A ‘gender reveal’ celebration turned into a huge house party with 200 drunken revellers, which had to be broken up by cops.
Airbnb owner Matt Genesis, 33, said he was duped after agreeing to rent his 10-bed £635,000 home out to a group of eight people who booked it via Instagram for a gender reveal.
But the rental turned into a ‘Project X’ style disaster with hundreds of party-goers flooding the venue, causing chaos and £2,000 worth of damage.
Matt said he was first alerted by noise complaints from neighbours on Wednesday, June 25.
He tried to log in to the property’s external security cameras only to discover they had been disconnected at the £450 a night rental.
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To his horror, he discovered that minibus loads of revellers had turned up at the quiet cul-de-sac in the village of Norden, Greater Manchester, and others were parking over his neighbours’ driveways.
Police in riot vans had to be called to the scene to disperse some of the party-goers who had travelled as far as London to attend the party.
Matt is a director of Fairway Building & Remedial Contractors, the company which owns the property. After arriving at the home at 9.30 pm, he was shocked to find 150 people filling the streets and trying to get into the 10-person home.
Matt said: ‘Whilst we were there, minibus after minibus was turning up – I’d say one every 15 minutes, a minibus full of six to eight people walking in. It was out of control – the police turned up. We called them, obviously, neighbours had called them. It was out of our control.
‘Even the guy who booked it, it was out of his control on his behalf – he said he didn’t expect anywhere near the amount of people, but it’s been passed around group and groups.’
Matt said the operation had been ‘calculated’ – with guests disabling the home’s security systems and turning off the Wi-Fi.
‘That disabled the cameras, so we weren’t able to deal with it any sooner than they could. It was very much ‘Project X’,’ he added.
The embarrassed Airbnb owners were forced to say sorry to neighbours and cancel their next booking as they worked to replace broken furniture and deep clean the damaged house, suffering a total of £2,000 in losses.
The property, which previously underwent a £200,000 renovation and includes a hot tub and pool tables, took three staff 12 hours to clean following the party.
The only money the owners received in return is the £450 per night charge, plus a £250 damage deposit – leaving them well out of pocket.
The property is regularly rented out via Airbnb but on this occasion was booked via Instagram.
Matt said: ‘It was so structured, before we emptied the house out the people who were there said ‘Where do we go?’ Guests had travelled from as far as London for it, so it was very, very calculated.
‘It hit us – we seem like the bad guys, but at the same time it did ultimately hit us as well in the pocket.’
Those living nearby were miffed by the chaos. James Gartside, 80, and Jane Gartside, 84, have lived next door to the home for over 50 years and remembered when it was previously owned by an older couple who had passed away.
On Wednesday, the couple first realised something was brewing after they were asked to allow a party-goer to park in their driveway.
Jane said: ‘I think I knew it was going to be quite busy, you just got that feeling quite quickly. It was just that night was out of control, when the police came. They calmed it all down – there was no fighting or anything like that.
‘We had a meeting, we went around, they invited us all around and everybody felt very upset. They were very apologetic.’
Mike Law lives on the other side of the property and said: ‘They did very well to disperse them, in my opinion. In a way, it was a problem at the time, but it hasn’t lasted. There were certainly more than 200 people, I would say, it was a nuisance – but we can be a nuisance to our next-door neighbours.’
Airbnb said it had looked into the situation and found the booking had been made through a third party, with no reservations made for the property on its platform.
Project X is a 2012 teen movie based on a real-life event when a house party attracted hundreds of unexpected revellers after details were posted on social media.
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