A coastal home on a quiet street a short walk from the beach, shuttered and empty on a bright morning

Guide · Homes and hosting

Sixty days of guests,
and three hundred days of empty house.

What the Byron Shire cap on non-hosted short-term letting actually covers, and what a compressed letting year changes about cleaning, maintenance and scheduling a coastal property.

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The Byron Shire short-stay cap limits non-hosted short-term rental accommodation to 60 days of letting per year across much of the Shire. It has applied since late September 2024. Non-hosted means the whole property is let while the host is not living there; hosted letting, where the host is present, is not subject to the cap.

Some mapped precincts within the Shire are excluded and can still let all year. Whether a particular property sits inside or outside those precincts is a question of where the boundary falls, so it is settled by Byron Shire Council’s own map rather than by anything on this page.

Last reviewed September 2026.

Four things worth being clear on

Deliberately brief. The detail belongs with the Council and the planning portal, not with a cleaning company.

It is about non-hosted letting

The cap applies to letting the whole property while you are not there. Letting a room, or a granny flat, while you live on the property is hosted letting and is treated differently.

That distinction does a lot of work, and it is the first thing to establish about any given property before working anything else out.

Some areas are excluded

Parts of the Shire are mapped as exempt and can continue to let all year. Whether an address falls inside one is a boundary question, and boundary questions are answered by the map, not by what the neighbours are doing.

Check it directly with Byron Shire Council before making a decision that depends on the answer.

Registration applies either way

Short-term rental accommodation in New South Wales has to be registered on the state register, and there is a code of conduct and a fire safety standard that come with it.

None of that is changed by the cap. A property inside an exempt precinct still has the same registration obligations as one that is capped.

It only affects one side of our patch

This is a Byron Shire control. Ballina, Lismore, Tweed and the Queensland side of the border all sit under their own arrangements, which differ from each other and change independently.

If you own in more than one of those, do not assume what you learned about one applies to the next.

We clean houses. We do not advise on planning controls.

Everything above is a plain summary written to help a host work out which questions to ask. It is not planning advice, it is not legal advice, and it can go out of date the moment a control is amended. Two authorities hold the real answers: Byron Shire Council for the map and the local controls, and the NSW planning portal for registration and the statewide framework.

If a decision about your property turns on the answer, get it from them or from a planner, in writing. The rest of this page is about the part we do know something about, which is what happens to a house that is full for sixty days and empty for the rest.

Where to get the real answer

Both of these outrank us on this subject, and the first one is the only place that can answer the question about your specific address.

What a compressed letting year actually changes

This is the part we do know about: what happens to a property that is full for sixty days and closed for the rest.

The turnovers compress into peak

Sixty days will not be spread evenly across a year. They will land in January, at Easter, over the school holidays and on event weekends, which is exactly when every other capped property in the Shire is also letting.

So the same number of changeovers now happens in a much smaller number of weeks, and the people who do them are the constraint. Peak-week cleaning capacity in this Shire was already tight before the cap and the cap concentrated it further. Book the season, not the booking.

An empty coastal house is not a house at rest

Three hundred days closed up near the coast is its own maintenance problem, and it is the one most owners underestimate. Salt film builds on glass and hardware whether or not anybody is inside. Dust settles. Drain traps dry out and the smell comes back up through them. Insects find their way in and die on window sills.

And in a Northern Rivers wet season, a closed house with no air moving through it is the ideal place for mould to start, in wardrobes, behind bedheads and along the cold side of a bathroom wall. None of that is caused by guests. It is caused by the house being shut.

The pre-season clean becomes a real job

A property that let all year was continuously maintained by its own occupancy. A property that sits closed from May to December needs a proper reset before the first guest of the season, and it is a deep clean rather than a turnover: linen out of storage and aired, every trap run, glass done properly, the whole place opened up and dried out.

It costs far less to book that as a scheduled deep clean in a quiet week than to discover on the 23rd of December that it was needed.

The long gap is an opportunity, if you use it

The one genuine upside. Every job that used to be impossible to schedule around back-to-back bookings is now easy: carpets, upholstery, tile and grout, exterior washing, gutters, windows at height, the oven done properly.

Those jobs used to be squeezed into a Tuesday in June. Now there is a season for them, and a property maintained in the gap presents better in the sixty days that count.

Every booking matters more

With fewer nights available, a single bad review carries more weight and a single cancelled booking is a larger share of the year. The tolerance for a turnover that ran late or a bathroom that was still damp at check-in goes down accordingly.

That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to have the changeover run by someone who does it every week rather than by whoever is free, and to have a number to ring when a guest is at the door and something is wrong.

Some properties change use, and that changes the cleaning

A number of owners in the Shire have moved to long-term or mid-term letting, or to hosted arrangements, since the cap. Whether that suits any particular property is a decision for the owner and their accountant, and we have no view on it.

What it changes for us is straightforward: a tenanted property needs routine cleaning and an end of lease clean at the end rather than fifty changeovers, and a mid-term let sits somewhere between the two. It is a different service, not a smaller one.

Before the cap, and after it

For a non-hosted property inside the capped area. Nothing here is about revenue, which is your accountant’s question, not ours.

What actually changed about running the property	Letting all year	Letting sixty days
Changeovers per year	Spread across twelve months	Compressed into peak weeks
Booking cleaning capacity	Usually available at short notice	Needs to be locked in for the season
Deep cleans	Squeezed into whatever gap appears	Easy to schedule, and now necessary
Condition between guests	Maintained by constant use	Deteriorates quietly while closed
Mould and damp risk	Lower, because the house is aired constantly	Higher, and highest over a closed-up wet season
Cost of one bad turnover	One night out of many	One night out of sixty
Exterior work, carpets, gutters, windows	Hard to fit in	A whole off-season to do it in

The short version: fewer cleans, but each one matters more, and a new category of work appears that never existed when the house was never empty.

The off-season, in order

Six jobs and roughly when to do them. Every one of them used to be impossible to schedule around back-to-back bookings.

Straight after the last guest

A proper close-down rather than a changeover. Fridge emptied and left open, bins out, linen laundered and stored dry rather than left made up on beds, traps run, and the place left as ventilated as security allows.

Autumn: the deep clean

The reset the changeovers never had time for. Tracks, grout, oven, skirtings, inside cupboards, the tops of everything. Done once at the start of the quiet stretch rather than in a hurry at the end of it.

Winter: carpets and upholstery

The one time of year drying is not fighting humidity, and the one time a floor can be out of action for a day without costing a booking. This is the right window for it and there is no longer any excuse to skip it.

Late winter: outside

Gutters, roof, exterior washing, windows and the driveway, before the storms rather than after them. A coastal property presents most of its wear on the outside and it is the first thing in a listing photo.

Through the wet: check on it

A closed house through a Northern Rivers wet season is where mould starts. Somebody should open it, look behind the wardrobes and along the cold walls, and run the exhaust fans, well before the pre-season clean.

Before the first booking: the pre-season reset

Dust off every surface, glass done, linen out of storage and aired, hot water and appliances checked, and the whole property walked as a guest would walk it. Book it with room to fix what it finds.

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The Byron Shire cap: frequently asked questions

1. What is the Byron Shire 60-day cap?

A limit of 60 days of letting per year for non-hosted short-term rental accommodation across much of Byron Shire, in place since late September 2024. Non-hosted means the whole property is let while the host is not living there. Hosted letting, where the host is present on the property, is not subject to the cap.

2. Is my property in an exempt area?

Some precincts within the Shire are mapped as exempt and can still let all year, but whether a specific address falls inside one is a boundary question. Check it directly with Byron Shire Council rather than relying on a summary, a neighbour, or a page like this one. It is a five-minute question with an expensive wrong answer.

3. Does the cap apply outside Byron Shire?

No. It is a Byron Shire control. Ballina, Lismore, Tweed and the Queensland side of the border each sit under their own arrangements, which differ and change independently of one another. If you own in more than one area, check each of them separately.

4. What does a shorter letting season change about cleaning?

Two things. Changeovers compress into peak weeks, so cleaning capacity has to be booked for the season rather than the booking. And the house is now empty for most of the year, which introduces a maintenance problem that constant occupancy used to solve on its own: dust, salt film, dry traps and, in a wet season, mould.

5. Does an empty holiday house really get mouldy?

On this coast, a closed-up house through a wet summer with no air moving through it is close to ideal conditions for it, particularly in wardrobes, behind bedheads and on the cold side of a bathroom wall. It is not caused by guests. Somebody opening the place up periodically through the wet is the least expensive prevention there is.

6. When should the off-season work be done?

A close-down clean straight after the last guest, a deep clean early in the quiet stretch, carpets and upholstery in winter when things actually dry, exterior work in late winter before the storms, and a pre-season reset with enough room before the first booking to fix whatever it finds.

Holiday lets and short stays

Sixty days is not less work. It is different work.

Peak-season turnovers booked for the season, and the off-season jobs the calendar never used to have room for.

See holiday let cleaning

Sixty days of guests,and three hundred days of empty house.