Home-sharers, opportunist apartment owners and lobbyists of online holiday rental agencies are the clear winners in the report into holiday rental legislation to be tabled in the NSW parliament today.

On the other side, the obvious losers are strata residents who don’t want short-stay lets in their blocks, established hotels, the state’s 500 or so registered bed and breakfast operators, and residential tenants competing for properties owned by short-stay hosts who can make three times as much in rent from holiday lets.

And there is a growing threat of direct disruptive action in strata schemes if any new legislation removes the ability of a majority of owners to reject having holiday lets in residential buildings.

The Legislative Assembly Committee on Environment and Planning’s 80-page report on the adequacy of short-term holiday letting regulation in NSW covers topics as diverse as party houses near Byron Bay and retirees supplementing their pensions by renting out their spare rooms.

Despite the broad range and many complexities, the takeaway is simple. Renting a room in your home when you are there will be allowed, because it’s not considered a change of use.

Letting out your entire home when you are not there is also OK, although that might become subject to some undefined restrictions on how often you can do it.

The report says strata schemes can’t ban short-stay lets under existing laws – although many already do. Instead, NSW’s incoming strata laws should be changed to include action at the Civil Administration Tribunal (NCAT) for troublemakers, in the same way as envisaged in Victoria.

The report also recommends that local councils should set their own parameters on how often a property can be rented as a holiday let before it requires development approval.

Predictably, there has already been a furious reaction from the strata community, angry that their hard-won advances against short-stay lets are about to be swept away. Some are even contemplating disruptive campaigns to make online holiday rentals too hard for their residents.

“The implications are very troubling,” says Gerry Chia, chairman of Epica tower in Chatswood and vice-chairman of the Owners Corporation Network, the lobby group for strata owners. “I expect owners corporations will resort to desperate measures to ensure that our homes remain secure communities.”

Owners in two of the strata buildings singled out in the report as having had severe problems with short-stay letting are outraged.

“I have been fighting short-term renting and cleaning up the mess in Maestri Towers for 10 years,” says Dr Michael Heaney, chairman of the 400-unit block in Kent Street. “We finally got our strata levies down by 15 per cent, cleaned up the infrastructure – a list of 35 things that were not done during short-term renting – and now I have to start fighting even harder.”

Dr Heaney had told the committee he saved owners millions of dollars when problems associated with short-stay letting – such as over-crowding, damage to common property and prostitution – were finally dealt with.

“There is no way this parliamentary inquiry committee can ever explain to me how we can manage the building and keep it safe if 240 out of the 400 units want their apartment managed as Airbnb,” he told Fairfax Media. “It will be a quasi-hotel with no fire regulations for residents and all approved by this government.”

Trish Burt, founder of the Neighbours Not Strangers website and long-term opponent of short-stay letting in the Bridgeport building in the CBD, says her block is an example of how residential apartment blocks can suffer when short-term letting is allowed.

“Parliamentarians need only look to Bridgeport to gain just a glimpse into the repercussions of the short-term letting of residential housing and the impacts on residents and all those looking for stable, secure and affordable housing,” she wrote in an open letter to committee chairman Mark Coure, MP for Oatley.

There has also been an angry reaction from hoteliers. Licensed bed and breakfasts and hotels will now have to compete with residential neighbours who can undercut their fees without having to comply with any of the regulations governing the official hospitality industry.

“What the MPs didn’t understand is the non-sharing side of Airbnb. In fact 61 per cent of accommodation let by Airbnb in Sydney involves no sharing,” said Peter Hook, communication manager of the hotel-backed Tourism Association of Australia, angered by the credence given to the “slick PR” machine of the online rental agencies.

“It is just owners and commercial landlords making a buck at the expense of long-term renters,” he added.

The committee received several submissions from local councils about added pressure on the rental market but dismissed them for lack of specific data.

“The only thing that is shared is the expense to replace damaged common property,” says leading strata lawyer Stephen Goddard, chairman of OCN, who added that strata owners must be given the right to choose whether or not they want short-stay letting in their buildings.