Enforce the Airbnb rules Christchurch already has before inventing new ones

Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger thinks the market will fix the city’s Airbnb problem. On the big picture, he has a point. Where he falls short is the next step. The council does not need a new tax, a national bed register or a citywide crackdown. It needs to enforce the zoning rules it already has, in the specific developments where the evidence is overwhelming.

The mayor’s bet on hotel supply

Mauger’s argument is simple. The $150 million Sheraton Christchurch opens in mid-2027 with 240 rooms, and more hotel stock should erode routine short-stay demand. “The more hotels that come online, the less demand there’ll be for Airbnbs,” he says.

That is a reasonable pro-market instinct, and the national evidence partly backs it. Back in 2024, an Airbnb-commissioned Infometrics analysis found short-term rentals had only a limited influence on rents and no real influence on house prices, with population growth and interest rates doing the heavy lifting. The commissioning party matters, but the finding still undercuts the lazy claim that Airbnb is what is wrecking housing affordability.

The weak spot is data. Mauger concedes the council’s grasp of non-compliance is “a stab in the dark” and questions whether stepping up enforcement is worth the money. That is not a market solution. It is a shrug.

Where the market argument breaks down

Citywide averages hide acute local problems. Central Christchurch’s population grew by just 50 people in the year to June 2025, from 9,150 to 9,200, despite 484 new homes being completed. Residents estimate only four of 25 townhouses at the St Luke’s site are lived in, and that about 80% of homes in another new development operate as Airbnb-style stays.

The District Plan only permits unhosted visitor accommodation where residential blocks keep a high proportion of residential activity. Blocks that are four-fifths short-stay plainly do not. Councillor Nathaniel Herz Jardine says these operators are “dodging half their city taxes” while taking homes off the market.

Demand will not simply evaporate either. Seven major events between April and June 2026 generated an estimated 133,385 visitor bed nights. A new Sheraton may soften baseline yields, but test cricket and stadium concerts will keep peak-period short stays lucrative for years.

The tools are already on the shelf

This is where the regulatory hawks overreach. The council does not need new legislation to act. MBIE has just backed the council’s ruling that owners who turned a consented household unit into short-term accommodation breached the Building Act, describing the use as “transient, rotational and commercial in character”. The owners are appealing, but the precedent stands.

The tax machinery exists too. In 2025, IRD issued a run of short-stay rulings covering occasional home rentals, GST on platform supplies and close companies. Councillors were also due to vote in June on charging short-stay operators business rather than residential rates, a far more targeted lever than a bed tax.

Opes Partners economist Ed McKnight argues councils that wait for a register will entrench bad behaviour, noting some developers market new builds as Airbnb opportunities without consent. “If the council is not going to crack down and enforce their rules, then you will get bad behaviour,” he says, pointing to analytics tools that already identify short-term listings.

Why a blunt crackdown would backfire

Short-stay supply is not the enemy. After the earthquakes, owners of unsold housing turned to short-term rental, and a 2025 University of Auckland analysis linked dense Airbnb activity to rising land values and urban regeneration from 2020. Tourism is structurally important nationally, with $37.7 billion in total expenditure in the year to March 2023. Scrapping the 60-night consent-free allowance citywide would punish casual hosts to fix a problem concentrated in a few blocks.

In February 2026, Lincoln University’s Anthony Brien framed the real question as how to regulate so short stays support tourism without undermining housing, communities or council finances. That is the right frame.

What Christchurch should do next

The business-friendly answer sits between Mauger’s patience and the activists’ wish list. Buy the listing data. Target the developments where residential use has visibly collapsed. Use the Building Act precedent and business rating where operators are clearly running commercial accommodation. Leave everyone else alone.

Hotel operators have a fair complaint about an uneven playing field, and inner-city residents have a fair complaint about ghost streets. Neither is solved by waiting until 2027 for a Sheraton, and neither needs a new layer of bureaucracy. Christchurch already has the rules. It just has to use them.

Sources

• RNZ: Property market will sort out influx of Airbnbs, Christchurch mayor says (2026-08-31)
• Chris Lynch Media: Day of reckoning is coming for Airbnbs, Mauger says (2026-09-18)
• The Press: Central Chch residents want action on Airbnbs as population of ‘ghost town’ grows less than 1% a year (2026-05-06)
• RNZ: MBIE backs council ruling that Christchurch Airbnb owners need to get consent or stop (2026-08-21)
• RNZ: Investment property expert says councils should crack down on holiday rental providers (2026-05-19)
• Infometrics: New analysis finds short-term rentals have little influence on rents and house prices in New Zealand (2024-07)
• IRD: Short-stay accommodation tax guidance (2025-05-23)
• University of Auckland: Airbnb could actually be good for us (2025-04-09)
• Stats NZ: Tourism satellite account, year ended March 2023 (2024-02)
• Why short-term rentals are needed – but can’t go unchecked (2026-02-11)