Can I short-term rent in Perth Metropolitan Area?

The STRA Register opened for registrations on 1 July 2024 under the Short-Term Rental Accommodation Act 2024, and registration became mandatory from 1 January 2025 (confirmed verbatim on the Consumer Protection page: 'registration of STRA premises becoming mandatory from 1 January 2025'). Both hosted (owner/host lives on site) and unhosted (guest has exclusive use) properties must register; hotels/motels, serviced apartments, tourist developments, farm-stays, and premises falling under the Caravan Parks and Camping Grounds Act 1995 s5(1) are excluded from the scheme. The registration number must be displayed conspicuously on every advertisement/listing. Booking platforms are required to check WA listings against the register.

Exceptions: Hotels/motels, serviced apartments, tourist park developments, farm-stays, and premises under the Caravan Parks and Camping Grounds Act 1995 s5(1) are excluded from the STRA definition and do not need to register.

Confirmed verbatim on the wa.gov.au registration-and-fees page: 'The initial fee to register a STRA premises is $250' and 'The renewal fee is $100'. These fees apply per premises to keep a registration current on the state STRA Register administered by the Department of Local Government, Industry Regulation and Safety / Consumer Protection.

Confirmed verbatim on planning.wa.gov.au: 'An exemption from the requirement to obtain development approval applies within the Perth metropolitan area where unhosted STRA is leased for 90 nights or less (non-consecutive) within a 12-month period, as per the date of registration.' The page lists all 30 Perth-metro local government areas benefiting from this exemption and states plainly that 'Hosted STRA is exempt from requiring planning approval within Western Australia', i.e. no night cap applies to hosted STRA anywhere in WA. The exact 1 January 2026 commencement is not printed on the planning.wa.gov.au page itself, but is now confirmed via a WA Government media statement dated 24 August 2025 ('Short-term rental owners warned time to get planning approval running out'), which states verbatim: 'all metropolitan councils require unhosted STRA operating more than 90 nights per year to have lodged a development application from 1 January 2026' and 'Failure to do so by 1 January will mean the STRA property can no longer operate.'

Exceptions: Hosted STRA is exempt from this trigger entirely. Outside the 30 defined Perth-metro councils (including all of Peel and regional WA), each local government sets its own planning-approval trigger for unhosted STRA.

Once an unhosted STRA premises within the 30 Perth-metro local government areas is booked beyond 90 nights in a rolling 12-month period, the operator must obtain development (planning) approval from the relevant local government to keep operating, this sits on top of, not instead of, state STRA registration. Confirmed via planning.wa.gov.au, which lists all 30 covered LGAs including the City of Perth. Local governments outside this metro definition (including Peel and all regional WA) set their own approval triggers for unhosted STRA rather than using the fixed 90-night threshold. The 1 January 2026 commencement date, previously inferred only from planning.wa.gov.au's 'now in effect' wording and its 5 Jan 2026 page-update stamp, is now confirmed via a WA Government media statement dated 24 August 2025: 'all metropolitan councils require unhosted STRA operating more than 90 nights per year to have lodged a development application from 1 January 2026.'

Exceptions: Hosted STRA never requires this development approval, regardless of nights let.

A direct fetch of the Short-Term Rental Accommodation Regulations 2024 text on legislation.wa.gov.au confirmed each of the following obligations on the lessor/owner, each carrying a $5,000 fine per contravention: ensure each smoke alarm is in working order; ensure mains-powered alarms remain permanently connected to the mains supply; ensure non-mains alarms have a 10-year sealed battery that cannot be removed; ensure the alarm has not reached its expiry date; and ensure an alarm without an expiry date is not more than 10 years old. This mirrors, and is confirmed as applying to, WA's general residential smoke-alarm regime. However, neither the Regulations text nor the wa.gov.au STRA Register page state that the Register itself records or displays smoke-alarm compliance status for a given premises, that specific claim from the original research could not be corroborated and has been dropped from this record rather than repeated.

A direct fetch of the legislation.wa.gov.au filestore HTML mirror of the Short-Term Rental Accommodation Act 2024 (using the direct mrdoc filestore URL rather than the statutes.nsf RedirectURL query pages that blocked prior fetch attempts) returned readable section text: s9, an accommodation provider commits an offence, penalty $20,000, if it enters or seeks to enter an arrangement to provide STRA in premises not registered under the Act; s10, an accommodation provider commits an offence, penalty $20,000, if a prohibited advertisement is published by the provider or their agent; s11, an advertising-publication owner commits an offence, penalty $20,000, if a prohibited advertisement appears in the publication; s12, a booking-platform provider commits an offence, penalty $20,000, if a prohibited advertisement appears on the platform. A parallel fetch of the Short-Term Rental Accommodation Regulations 2024 text confirmed $5,000 fines per contravention for each of the smoke-alarm compliance obligations (see fire_safety rule). Both figures are now primary-sourced, resolving the prior unresolved_flag.