June 15, 2026
The most important document in most apartment purchases is not the offer-to-purchase. It is the body corporate's conduct rules.
This is the document that tells you whether you can let your apartment on Airbnb, for how many nights, with what notice, under what conditions. It tells you what the parking rules are, how pets are handled, what the noise restrictions look like, and whether the building has the authority to fine you if you breach any of it. The conduct rules sit underneath every apartment in a sectional title scheme in South Africa, and they shape what the asset can actually do.
Most buyers do not read them. They sign the offer, take occupation, and then discover the rules only when they bump into one. Governance is part of the product. Buying an apartment without reading the conduct rules is like buying a business without reading the shareholder agreement.
"If the rules are standardised and there's a protocol that's observed and the constitution and conduct rules are adhered to, then it's pretty seamless."
Under South African law, a body corporate has substantial authority over how units in a sectional title scheme are used. That authority is granted by the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act 8 of 2011, the Sectional Titles Act 95 of 1986, and the Community Schemes Ombud Service Act 9 of 2011. Together, these statutes give the body corporate the power to adopt and amend conduct rules that govern the use of individual units and common property.
The procedure is not casual. To amend a conduct rule, the body corporate must call a meeting on at least 30 days' written notice to all owners. The amendment must be approved by special resolution, which requires 75 percent of votes in favour, or 75 percent of all owners in writing if conducted by round robin. Once passed, the amended rule must be submitted to the Community Schemes Ombud Service for approval. Only after the Chief Ombud has signed off does the rule come into operation and become binding on all owners and occupiers.
The reasonableness test runs through all of this. STSMA section 10(3) requires that rules be reasonable and apply equally to all owners. The CSOS adjudicator weighs the individual owner's interest against the body corporate as a whole, and considers whether the rule fits within the legislative intent.
This is not a loose mechanism. It is a deliberate one, with checks built in.
The legal question of whether a body corporate can restrict or prohibit short-term letting through conduct rules was settled in 2021. In what has become known as the Paddock case, the High Court of South Africa confirmed that a body corporate can lawfully prevent owners from using their units for short-term Airbnb rentals where this is prohibited under validly adopted conduct rules. The body corporate in question had followed the special resolution process, the amendments had been registered with the CSOS, and the court upheld the result.
The Paddock case was not the first time this issue had been tested. A 2018 CSOS adjudication had already held that a rule prohibiting rentals of less than three months was "reasonable and fair in the circumstances" under the STSMA. The Paddock judgment confirmed at the court level what the adjudicator had established three years earlier.
For buyers, the implication is direct. A body corporate that has properly adopted a restriction on short-term letting is enforceable. The owner who breaches it does not have a winnable case. The asset's use is governed by the rules that were in place when the buyer signed, and by any amendments that have been properly adopted since.
The Atlantic Seaboard now sits inside a Cape Town short-term letting market with approximately 26,304 active Airbnb listings as of mid-2025, more than San Francisco or Sydney. The pressure on residential buildings to take a position on short-term letting is real, and most buildings in apartment-dense neighbourhoods like Sea Point, Green Point, and the CBD have taken one.
The shapes vary. Some buildings require a minimum stay of seven nights. Others require thirty. A small number have moved to prohibit short-term letting altogether. The common thread across the ones that work is consistency. A body corporate that enforces a clear rule across all owners produces a stable building. A body corporate that publishes rules and then does not enforce them produces an unstable one.
We have been developing on the Atlantic Seaboard for over 33 years, and we have watched this evolve from a fringe consideration into a central question of building design and governance. In our developments, we regulate the minimum stay deliberately, because the alternative is a building with multiple operators running to different rules, which is the structural problem Paul described in the first episode of this series.
Body corporate governance is one layer. The other is the city.
The City of Cape Town introduced a draft Short-Term Letting By-Law in February 2026, which proposes that owners of short-term letting units register with the City. Properties used primarily for short-term letting (assessed against a 50 percent availability ratio) may be classified as commercial for rates purposes, which materially changes the cost of running the asset that way. The draft is currently in public consultation, with adoption expected to follow the standard municipal process.
This sits alongside body corporate authority, not above it. A city by-law cannot override a properly adopted conduct rule, and a body corporate restriction cannot override a city by-law. The two operate independently, and a buyer needs to clear both layers to confirm what an asset can actually do.
Before you sign an offer-to-purchase on a sectional title apartment, ask for three things.
1. The current conduct rules. Not a summary. The full document, as registered with the CSOS. Read it.
2. The minutes of the last two annual general meetings and any special general meetings held in the past 24 months. This is where you will see whether the body corporate is functional, what disputes have arisen, and whether any rule amendments are in progress.
3. The levy schedule and the reserve fund balance. A well-governed body corporate maintains both. A poorly-governed one does not.
These three documents will tell you more about the asset than any brochure. They will tell you whether the building is governed in a way that protects its value or in a way that erodes it. And they cost nothing to request. The buyers who treat this as part of due diligence rather than an afterthought are the ones who avoid the worst surprises. The buyers who skip it are the ones writing complaints to the trustees within a year of moving in.
Governance is part of the product. The building you are buying into is not just the apartment, the view, and the finishes. It is also the rules that govern how the apartment can be used, who can do what to whom in the common areas, and how disputes get resolved when they arise.
These rules can change. They change by special resolution, on 30 days' notice, with CSOS approval. A buyer who walks into a building today is buying into the rules that exist today and the framework that allows those rules to change tomorrow.
That framework is not a constraint on the asset. It is the asset's protection. The buildings that govern themselves properly are the ones that hold their value across cycles. The ones that do not, do not. We have spent more than three decades watching this play out across the Atlantic Seaboard. The pattern is consistent enough to be a thesis.
Paul Berman is a co-founder of Berman Brothers Group, which has been developing on the Atlantic Seaboard for over 33 years. Myth vs Fact is BBG's monthly series cutting through the assumptions buyers most often bring to the Atlantic Seaboard market. For the full Q1 2026 market read, see the Boardroom Quarterly Executive Brief.
Continue reading: Is Airbnb Always Allowed? The Atlantic Seaboard Reality is the companion piece to this article, covering the broader question of where short-term letting rights actually come from.
