{"id":91231,"date":"2026-05-10T06:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T06:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=91231"},"modified":"2026-05-11T05:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T05:16:11","slug":"host-with-the-most-cape-towns-airbnb-boom-and-the-citys-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2026\/05\/10\/host-with-the-most-cape-towns-airbnb-boom-and-the-citys-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Host with the most: Cape Town&#8217;s Airbnb boom and the city&#8217;s plan to fight back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cape Town now has more Airbnb listings than Sydney, Toronto, Berlin and Barcelona and the numbers keep climbing. Between September 2023, when we <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/charts\/chart\/d6a25d6a-4da8-4b6a-abc1-f13cfb92b619\">first visited this issue<\/a>, and September 2025, the city has gained more than 6,000 listings, pushing the total to 26,877. Many of those new listings are in the high-value areas in and around the city centre and on the Atlantic seaboard which are desirable for tourists and other short-term visitors. But for local residents this means long-term accommodation is becoming expensive and hard to find, with many people pushed to more outlying parts of the city to find homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"810\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/listings-boom-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-91236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/listings-boom-1.png 810w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/listings-boom-1-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/listings-boom-1-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/listings-boom-1-768x768.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there is another issue the City of Cape Town is now trying to address: Airbnb operators that operate dozens of short-term rentals without paying commercial rates and are essentially operating as unlicensed hotels. 40% of all Airbnb listings for Cape Town are managed by just 7.8% of hosts. The most active hosts have hundreds of listings. One host has 175 listings, another 161. These are not spare bedrooms and granny flats; they are commercial accommodation operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"810\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/airbnb-global-comparison-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-91237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/airbnb-global-comparison-1.png 810w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/airbnb-global-comparison-1-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/airbnb-global-comparison-1-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/airbnb-global-comparison-1-768x768.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the city is taking action. A proposed Short-Term Letting Bylaw would reclassify properties listed for more than half the year as commercial premises, requiring operators to pay hotel-grade rates. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has been blunt: the current system is blocking formal hotel investment and squeezing residents out of their own city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this week\u2019s feature we dug into the numbers behind the issue and found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>One area in Cape Town has <strong>more than 5,700 listings<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hosts that have close to <strong>200 listings<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The most popular area has <strong>more than 350 listings per square kilometre<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Two areas have <strong>more than 100 listings per square kilometre<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/features\/airbnb\">Read the full feature and interactive map<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[709,5,1454],"tags":[418,293],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-91231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-economy","category-feature","tag-airbnb","tag-cape-town"],"acf":{"post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91231"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91238,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91231\/revisions\/91238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91231"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=91231"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=91231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}