When your home is turned into a nightclub

Quote: Airbnb is just an advertising platform. The company is not a hotel chain and has no security, but it doesn’t declare those facts up front to hosts — Prof Julie Reid, digital media expert

When December’s first tourists land, scores of luxury homeowners will hand over their keys to them expecting a quiet, profitable holiday rental — not a de facto nightclub nightmare.

Yet across Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard, gleaming upmarket villas are being used for unauthorised rages complete with festival speakers, neon signage and ticket sales at the gate. And industry insiders warn it’s happening more often than owners think.

Nick Taylor, MD of NOX Cape Town, a short-term rental company specialising in high-end homes along the Atlantic seaboard, says his team has intercepted a few attempts to turn plush rentals into raucous event spaces. Taylor, a board member of the South African Short Term Rental Association, says the issue is real but manageable.

“It’s just a risk we would like luxury property owners to be aware of and know how to protect themselves [against],” Taylor told the Sunday Times this week.

What many guests don’t realise is that throwing a full-scale bash in someone’s house — even on private land — is a violation of municipal bylaws, not to mention safety, planning and environmental legislation. In most cases, a council permit is required if there’s going to be amplified sound, a crowd, or alcohol on sale at the shindig.

“We frequently receive complaints from neighbours about noise, overcrowding, illegal parking, or suspected commercial use [of the property]. These cases are now so regular that we have formalised a management process with major short-term rental companies operating in the area,”

—  Muneeb Hendricks, Camps Bay City Improvement District manager

One property owner learnt this the hard way. After renting out her home, she went to visit her mother in Namibia. When she checked her security cameras remotely, she watched in horror as Ubers pulled up outside her property and giant speakers were carried in. In no time at all, her three-bedroom home had been transformed into a full-on unauthorised party venue.

In another incident, Taylor says, a “small, private celebration” booking “morphed into a production-level event when neon signage and a portable clawfoot bathtub were installed on the property, and 10 chefs were simultaneously put to work in the kitchen”.

Taylor’s company has begun monitoring properties in real time, to ensure trouble is dealt with before it detonates. They’ve also “heard some horror stories” from other agents — including guests who booked a property and then took to social media to advertise “R1,000 tickets to a thrash at a R35m villa in Camps Bay”.

The Camps Bay City Improvement District (CID), which handles security and emergency response in the area, has confirmed a rise in such incidents. CID manager Muneeb Hendricks says they have seen a “noticeable” increase in short-term rentals being misused for secret parties, social media shoots, and undisclosed large gatherings.

“Camps Bay is an attractive high-end destination, which makes it a target for this type of behaviour,” he says. “We are seeing a growing pattern of tenants pushing boundaries.”

This trend includes short-term renters hauling in pro-grade music gear and hosting large parties that exceed building occupancy limits, as well as staging commercial shoots without the required permits.

“We frequently receive complaints from neighbours about noise, overcrowding, illegal parking, or suspected commercial use [of the property]. These cases are now so regular that we have formalised a management process with major short-term rental companies operating in the area,” said Hendricks.

Globally the problem isn’t new. Airbnb introduced a temporary “party house” ban in 2019 after five people died at a massive Halloween celebration at a California home rented through the platform. In 2022 Airbnb made the ban permanent. In October the platform doubled down on the issue, announcing a global ban on disruptive and unauthorised parties, and rolling out reservation-screening tech designed to flag potentially high-risk bookings.

If your place gets trashed, Airbnb only steps in after the fact. It’s the property owner who faces all the legal risks and insurance issues in cases where they are not covered because 200 people attended a party at their house they didn’t know about

—  Prof Julie Reid, digital media expert

“The policy will continue to include serious consequences for guests who attempt to violate these rules, varying from account suspension to full removal from the platform,” the company said.

But the sophisticated anti-party systems now deployed in the US and Canada are not available in South Africa. So local operators are plugging the gap. Taylor says he gets his clients to sign contracts acknowledging they understand their rental property is being constantly monitored.

One tool is “a device that looks like a smoke alarm” that tracks noise, movement and smoking in real time. If the noise exceeds 60-70 decibels, smoking is detected, or there’s a suspicious spike in movement, the device issues an alert that triggers a response team.

Digital media expert Prof Julie Reid says on-site monitoring of Airbnb clients is “a really good service” that also serves to highlight the fragility of a system where booking platforms wield very little real-world power.

“They claim they have the technology to screen problematic guests, but those guests only become high risk when they’ve offended a few times or been banned. And then they just create a new profile,” Reid said.

“Airbnb is just an advertising platform. The company is not a hotel chain and has no security, but it doesn’t declare those facts up front to hosts. It can’t act before someone throws a couch out the window. If your place gets trashed, Airbnb only steps in after the fact.

“It’s the property owner who faces all the legal risks and insurance issues in cases where they are not covered because 200 people attended a party at their house they didn’t know about.”