DR CHET SPEVENS | Finance Expert | CONTACT
$425. That’s how much profit one of my investment properties made me from a couple of city slickers staying there while visiting our beautiful town of Betoota last weekend.
Did you know that the same time last year, when I was renting out that same property to a single mother on welfare on a 12-month lease, I was not making any profit? In fact, I was losing $35 each week (although I got it back come tax time).
Transforming your investment property from a long-term rental to a short stay accommodation is more lucrative for humble landlords like you and I. Plus, it’s less stressful. There’s less regulation and legislation to adhere too, and if your short stay tenant is demanding, well it doesn’t matter because they’ll be gone by the end of the week!
By every measure, short stay accommodation is the more profitable choice for us landed gentry. So why on John Howard’s good green Earth would the Betootanese government be considering charging our AirBnBs a new tax to make it harder for us to make a dollar?
Sure, the government might claim that it’s to ease the so-called ‘rental crisis’ in tourist areas such as Betoota’s famed French Quarter. But really, it’s just another shameless money grab.
Now even Airbnb itself is succumbing to this ultra greenie radical left pressure and is supporting calls for a tax on tourists to try to combat the housing affordability crisis.
Has the world gone mad?!
It is getting hard for Landlords like us to eeek out a profit during this rental and cost of living crisis.
Why is no one talking about the effect this is having on the financial and mental health of our ever dwindling cohort of Aussie landlords who decided to get up off their yoga ball and make something of themselves?
Look, I am all for housing reform to ease the rental crisis. I am. But it must be done in a way that does not alienate the landlord class any further by attacking their profit margins.
Which I know is impossible. But so long as it negatively affects me then I’m against it no matter the social costs to wider society.
Support the economy. Support tourism. Say ‘Yes’ to short stay accommodation!
