Getting your Nairobi building to allow short lets

The most expensive way to discover your building objects to short lets is after you have furnished the apartment. It happens regularly, the objection usually wins in practice whatever the legal position, and the owner is left with a styled unit they cannot operate. This is avoidable in an afternoon.

Why committees object

It is worth understanding the objection properly, because the way to get a yes is to answer it rather than to argue with it. The concerns are mostly reasonable.

• Security. A stream of strangers with gate access, in a building where residents know each other by sight. This is the dominant objection and it is not unreasonable
• Noise and behaviour. Usually traceable to a handful of badly run units and party bookings, which then defines short lets for everyone
• Shared cost. Short let guests use lifts, water, power and the pool more intensively than residents, while the owner pays the same service charge
• Wear on common areas. Suitcases in lifts, constant traffic through the lobby
• Character. Residents bought a home and feel they are living in a hotel, which is a legitimate thing to mind
• Property values, which is usually asserted rather than evidenced, but is deeply felt

The committee is not against you. It is against the one badly run unit it dealt with last year. Your job is to be visibly not that.

The legal position, in outline

This is genuinely complicated and depends on your specific documents, so treat the following as the shape of the question rather than an answer.

• A unit owner in a sectional properties scheme owns their unit and shares the common property, subject to the scheme’s by laws
• By laws can restrict use, and a validly adopted restriction on short term letting is capable of binding owners
• A committee cannot simply invent rules. Restrictions generally need to be properly adopted through the correct process, which is where many purported bans are weak
• Older schemes and long lease arrangements may contain use covenants that predate anyone thinking about nightly letting, and those get argued about
• Separately from the by laws, short stay accommodation is a licensed commercial activity, and zoning and county requirements apply regardless of what your committee thinks

Background on the framework is in the Sectional Properties Act guide.

How to actually get a yes

Go before you start, not after a complaint. Bring a proposal rather than a request, and address every one of the objections above explicitly.

1. Ask for the by laws and read them before you say anything. You need to know whether there is an existing restriction and how it was adopted
2. Approach the chair privately first. A proposal discussed quietly gets a fair hearing. The same proposal sprung on a full meeting gets a reflexive no
3. Offer a guest register. Names and dates provided to the gate in advance for every booking. This answers the security objection almost entirely, and it is the single most effective concession available
4. Offer a minimum stay. Three nights removes the party risk that the committee is actually worried about, and it is good for your business anyway
5. Commit to a no parties and no events rule in writing,with a named contact reachable at any hour if there is a problem
6. Offer to contribute. A modest additional service charge contribution, or funding something visible in the common areas, answers the free rider objection directly and buys a lot of goodwill
7. Cap it. Offering that only your unit does this, or that the building sets a limit on how many units may, reassures residents that they are not approving a hotel
8. Propose a trial. Six months, reviewed, with the committee able to withdraw consent. Far easier to say yes to than a permanent change, and in practice trials that go well simply continue
9. Get it in the minutes. A verbal yes from one chair evaporates when the committee changes. Minuted consent survives

If the answer is no

• Take the no. Operating against a minuted objection is how owners end up with locks changed, gate access refused and a dispute that costs more than the income
• Let it long term instead. Frequently the better business anyway, and it is available immediately
• Consider the serviced or medium stay model. Committees that refuse nightly letting are often relaxed about a single corporate tenant on a two month stay, because that is indistinguishable from a tenant to everyone else in the building
• Revisit in a year with a specific proposal, once you have been a good owner in other respects

If you are still buying

Make this part of your diligence rather than a discovery. Before you commit to a unit you intend to short let:

• Ask for the by laws and the last two years of committee minutes
• Ask directly whether any unit currently operates as a short let and what the building’s position is
• Ask the developer, in writing, if it is a new building. Sales agents will say yes to anything, so get it from the developer
• Prefer mixed use buildings, which are structurally more tolerant than purely residential compounds

How Goldstay handles it

We confirm the building’s position before taking on a short let, and we run a guest register and a minimum stay as standard because they are what keep committees comfortable. Where a building says no, we tell the owner to let it long term rather than operating around the objection.

All of it is included in full Airbnb management in Nairobi, if you would rather hand the property over.

Related reading: service charge in Nairobi apartments and guest vetting and house rules.