There is a crisis of rental housing across Australia. Areas in major cities and regional Australia alike are facing extremely low rental stock and record high rents.

Many cities around the globe have cracked down on platforms such as Airbnb and Stayz to try and deal with the overlap of rental shortages and high numbers of short-term rentals.

The aim is to preserve rental supply for locals by restricting short-stay accommodation for tourists to certain areas, limiting the number of nights an unhosted home can be rented, or banning short-term rentals altogether.

Australia has been following suit, and the big question is: will it work?

What rules are in force?

A broad range of new rules have been put in place in the past few years, as outlined in our recent study.

New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria require short-term rentals to be listed on state registers, an important first step to regulation. Tasmania goes further by forcing platforms to share detailed listings data, so registry information can be checked.

Victoria has introduced a 7.5% levy paid by the booking platform or hosts on stays of less than 28 days. This has two goals: shifting profitability in favour of long-term rentals, and raising revenue for social and affordable housing.

The NSW government limits unhosted short-term rentals to 180 days per year across Greater Sydney. In high-demand Byron Shire, the limit is 60 days per year, outside of designated tourism precincts. Other councils, such as the City of Sydney, which has both high tourism demand and extreme affordability pressures, want to follow suit.

In WA, local councils are........

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