Super rich home buyers shrug off rate hikes

By Xolile Bhengu

Middle-income home buyers are going downmarket because of rising interest rates, but the super rich, it seems, are not feeling the pinch.

Aylesford International recently opened an office in Cape Town that specialises in the sale of properties worth more than R40-million.

The company said South Africa has many individuals who have done well and, though it was not a large market, it was not uncommon to find someone buying a property for R80-million.

But Aylesford said many of the buyers of property worth more than R50-million were foreigners.

Sol Kerzner has announced that his company is to build three luxury apartments across the top two floors of his new R1-billion hotel on the marina at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront.

Scheduled for completion next year, the 700m² duplex apartments, with a price tag of R100-million each, are the centrepiece of the latest development in South Africa by Kerzner’s luxury management company, One&Only Resorts. The company’s previous big development was the Lost City, built in North West in 1992.

Pam Golding Properties yesterday launched a R1-billion ultra- luxury development in upmarket Waterkloof, in Pretoria.

The development, The Embassy, is expected to set a high-water mark for properties in South Africa at R35000 per square metre.

It is the second-most expensive Gauteng residential development per square metre, after the March launch of Nedbank’s La Residence, a R1.6-billion development in Sandton that has a R40000 per square metre price tag.

The Embassy will be built on a 2ha site close to the Brooklyn Mall and will consist of 144 apartments, ranging in size from 140m² to 1100m². Prices are from R3.5-million to R25-million.

Sizwe Nxedlana, an economist for Standard Bank, said South Africa’s exclusive property areas were not showing strain.

“These are people who have the ability to purchase properties for cash,” he said.

“This market is usually influenced by wealthy individuals who receive high performance bonuses, are entrepreneurs or have exposure to wealth-creating mechanisms such as the stock exchange. — Additional reporting by Simpiwe Piliso