Sunshine Coast Cracks Down on Duplicate Short-Term Rental Listings Harder

Sunshine Coast Council is tightening its audit of short-term rental registrations after internal reviews found a pattern of duplicate property listings across platforms including Airbnb and Stayz, a problem that has distorted housing availability data and complicated enforcement of the region's short-term accommodation rules, which came into full effect under Queensland's new regulatory framework in late 2024.

The issue matters now because the council's planning team is actively using rental stock data to underpin decisions about residential density, particularly around the Maroochydore CBD development corridor and established coastal suburbs such as Mooloolaba and Noosa Heads. If the same dwelling appears twice, or more, in the dataset, the modelling overstates available tourist accommodation and understates pressure on long-term rental housing. With the Sunshine Coast's rental vacancy rate sitting below one percent for much of 2024 and 2025, according to figures published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, the accuracy of that data carries real weight for residents competing for housing.

What the Sunshine Coast Is Actually Doing

The council launched a cross-referencing project earlier this year, matching property addresses listed on short-term rental platforms against the Queensland Government's online register, which hosts operate under the state's mandatory registration scheme introduced through the Tourism and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2023. Properties appearing under multiple listings are being flagged for investigation. The Maroochydore-based planning team is coordinating with the state's Office of Fair Trading, which manages complaints about non-compliant listings.

Visit Sunshine Coast, the region's tourism body headquartered in Birtinya, has also been drawn into the process. The organisation publishes accommodation supply data used by developers and hospitality investors, and duplicate listings skew that picture. A property on Pacific Boulevard in Mooloolaba, for example, listed separately on three platforms under slightly different names, would inflate the apparent supply of visitor accommodation in that suburb without adding a single additional bed.

Locally, the distinction matters most in suburbs where short-term rentals now account for a significant share of the overall housing stock. In parts of Noosa Shire, a separate council area immediately to the north, short-term rentals have historically represented more than 30 percent of all dwellings in beachside pockets, according to Noosa Council's own housing studies. The Sunshine Coast proper has not published equivalent suburb-level breakdowns publicly, but council planning documents reference the same structural pressure on Mooloolaba, Caloundra, and the Hinterland towns of Montville and Maleny.

How It Compares Globally

Other coastal cities facing similar pressures have tried different tools. Barcelona's city government moved to ban new short-term rental licences entirely in November 2024, citing a housing affordability crisis and pointing to more than 10,000 active listings it described as driving up rents. Amsterdam introduced a 30-night annual cap for most properties years earlier. Honolulu passed legislation in 2022 restricting short-term rentals outside designated resort zones, with fines of up to $10,000 USD per day for non-compliant operators.

The Sunshine Coast's approach is more measured. Rather than hard caps or outright bans, the council is leaning on the state's registration system as a filtering tool, pulling duplicates out of the data picture rather than pulling properties off the market. That puts it closer to the model used by Queenstown in New Zealand, which has also opted for registration-based auditing over restrictive licensing, though Queenstown has gone further in requiring hosts to demonstrate primary residence to qualify for certain licence categories.

The practical upside locally is that the audit process should not disrupt compliant operators. Hosts who registered correctly under the Queensland scheme and who list a single property accurately on each platform will not be contacted. The council's planning and development team has indicated, through its published project updates on the Sunshine Coast Council website, that letters will go to operators with flagged listings in stages across the second half of 2026.

For residents watching the housing market, the test is whether cleaner data eventually translates into better policy. If the council's stock figures more accurately reflect the number of dwellings locked in short-term use, the argument for stronger intervention, the kind Barcelona and Honolulu eventually pursued, becomes harder to dismiss.