Sydney

Woolies won’t allow AirBnBs in these apartments

If you started at an "either way" to the "built to buy or built to rent" question, this matters. If it's built to buy Woolies can't really do much to stop AirBnBs. They don't own the apartments once it's been sold off. And I'm not convinced that a strata by-law against short-term accommodation would even be legal, let alone practically enforceable. From that perspective, build-to-rent might be superior.

I'm personally not entirely convinced either way about whether build-to-rent or the more standard build-to-own is better (certainly, build-to-rent affordable homes is better than build-to-buy luxury ones, but build-to-buy affordable homes should also be in the mix—as should, to a much much greater degree than at present, State-owned housing, which I guess is a subset of build-to-rent). It kinda just feels wrong on a gut level (I guess it "doesn't pass the pub test") to have housing that's literally impossible for an individual to buy and live in because of corporate ownership. And I think I'd rather rent from a good individual landlord than a corporation, but the corp is likely to be more consistent and much better than many of the worst landlords. Assuming they use good agents.

But I do think it's worth recognising what potential upsides are to each, and "it prevents AirBnBs" does not, I think, work as an advantage for build-to-own, and is more likely (though not guaranteed) to work in the case of build-to-rent.