Upgrading of Strand and Gordon's Bay will boost residential values
The planned upgrades of Strand and Gordon's Bay near Cape Town will speed up the already fast residential price rises witnessed here in the last two to three years.
This is according to Wouter Joubert, manager and co-franchisee of the Rawson Property Group's franchise serving these areas.
The municipality's programme will entail an initial outlay of at least R50m and the projects which it will tackle will include a complete rebuilding of the Strand seawall and a reconstruction of the roads, parking areas and public facilities along the entire 3km beach front. A section of the beach will also be upgraded so that it can attain a blue flag status.
In addition, the municipality will next to the pavilion construct a totally new pier which will reach some 200m into the sea.
The municipality will also complete the removal of the now partially demolished old pier. Then there are also plans to reconfigure and modernise Strand's CBD so that it rivals the best in the coastal resorts of Europe.
Boulevard with traders
"The thinking behind these encouraging improvements is that the beachfront should, as at Sea Point, be suited to boulevarding as well as to the provision of limited and controlled hawking by traders in specially constructed stalls," says Joubert.
The plan recognises that Strand is today a Helderberg residential and business hub, no longer just a retirement and holiday village as it was 25 years ago.
At Gordon's Bay, an African private enterprise syndicate has bought the well-known Villa Via Hotel and they have plans to make it the focal point of the already popular Harbour Island retail, entertainment and residential node. Here, too, the public amenities and roads and Harbour Island itself will be upgraded by the municipality.
In Strand the average price of homes and sectional title units has, in round terms, risen in three years from R750,000 to R1m - with the freehold homes being mostly in the R1m to R2m bracket. Many of the homes his team has been selling, he says, have achieved increases of 15% per annum.
Bargains available
There are bargains available, notably in the luxury high rise apartment blocks which seven to ten years ago were brought to the market at record prices of around R30,000/m2. Today they can often be had at a massive discount, i.e. at R12,000/m2 to R15,000/m2. This means that a typical luxury two bedroom apartment on or close to the beach front can now be had for R1.5m - again a very reasonable price.
For those with upmarket tastes, this franchise can offer luxury Strand apartments in the Hibernia and Topaz blocks where the prices are between R2.5m and R4m.
At Gordon's Bay the low lying houses today still sell for an average of R850,000. For those on the mountainside, prices can be anywhere from R2.5m to R8m. The long-term prospects are excellent because there are very few more attractive homes in South Africa than those dotting the hillside of Gordon's Bay.
