Hobart housing market 'robust', with Airbnb's help: MyState Bank chief

The accommodation platform Airbnb is keeping the Hobart housing market "robust”, according to the chief executive of Tasmania's second biggest lender, MyState Bank.

Melos Sulicich said investors were listing their properties on Airbnb because of a lack of hotel accommodation, The Australian Financial Review reported.

"There's a lot of apartments and small housing rentals going onto Airbnb [and because of this] there's a shortage of long-term rental accommodation," Sulicich was quoted by the AFR.

The Central Hobart vacancy rate has fallen from about two per cent to just 0.6 percent over the past two years, pushing up annual rents by four per cent for houses and 12 per cent for apartments, according to data compiled by SQM Research.

Searches on Airbnb show more than 300 properties available for rent on Airbnb across greater Hobart. According to analytics firm Airdna, which analyses Airbnb data, there are 111 properties for rent in Central Hobart, up from 96 a year ago with 84 being entire homes or apartments.

A studio in West Hobart is up for rent for $80 a night. The ad says it has its own courtyard and access and is close to the city.

Another one-bedroom house with garden was advertised for $195 per night in Hobart’s Battery Point suburb.

Hobart was experiencing a pent up demand from the increased tourism - the latest ABS figures show international visitor nights up 20 percent - to match the new supply, Sulicich said.

The development pipeline includes a number of hotels in Hobart and across Tasmania, but Sulicich doesn’t expect a big impact on the housing market when these hotels open.

He also brushed off the most recent CoreLogic housing data for May, which showed a 4.8 percent drop in dwelling values in Hobart to a median of $350,000, after values had risen 10.2 percent over the previous 12 months.

The fall reflected the "law of small numbers" (referring to the size and volatility of the market) rather than any sign of a major correction in Hobart house prices, Sulicich said.

MyState, whose loan book from Tasmania makes more than half of its total of more than $4 billion, was seeing similar levels of mortgage growth, Sulicich said.

Sulicich said Tasmania was heavily dominated by owner-occupiers which accounted for 80 percent of its borrowers.