-highest homelessness rate after Sydney.

Caps do not work and are hard to enforce, Thompson says. He prefers a de facto ban like those in Barcelona, Amsterdam and New York.

'It's not the silver bullet, this is not going to fix the housing crisis, but it's something that we could do to return houses that already exist, that could be someone's home,' he says.

SQM rental data, used by the council, shows vacancy rates of 1% to 1.5% in most postcodes across the local government area.

Murray Cox, founder of Inside Airbnb, which tracks short-term rentals in global cities, campaigned for New York restrictions on non-primary residences. Those rules took effect in September 2023. Cox, who grew up in Sydney, says vacancy rates below 5% signal a housing emergency.

'I don't think we need to cannibalise our housing markets just to provide cheaper travel options,' he says. 'I think we need to prioritise people that are trying to find housing, housing for our children and our students, our elderly.'

Deputy mayor Jess Miller says a ban would be tough to enforce without state government changes to the short-term rental register.

'We don't have the ability to match whether or not it's a primary or secondary residence,' she says. 'We don't know if it's a property under management by an agent. We don't know if it belongs to a consortium.'

Champion started renting his Kent Street house as office space in 2018 for his sales and marketing business staff. He moved his family there in 2020.

'We've seen so much change in the last six or seven years in this neighbourhood but in the city as well,' he says.

He watched about 20 families with children leave Millers Point. One family's rent jumped $600 a week from one lease to the next because neighboring houses had become Airbnbs matching that rate.

Many short-term rental operators rent properties and sublease them as holiday homes. They attend rental inspections with prospective tenants, secure leases and manage dozens of properties, often with landlord approval.

Local residents identified one Airbnb superhost with listings for at least 66 properties in inner Sydney, including several on High Street.

New South Wales allows strata corporations to vote against short-term rentals if the property is not the host's principal residence. Hosts living there can still rent rooms or the whole home while away.

The Minns government launched a short-term rental review in 2024 after taking office. More than two years after the initial four-week public consultation, it has not released the report.

Airbnb donated $7,900 to the NSW Labor party in 2025, more than double the $3,750 across 2024 and 2023. It gave $2,000 to the Liberal party in 2022 when it governed.

In 2024 and 2025, Airbnb partnered with Vivid Sydney, the state-run light festival. Last year, it backed Local Government NSW's annual conference and served as an 'elite partner' for its Destination and Visitor Economy Conference. A Local Government NSW spokesperson said event partners have no role in policy or advocacy.

Diary disclosures show Airbnb or its lobbyists met Minns government ministers 12 times across 24 occasions since 2023, including at industry events.

A government spokesperson said it is reviewing the planning framework for short-term accommodation and will announce details later. The housing minister's sector review date remains undisclosed.

They added: 'The best way to reduce demand for short-term rentals is to build more visitor accommodation. Short-term rental accommodation provides important economic benefits and choice for visitors.'

Airbnb shared a statement from Claudia, a host near St Vincent's hospital in Darlinghurst.

'It gets booked by families in medical crisis who need to be close to the hospital and families who book my place specifically because they have neurodiverse children and they simply cannot stay in a hotel,' she said.

Champion notes a nearby short-term rental advertises as a hotel. A lost guest once knocked on his door seeking it.

'We want [tourists] here,' Champion says. 'But it's not as if they won't come because they can't rent a whole house for their visit.'