Most of Australia does not cap your nights

The assumption behind most short-stay questions is that Australian states limit how many nights you can let. Two of them do. The rest regulate short-stay letting through planning approval, strata rules, registration and tax, none of which involve a night count.

New South Wales sets a 180 night limit on non-hosted short-term rental accommodation in Greater Sydney. Western Australia requires development approval for unhosted short-stay letting in the Perth metropolitan area above 90 nights in a twelve month period. Those are the two numbers.

Victoria has no night cap. It applies a 7.5 per cent levy to stays under 28 consecutive nights, and owners corporations can ban short stays by special resolution. Queensland has no statewide cap. In Brisbane and on the Gold Coast your position depends on planning approval for the use, zoning and rates categorisation.

So the pattern across the country is thresholds and approvals rather than bans. Where a threshold exists it applies to one kind of booking and leaves the others alone. That distinction is what makes a full year possible.

Where each state actually stands

Each row links to the full rules for that market. Figures are the position at the time of writing and local councils can add requirements on top.

New South Wales, Greater Sydney

180 nights a year for non-hosted stays, set by NSW Planning. Hosted letting has no night limit. Bookings of 21 consecutive days or more are exempt from the count. The twelve months run from your registration date. Full detail in the Sydney STRA rules and the NSW rules.

Western Australia, Perth metro

Statewide registration since 1 January 2025 under the WA short-term rental accommodation scheme, renewed every twelve months. Unhosted letting up to 90 nights in twelve months is exempt from development approval in Perth metro, above that you need approval. Hosted letting is exempt from planning approval statewide but still needs registration. Regional councils set their own position. Full detail in the Perth rules and the registration and 90 night guide.

Victoria

No night cap. A 7.5 per cent short stay levy applies to stays under 28 consecutive nights, charged on total booking fees and administered by the State Revenue Office. Owners corporations can ban short stays by special resolution, with principal place of residence lots exempt. Full detail in the Melbourne short-stay rules.

Queensland, Brisbane and Gold Coast

No statewide or citywide night cap. Your obligations run through planning approval for the use, zoning, rates categorisation and state safety law. Full detail in the Brisbane rules, the Queensland regulations and the Gold Coast rules.

Everywhere else

South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory have no night cap of the New South Wales or Western Australia kind. Council planning rules and strata or body corporate rules still apply. For the national picture see the Australia-wide rules guide.

The three booking bands

Every short-stay calendar in Australia sorts into three bands. The band decides whether a booking counts against a cap, and in Victoria whether the levy applies.

Band one, short nightly stays

These are the bookings a cap counts. Leisure travel, events, peak season. In Greater Sydney anything under 21 consecutive days falls here and draws down the 180. In Victoria anything under 28 consecutive nights attracts the 7.5 per cent levy.

Band two, the exempt middle

Longer bookings that still sit inside the short-stay framework but outside the night count. In New South Wales a booking of 21 consecutive days or more does not count toward the 180 at all, so a single 28 night booking uses none of your allowance. In Victoria a stay of 28 consecutive nights or more falls outside the levy.

Band three, past short-stay letting entirely

New South Wales defines short-term rental accommodation as stays of three months or less. Anything longer is not short-term rental accommodation and the framework does not reach it.

The strategy is the same everywhere. The number is local. Check the threshold for your state in the section above before you set your minimum stay.

Why a capped year does not cost you half your revenue

A 180 night cap sounds like half a year of lost income. It is not, for one reason. You choose which nights to give up.

Nightly rates are not flat across the year. In every Australian market there is a peak where rates and occupancy are both high, a shoulder either side of it, and a quiet stretch where nightly letting earns a fraction of peak. A cap does not take nights evenly from across that range. It takes them from wherever you decide, which means it takes them from the bottom.

Run your nightly bookings through the months where rates are highest and you fill the cap with your most valuable nights. The nights you give up are the ones that were earning least. The revenue you lose is a much smaller share of the year than the nights you lose.

Then the quiet months are not empty. They go to band two.

A worked illustration

The numbers below are illustrative and are not market data. Substitute your own nightly rate and season length and the shape of the result holds.

Assume a property that achieves 400 Australian dollars a night in peak season and 180 dollars a night off peak, and assume peak and shoulder together run six months. For simplicity the illustration runs both halves at full occupancy, which no property achieves, so treat the totals as a ceiling rather than a forecast.

• Nightly letting across the six strongest months at 400 dollars, at 180 nights, is 72,000 dollars.
• The same 180 nights taken from the off peak half at 180 dollars would be 32,400 dollars.

The cap costs you the second figure, not the first, because you place the nights where they earn most. On these assumptions the half of the year you give up to the cap was carrying about 31 per cent of a full nightly year.

Now fill the off peak half with band two bookings. A 28 night corporate placement at 220 dollars a night is 6,160 dollars. Six of those across the quiet half is 36,960 dollars, which is more than the 32,400 dollars the same months would have made on nightly letting at off peak rates.

On these assumptions the capped year earns more than an uncapped nightly year would have, because the middle band outperforms off peak nightly letting. Change the inputs and the margin changes. The direction does not.

Who books the middle band

Band two is not a discount tier for leisure guests who want a long holiday. It is a different market.

• Corporate placements. Staff on a project or a secondment, usually four weeks to three months, booked by an employer rather than an individual.
• Relocations. People who have moved city or country and need somewhere to live while they look for a permanent home.
• Insurance housing. Households displaced by damage to their own property, placed and paid for by an insurer.
• Contractors and healthcare staff. Rotations that run in blocks of weeks.

These bookings behave differently to nightly ones. They are made further ahead, so your calendar fills earlier. They turn over once rather than eight times, so cleaning and linen cost per night falls. And the guest is usually working rather than holidaying, which tends to show in how the property is treated.

Building the calendar

Work backwards from your peak.

1. Identify your peak and shoulder months from your own booking history, or from local event and holiday calendars if the property is new.
2. Allocate your capped nights to those months first. Set your minimum stay short there so you can take the high rate nightly bookings.
3. Raise your minimum stay in the quiet months to the local exempt threshold. Twenty one days in New South Wales, 28 nights in Victoria if you want to sit outside the levy.
4. Market those months to the band two audience rather than listing them on nightly platforms at a discount.

One detail catches people out in New South Wales. The twelve months run from your registration date, not the calendar year. Register in March and your allowance resets in March. Plan the peak inside that window rather than assuming a January reset.

Where the tenancy line sits

There is a point at which a long booking stops being short-stay letting and becomes a residential tenancy, with its own obligations on written agreements, bond handling and termination. In New South Wales the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 governs that.

Where the line falls depends on the arrangement rather than the night count alone. A 28 night corporate placement booked and paid for by an employer is not the same thing as an individual moving in for three months on a rolling basis. If you plan to run band two bookings regularly it is worth getting the agreement structure right at the start rather than after a dispute.

This is not a reason to avoid the middle band. It is a reason to document it properly.

What this means for your property

If your property is in Greater Sydney or Perth metro, the cap sets how many nightly bookings you can take, not how many months you can let. If it is in Victoria, Queensland or anywhere else in the country there is no night cap to work around, and the question is approval and strata rather than a number.

In every case the year splits into nightly months and longer stay months. The work is placing them correctly and then filling both, which means pricing two different markets, holding two sets of minimum stay rules, and moving them as the season turns.

That is what we do. Houst manages the calendar, the pricing and the compliance across both bands, including the registration and approval side where it applies.