WA's 90-night rule started in 2024, not 2026

What the instrument says

The 90-night threshold was created by the Planning and Development (Local Planning Schemes) Amendment (Short-Term Rental Accommodation) Regulations 2024, SL 2024/194, published on the WA legislation website on 18 September 2024.

Its commencement clause is two lines long and settles the question on its own. Regulation 2 reads:

Sources: Planning and Development (Local Planning Schemes) Amendment (Short-Term Rental Accommodation) Regulations 2024, SL 2024/194

There are no transitional provisions

This is the part worth checking yourself, because a transitional or savings clause would change the answer completely. There isn't one.

The instrument runs to eight clauses in total: 1 Citation, 2 Commencement, 3 Regulations amended, 4 Schedule 1 clause 37 amended, 5 Schedule 1 clause 38 amended, 6 Schedule 2 clause 1 amended, 7 Schedule 2 clause 61 amended, 8 Schedule 2 clause 78B amended. Every clause after the third is an amendment to the principal regulations. There is no phase-in, no grandfathering, no saving of existing arrangements, and the date 1 January 2026 does not appear anywhere in the instrument.

It is an exemption, not a ban, and it has four conditions

The reporting that gets the date right often still gets the mechanism wrong. SL 2024/194 did not prohibit unhosted letting above 90 nights. It inserted a new exemption into clause 61(2) of the deemed provisions, the list of uses for which development approval is not required. Going past 90 nights does not make the use unlawful; it takes you outside the exemption, so you need development approval from your local government to continue.

The exemption in new clause 61(2)(eb) applies only where all four of the following are true. Most published summaries mention the third and skip the rest.

Source: Schedule 2 clause 61(2)(eb) of the Planning and Development (Local Planning Schemes) Regulations 2015, as inserted by SL 2024/194 clause 7.

Sources: SL 2024/194, clause 7 (Schedule 2 clause 61 amended), Short-Term Rental Accommodation planning reforms, Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage

The 12 months runs from your registration date

New clause 61(10) defines the counting window, and it is not the calendar year. It is "the period of 12 months commencing on the day on which the owner or occupier registered the dwelling under the Short-Term Rental Accommodation Act 2024 Part 3", or any subsequent 12-month period starting on the anniversary of that day.

So two properties on the same street can have windows that open five months apart. A night counter reset every January is measuring the wrong year, and will read as compliant while the actual window is already over.

The 90 nights are also non-consecutive nights across that window, not a single continuous block.

Sources: SL 2024/194, clause 7 inserting Schedule 2 clause 61(10)

Your council cannot undercut it

The same amendment inserted clause 61(9), which says that despite any provision to the contrary in a local planning policy or local development plan, development approval is required for unhosted short-term rental accommodation in the metropolitan region where the dwelling is unregistered, is used beyond 90 nights in the relevant window, or sits in a zone where the use is class X or inconsistent with the zone objectives.

The Department describes the deemed provisions as automatically applying to all local planning schemes and being unable to be altered, varied or excluded by local governments. A friendlier local policy does not help you here.

Sources: SL 2024/194, clause 7 inserting Schedule 2 clause 61(9), Short-Term Rental Accommodation planning reforms, Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage

So what did happen on 1 January 2026

Three different things, which is exactly why the date became shorthand for something it is not.

None of these is the commencement of the 90-night threshold, which had already been in force for over a year.

Sources: Short-Term Rental Accommodation planning reforms, Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, WA Government announcement, short stay register now open for owners

Where the wrong date came from, and where it did not

Worth being precise about this, because it would be easy and wrong to blame the State.

The WA Government's own published wording is careful. It consistently describes 1 January 2026 as a deadline by which a development application had to have been lodged, not as the date a rule began. The announcement of the reforms in September 2024 set out the changes as introduced on 18 September 2024 and does not mention 2026 at all.

The error lives in the restatement layer: the industry guidance, agency blogs and rules summaries that compressed three obligations landing on one date into a single sentence about when the rule started. It is an ordinary and understandable compression. It is also the kind that costs a host a year of misplaced confidence, which is why it is worth setting out with the clause numbers attached.

The practical consequence is narrower than it first looks, and worth stating carefully. Before 19 September 2024 there was no state-level exemption for unhosted short-term rental accommodation at all, so the amendment made the position more permissive, not less. Whether any individual host was in breach depends on their local scheme and whether they already held approval. What can be said plainly is this: a host who read 'from 2026' and let unhosted beyond 90 nights spent more than a year outside the state exemption, relying on a safe harbour that did not cover them.

Common questions

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