In Cape Town’s historic Bo-Kop, houses under siege by wealthy foreign buyers | Housing news

Cape Town, South Africa – After sunrise, there is a call to prayer throughout the community at the foot of Cape Town’s Table Mountain.

The adhan from the minaret of the Auwal Mosque, South Africa’s oldest mosque built in 1794, echoes through the narrow streets and brightly colored houses of Bo-Kap, a historically Muslim community.

But beneath that familiar call that has passed for more than two centuries, a quiet shift is unfolding.

Across Bo-Kop – and much of Cape Town’s inner-city – rising property prices, growing investor demand and the rapid spread of short-term rentals are raising fears that one of the city’s oldest-living neighborhoods could slowly disappear.

A legacy under siege

For local photographer Yasser Boole, the change is gradual, but impossible to ignore.

“One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is the slow suffocation of my living culture through the accelerated sale of homes to high-net-worth individuals, most of whom have no ties to the place or the culture,” she says.

Booli, 50, an eighth-generation Bo-Kop resident, grew up in a neighborhood where extended families lived within a few streets of each other — mosques, schools and culture, a shared history shaped by colonial rule and apartheid.

Today, Booli says, the social fabric is under pressure as the neighborhood’s growing popularity with tourists and investors begins to reshape everyday life — from how homes are used to the types of businesses that open in the area.

For him, the changes aren’t just visible in those who live in the neighborhood, but in how Bo-Cop is viewed from the outside.

Across Cape Town’s prime property market, international demand is increasingly visible. Data from Seef Property Group shows foreign buyers accounted for about 2.8 billion rand ($168m) – a quarter of the nearly 11.3 billion rand ($679m) in property sales across the Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl last year.

And as demand from wealthy buyers increases, residents say the effects are unfolding in the neighborhood itself.

Homes that once housed generations of the same family are often sold to foreign investors or converted to short-term rentals such as Airbnb.

Younger residents, meanwhile, are finding it difficult to stay in neighborhoods their families have called home for decades — some, centuries.

“I’ve seen my generation leave Bo-Kop en masse because they can’t live here anymore,” says Booley. “Where young people have the resources to buy into this area, there seems to be an invisible barrier (to entry).”

For Booli, this raises a deeper question: Can the community that built Bo-Cop still afford to stay here?

“It’s a dire state of affairs, culturally speaking, when the hard-fought battles of our forefathers are in vain,” he says.

Tourism boom or housing squeeze?

In recent years, Cape Town’s rise as a global tourism destination has quietly transformed the economics of its inner-city housing market.

In 2025 alone, the city will welcome around 3.3 million international passengers, according to Airports Company South Africa.

For tourists, neighborhoods around the city bowl like Bo-Cop are central to that tourism economy, offering something increasingly rare in global cities: a historic district where culture, architecture and everyday life still coexist.

But the same qualities make the area prime real estate.

Short-term rental platforms have accelerated that change.

Data from rental analytics firm AirDNA shows more than 31,000 active short-term rental listings operating across Cape Town, with some of the highest concentrations around the central business district – 26,000 Airbnb listings alone.

For property owners, the returns can be substantial. According to AirDNA, some short-term rentals in central Cape Town generate more than 400,000 rand ($24,000) a year — often surpassing what traditional long-term rentals can bring.

By comparison, long-term rent for a similar apartment to a local tenant typically fetches between 12,000 and 18,000 rand ($720 – $1,080) – or about 144,000 to 216,000 rand ($8,640 – $13,000) per month.

But tourism is only part of the story.

Cape Town has become a magnet for remote workers and digital nomads – professionals who earn salaries in strong foreign currencies while living in South Africa.

In 2024, the government introduced a digital nomad visa, allowing foreign remote workers employed abroad to live in South Africa for longer periods of time – as part of attracting international talent, tourism and investment.

Drawn by the city’s climate, scenery and relatively low cost of living, many can afford to rent beyond what most local residents earn.

“Remote workers and international buyers have given affordability beyond the means of locals,” Booley argues.

The gap between local income and housing costs is stark.

According to the South African Quarterly Labor Force Survey, the average monthly wage in South Africa is estimated to be approximately 15,000 to 18,000 rand (about $800 to $950).

In contrast, long-term rentals in central Cape Town often exceed 20,000 rand ($1,200) per month, with some properties commanding significantly higher prices during peak tourist seasons.

Cape Town-based housing advocacy organization Ndifuna Ukwazi says many low- and middle-income workers are being priced out of the inner city, despite having full-time jobs.

It warned that widening the gap between wages and housing costs was contributing to a growing category of the so-called “working homeless” – people who are employed but unable to afford stable housing.

For the Bo-Kop Civic and Ratepayers Association (BKCRA), a community organization representing residents and property owners in the historic neighborhood, the effects of the property boom are no longer theoretical. House by house, street by street are unraveling.

“The community absolutely sees the current situation as a form of economic displacement,” says Sheikh Dawood Terblanche, president of BKCRA.

Residents are not being forcibly removed by law, he says, a quieter form of displacement is taking place – driven by rising property prices, rising council rates and the wider cost of living.

And fears are not new.

In 2019, thousands of residents took to the streets of Bo-Kop to protest against large-scale property developments that threatened the historic neighborhood. The displays attracted national attention and the area was eventually granted Heritage Protection Overlay Zone (HPOZ) status – designed to protect its unique architecture and streetscape.

But while the heritage designation helped save the neighborhood’s colorful houses from demolition, locals say, it does little to protect the people who live inside them.

Instead, residents say they feel the effects more at their front doors.

“The pressure is intense and constant,” says Terblanche.

“Residents report being frequently approached by agents with high cash offers, often targeting elderly homeowners and the vulnerable.”

Cost of living

For some residents, the pressure doesn’t just come from investors; This comes from the rising cost of staying in the neighborhood.

As property prices have risen across Cape Town’s inner city over the past two decades, municipal valuations have risen alongside them. Higher assessments translate directly into higher property rates – turning once-modest family homes into expensive properties.

Across Cape Town, property values ​​have risen by an average of 10 per cent a year, consistently outperforming other major metropolitan areas, including Johannesburg, the country’s financial hub.

In some areas, the increases have been steep: property prices have risen more than 200 percent in the past decade, while municipal rates and fees have risen nearly 500 percent.

For older residents in Bo-Kop, the effects are particularly severe.

“For pensioners on fixed incomes, the resulting property prices are higher than their monthly pensions. Many are forced to sell simply because they can no longer afford the ‘living tax’ on their ancestral homes,” says Terblanche. South Africa’s state old-age pension is about 2,190 rand ($115) a month, paid through the South African Social Security Agency — leaving little room for homeowners facing rising municipal property rates.

For the younger generation, the barrier is different: access.

Property prices in Bo-Kop have risen sharply over the past decade as investor demand and tourism have boosted property values ​​across the inner city.

One-bedroom entry-level homes now regularly sell for between 2.5 million and 3 million rand — roughly $135,000 to $160,000 — putting ownership beyond the reach of many families. A decade ago, similar homes sold for about 1.6 million rand (about $100,000).

Across Cape Town more broadly, the affordability gap has widened dramatically. Research estimates that 90 percent of households cannot afford property in the City Bowl, where housing prices have risen faster than wages.

Location of the city

But City of Cape Town officials say the pressures affecting neighborhoods like Bo-Kop must be understood within the wider transformation of the city.

In a written response, City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said Cape Town’s rapid growth was a major factor shaping its housing market.

“Cape Town’s success as a city has seen a population growth of over one million new residents over the past decade alone due to semimigration and other urbanization forces,” he said, referring to the tendency of South Africans to migrate internally to better-off municipalities in the country.

Housing affordability is also shaped by broader economic conditions, he said.

“There is an income crisis in South Africa … the lack of economic (opportunities) is having a profound impact on income levels and affordability for most households.”

Tihalibongo said the city is trying to address the spatial legacy of apartheid-era urban planning, which left many low-income families far from economic centers. Some families on the outskirts of the city still spend up to 40 percent of their income on transportation to get to work.

The City says it is trying to expand housing supply — in an effort to promote access to economic opportunity. “In the last two years, we have released more land for affordable housing than in the last 10 years,” it said.

Meanwhile, the national government says policies aimed at attracting digital nomads and foreign investment are designed to boost tourism, spending and economic growth.

In Bo-Cop, however, residents say the challenge isn’t proximity to opportunity, but the growing cost of staying in the neighborhood.

what is left

As demand for prime-city property continues to grow, heritage protection has exposed deep tensions in Bo-Kop, residents say.

“Living heritage, its people are not protected,” says Terblanche.

The houses of Bo-Kop remain – a cascade of color climbing the slopes below Table Mountain – as they have been for generations.

Five times a day, the call to prayer still rises from the minaret of the Auwal Mosque, marking the passage of time in the neighborhood that has changed around it.

But for Booli, preserving what is disappearing is very difficult.

“The loss of existence of the physical environment that led to the passing and survival of a unique culture formed in the shadow of Table Mountain,” he says.

Then, he pauses.

“The reality is already here – the culture is under attack.”