Eerste River sales boom prompts its own agency

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Snyder is partnered in this new enterprise with Carol and Maurice Mullam, who are co-franchisees and whose backgrounds include six years' experience as property professionals at the Rawson Property Group, owning the the Malibu Village franchise in Blue Downs.

Snyder said recently that two factors had led to her taking this step: firstly, demand for property in this ultra-low cost suburb has never been higher. Prices here range from R350,000 to R650,000 and this is exactly the price range for today's emerging buyer.

The second factor leading to her and her co-franchisees' decision, said Snyder, is that it will suit her agents working there to have a local office. As a temporary measure these agents will be working from the Rawson Property Group's Malibu Village office, but they are already on the hunt for their own office base.

Lighstone's findings

Lightstone, the property analysts (which uses Deeds Office figures), have shown that Eerste River is ideally positioned to serve those in the lower income group of the property market here, where household incomes average from R6,000 to R9,000 per month and the average sales price of a home is on R360,000, which puts it in roughly the same price bracket as Camelot, Sunbird Park and Silver Sands.

In 2013 the total value of sales (around R71,5-million) was nearly double that of 2012 (R39,3-million), which itself had seen a significant increase on 2011 (R21,1-million).

Lightstone has also shown that although a low cost area, Eerste River has been fairly well served by the banks since 2010 as regards bond awards.

Snyder said that with almost 600 sales now taking place annually at Eerste River (again a Lightstone calculation), her team should be achieving 10 to 15 sales per month by the end of this year. She will build up to a total staff complement of between four and six agents.

"It is," she said, "always very pleasant to be an estate agent in a high demand area because one can virtually guarantee buyers that their homes will increase steadily in value - and that is certainly the case here at Eerste River."