Guests reportedly arrived at the house in Rochdale in buses
09:39, 06 Jul 2025Updated 10:03, 06 Jul 2025
A large crowd gathered at the property(Image: / SWNS)
A holiday let owner was left horrified after a small “gender reveal” booking turned into an enormous party with hundreds of guests.
Matt Genesis, 33, rents out a 10-bedroom house in Falcon Close, Norden, Rochdale, worth £635,000 which he let out to a group of eight people for a “gender reveal” party.
But the booking via Instagram soon snowballed as more and more attendees arrived until some 200 people had turned up to the property.
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In the end, the revellers caused some £2,000 worth of damage to the £450 a night rental house, and the police had to break up the festivities.
Matt would not find out that the party had gotten so out of hand until neighbours complained about the noise on June 25.
He would discover that far from the party of eight he had expected, a minibus of people had arrived at the house, with some guests coming from as far as London.
The police broke up the gathering(Image: / SWNS)
Matt is a director of Fairway Building & Remedial Contractors, a company which owns the property, and scrambled down to see what was going on.
When he arrived at around 9.30pm he was greeted by some 150 people filling the streets trying to get into the house.
He 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 – 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 described the operation as “calculated”, saying that the guests had even switched off wi-fi to disable security systems.
He explained: “Usually if guests are checking in we have cameras on the property, but as soon as they entered they turned the Wi-Fi off.
“That disabled the cameras, so we weren’t able to deal with it any sooner than they could. It was very much ‘Project X’.”
A broken lamp at the house(Image: Matt Genesis / SWNS)
In the end the owners apologised to the neighbours for the disruption, and had to cancel the next booking and fork out £2,000.
Staff worked for 12 hours to clean the property, which had previously had a £200,000 renovation including a hot tub and pool tables.
They had received the charge of £450 per night as well as a damage deposit of £250. While normally rented on Airbnb, this time the house had been 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.”
Neighbours described how they had been disturbed by the noise.
James Gartside, 80, and Jane Gartside, 84, have lived next door for more than 50 years.
They began to think something was amiss when someone asked to park in their driveway.
The 10-bedroom house(Image: Matt Genesis / SWNS)
Jane said: “I think I knew it was going to be quite busy, you just got that feeling quite quickly.
“Nine o’clock one of the owners arrived and said ‘I’m sorry, this is what’s happening’ and said the police had been sent for. They got everybody out.”
She added: “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 house.
He said: “They did very well to disperse them, in my opinion. In a way it was a problem at the time, but it’s not 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.
“Nuisance, OK, yeah, danger and that sort of thing didn’t come in to it, in my opinion.
“I didn’t know how they were going to fit in there. Before the big masses came I did offer our drive to park on, but I think the owners learnt a lesson on it and will obviously improve it.”
Airbnb said that after investigating the situation they had found that the booking had come through a third party and no reservations had been made there on their platform.
Greater Manchester Police was contacted for comment.