Can I Airbnb a property in City of Hobart?

Short stay premises providers must hold (or be exempt from needing) a permit under the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993 and disclose permit status/exemption to their booking platform (s.6(1)). Booking platform providers (Airbnb, Stayz etc.) must collect property address, bedroom count, permit number/exemption basis, and whether the dwelling is the provider's primary residence (s.4, s.5(2)), then report this quarterly to the Director of Building Control within 30 days of each quarter's end (s.7(1)). Section 8(4) expressly prevents publication of information that would identify individual premises, there is no NSW/WA-style public register.

If the home-sharing exemption does not apply, a permit is required. The use is 'Permitted' (the simpler pathway, using the standard Visitor Accommodation application package combining the planning permit form and a Building Self-Assessment Form) where the property is in a residential zone excluding Battery Point BP1, or the Wapping Inner City Residential activity area, guests are housed in an existing habitable building, the use occupies no more than 200m2 gross floor area per lot, and the dwelling is not part of a strata title arrangement with another dwelling. New buildings, non-habitable conversions, or use over 200m2 require a full discretionary planning application direct with council. The fee gap between those two pathways is now the single biggest cost in the country for getting a whole-home short stay approved: the council's adopted 2026-27 Fees and Charges booklet lists 'Change of use to visitor accommodation permitted applications $250.00' and 'Change of use to visitor accommodation discretionary applications $5,000.00', both per application. VERIFICATION NOTE: two earlier passes could not confirm this because hobartcity.com.au 403s automated fetches site-wide, including static PDFs. On 25 July 2026 the booklet was read directly and both figures are confirmed verbatim. The previously reported $435 prior fee and the 6-5 council vote of 28 April 2026 remain news-sourced only; the $5,000 figure no longer depends on them.

The Short Stay Levy Bill 2026 imposes a 5% levy on the total booking fee for short-stay accommodation (stays of fewer than 28 consecutive days) booked through a booking platform provider, who is liable to remit it (the cost may be passed on to guests). Exempt: hotels, motels, inns, hostels, bed and breakfasts, caravan parks; specialist accommodation (student, crisis, Minister-declared); and accommodation in a dwelling usually occupied by its owner (home-sharing). Revenue is earmarked for first-home-buyer assistance. The levy commences on a date to be proclaimed and applies only to bookings from that date. CONFIRMED directly from the bill's official progress table on parliament.tas.gov.au: House of Assembly third reading 07/05/2026; Legislative Council first reading 15/05/2026 with second reading, committee, third reading, Royal Assent and commencement all blank as of the fetch date. No levy is currently being collected. Once commenced, booking platforms must register with the Commissioner of State Revenue and lodge returns (annual in the first year regardless of size).

Exceptions: Home-shared/owner-occupied stays and hotel-type accommodation are excluded from the levy entirely.

CONFIRMED directly from the Act's text on legislation.tas.gov.au. Booking platform providers that fail to comply with the data collection/reporting obligations face up to 100 penalty units plus up to 10 penalty units for each day the offence continues (s.5). Short stay premises providers who misrepresent their permit status face up to 50 penalty units (s.6(3)). Unauthorised disclosure of collected short-stay premises information carries up to 50 penalty units (s.8(4)). Separately, once the Short Stay Levy Act commences, a person who wrongly declares their accommodation is not 'short stay accommodation' becomes jointly and severally liable with the booking platform for the unpaid levy plus interest and penalty tax if the declaration is later found incorrect. Tasmania's current per-unit dollar value was not directly confirmed from a primary source this pass (justice.tas.gov.au and gazette.tas.gov.au both 403'd); multiple independent search-index snippets consistently give $213/unit for FY2026-27, but this is not cited here as it wasn't read directly from the primary page, no dollar-equivalent figures are stated in this record's penalties, only unit counts, so this does not affect the accuracy of what is published.

Hobart's visitor accommodation permit test bites hardest in the residential zones; business and mixed-use zones are more permissive, and the Battery Point Heritage Precinct (BP1) carries extra restrictions and is excluded from the simpler permitted pathway. The bigger change is pending. Draft amendment PSA-25-3 would insert HOB-S11.0 Hobart Visitor Accommodation Specific Area Plan into the Tasmanian Planning Scheme, Hobart Local Provisions Schedule. Read directly from the draft instrument, its stated purpose is to 'limit the impact of Visitor Accommodation use on the availability and affordability of housing for long-term residents in residential zones in the City of Hobart' and to 'maintain the character of local residential communities'. It substitutes the visitor accommodation provisions of the General Residential, Inner Residential and Low Density Residential zones within the mapped area, and applies to the Visitor Accommodation use class only. Its Acceptable Solution A1 allows visitor accommodation only where it is within a dwelling the operator uses as their main place of residence, within a secondary residence where the operator's main residence is on the same site, or within a new development where the number of visitor accommodation units is no greater than the number of residential dwellings and there is no net loss of dwellings. Critically, A1 is paired with 'P1 No performance criteria', which means there is no discretionary route for a proposal that fails A1. A second test, A2, blocks visitor accommodation in a strata lot where another lot in the scheme is in residential use, though that one does have an amenity-based performance criterion. In practice the amendment would end new whole-home, non-owner-occupied short stay in Hobart's residential zones. It is NOT yet law: it was certified for exhibition by the Planning Authority Committee on 10 June 2026, was publicly exhibited from 19 June to 16 July 2026, and representations now go to the Tasmanian Planning Commission.