WA news LIVE: Greens pledge to slash AirBnB numbers; Woman dies after being hit by car in Kings Park

The WA Greens will push for a 90-day cap on entire homes listed on short-term rental sites during the next term of government, they announced this morning.

The party hopes to hold the balance of power in the upper house after the state election, to leverage support for their policies.

They have been calling on the government to introduce the 90-day cap, plus powers for owner’s corporations in apartment buildings to ban or limit short stays, and a 7.5 per cent investor levy on entire homes listed as AirBnBs to generate “millions” in additional revenue for building social and affordable homes.

Housing spokesperson and Legislative Council candidate Tim Clifford said the policies would stop investors hoarding homes for major profits during a rental crisis.

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The Greens say the government’s $10,000 cash incentive for owners to switch their short-stay holiday homes to long-term rentals, registrations for which opened this year, has resulted in only 276 properties unlocked so far at a cost of $2.7 million (though the scheme has been extended and is still taking registrations until mid-2025 with the aim of attracting an extra 400 homes).

The Greens say their policy would unlock closer to 3000 rentals.

Greens WA MLC Brad Pettitt said this was based on modelling from the Parliamentary Budget Office of Victoria, which modelled a similar policy and indicated it would return one-third of AirBnBs to the rental market.

“There are more than 10,500 entire homes listed on AirBnB across WA,” Pettitt said.

“I think [3000 returning to the rental market] is quite a conservative assumption.”

The Real Estate Institute of Australia released figures last year showing the number of short-stay entire dwellings only made up 0.4 per cent of Perth properties, or two to every 100 in Perth, though the number is slightly higher in regional WA at 1.7 per cent/12.1 to every 100).

The government has previously defended its AirBnB incentive saying that in a rental crisis every home makes a difference.