The comment window on Cape Town's short-term letting by-law closed on 5 October 2026, and three weeks later the City has not published a tally of submissions or a revised text. That silence is normal, not a signal. This short-term letting by-law update covers what the City has now said in its own words about the timetable, the two opposite pressures it has to reconcile before Council, and the one number every host will be asked for once the rules land.
Where it stands
The draft sat open for public comment from 5 August to 5 October 2026. The City's own page now states the timetable outright: adoption of the by-law is targeted for early 2027, and the proposed changes to rating categories take effect from 1 July 2027. Between those dates, the order of events is fixed even if the dates are not: a revised draft that answers the submissions, adoption by Council, then a registration system that opens before the rates change.
Nothing in the rules has moved yet. The draft still asks every property listed on a booking platform to register with the City and display its number, still puts platforms in the enforcement seat, and still sends a home onto commercial rates once it is available for short-term letting on more than half its annual room nights. We set out what each of those clauses will ask of you in What the final by-law will require of you.
Two pressures, pulling opposite ways
The submissions the City now has to answer do not point in one direction, which is why the revised draft matters more than the original.
The hospitality side wants it narrower. FEDHASA Cape has backed a registration system from the start, but its chair, Lee-Anne Singer, warned that treating someone who lets a spare room a few weekends a year as a commercial operator could push them out of the market or into non-compliance, and asked for clear thresholds between casual and commercial hosting and a phased rollout. That is an argument about where the line sits and how hard it bites, not about whether there should be one.
The housing side wants it wider. Writing in Daily Maverick on 1 October, housing activist Leila Kidson welcomed registration and data-sharing but argued the 50 percent threshold is easy to evade, that roughly 23,000 Cape Town homes now operate as short-term rentals, and that only primary residences should be allowed to list at all. The Cape Town Collective Ratepayers' Association, which speaks for 45 civic bodies, gave the draft cautious support while doubting it would change the incentives that favour short-term letting over long leases.
Both pressures land on the same clause. Tighten the threshold and spare-room hosts carry the cost; loosen it and the housing argument gets louder before Council. Our own view has not changed since we wrote An open calendar is not a full hotel: a test built on availability rather than nights actually sold measures the wrong thing. Whichever way the revision goes, the measurement itself stays.
What crossing the line costs
Deadline-week coverage put a rand figure on it. Rowan Alexander of Alexander Swart Property Group told EWN that an owner paying about R10 000 a year in property rates could expect to pay about R24 000 a year once the property crosses the threshold. That is one valuer's estimate on one example, and your property's value sets your own number, but the shape holds: roughly two and a half times the rates bill, every year, for a calendar decision.
Two details make that decision less obvious than it looks. The test counts bedrooms, not just nights: the City measures the share of a property's total bedrooms that stand available for short-term letting across a 365-day period. And it measures availability, not bookings: a December blocked open and left unsold still counts against you. Some coverage has already restated the rule as "more than 183 nights a year", which is not what the draft says, and hosts who plan off that shorthand will plan wrong. Our close reading of the text, including the clause that decides who carries the burden at the line, is in We read the whole by-law.
The number you will be asked for
Whatever the revised draft says, every host will need one answer: what share of your annual room nights was your property available for short-term letting, measured the way the City measures it. Most hosts cannot answer that today. A listing calendar shows open and closed dates for one channel, it does not count bedrooms, it does not hold twelve months of history once the dates pass, and it does not know about the nights you blocked on another platform. Reconstructing it after a reclassification letter arrives is the expensive way to find out.
And knowing the number is only half of it. The other half is deciding, property by property, whether the nights above the line earn more than the rates they trigger, a calculation that moves with your suburb, the season and the events calendar. We made that case in The 182-night calendar.
Have the record before the City asks
RateVeld members already carry availability, occupancy and rate history for every property as a matter of course, across channels, with every night priced from local comparables, hotel rates and a curated events calendar. When the revised draft lands, we read it and update The Ledger the same week; when the City asks for your number, it is already on file. Ask for pricing and we will show you your availability share on your own property.