Website offers Asian investors Airbnb ghost tax get-out

The website’s general Mandarin Chinese page urges investors to take advantage of the Australian property boom

Overseas investors are being urged to circumvent the proposed “ghost tax” on empty properties … by listing them as Airbnb lets.

The short-term letting management website andchill.com.au this week launched a page under the headline “Avoid the Australian Ghost Tax” and added “we transform your property into a five-star Airbnb”.

Another page in Chinese script urges potential clients to take advantage of the property boom, and says the company is actively changing the real estate industry. The website has no official affiliation with Airbnb.

Treasurer Scott Morrison announced in the federal budget this week that overseas investors who leave their properties empty for more than six months could face fines of up to $5000.

Now Sydney state MP Alex Greenwich has slammed the andchill pitch, saying the ‘ghost tax’ was intended to put more properties into the residential market, not increase holiday lets.

“This is quite alarming,” Mr Greenwich told Domain. “The ghost apartment tax is meant to help increase the supply of homes in a market of rapidly escalating rent and it will be a serious shame if it only acts to convert potential homes into holiday houses.”

However, Callum Forbes, 27, principal of andchill denied that he and his co-founer Jeffrey Seng were undermining the ghost tax proposal and said their service wasn’t just for tourists.

“What we’re doing is still increasing the housing supply,” he told Domain.  “We also supply accommodation for people between houses, or who are undertaking renovations or who have visiting families from overseas who need somewhere to stay.”

He said andchill has about 150 properties in Sydney under management and about as many again across Australia. Their business model locks clients into long-term management contracts with an allowance of up to six weeks per year for private use of their property.

Andchill is one of a growing number of middleman companies that manage holiday letting properties, providing cleaning and concierge services on behalf of investors.

Mr Forbes said they had put the ‘ghost tax’ page up just after the Budget announcement because “we try to be agile.”

Mr Greenwich, whose constituency contains the largest number of apartment blocks in the state as well as several Airbnb hotspots, says the impact on apartment communities “could be disastrous with buildings even more likely to be turned into quasi hotels.”

He said this showed how important it was for the state government to introduce adequate regulations for short term letting so that owners corporations were able to decide if they wanted to provide visitor accommodation in their buildings, and regulate its extent, with a proper enforcement regime.”

A spokeswoman for Innovation and Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean, currently formulating the Government’s policy on holiday letting, declined to comment, saying the ‘ghost tax’ was a federal initiative.

Despite having the look and feel of an Airbnb site, andchill.com.au, which has been running for about a year, is not connected with the online holiday letting giant.

“Airbnb has no affiliation with andchill.com.au,” a spokesman for Airbnb said. “Overwhelmingly, our hosts are everyday people who open their homes to travelers from around the world to make a modest bit of extra income.

“We are committed to working with governments at all levels to achieve fair and progressive rules which continue to support home sharing, while also encouraging our hosts to think carefully about their responsibilities.”

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