The Cape Agulhas area has, says Marthie Jones, the Rawson Property Group’s franchisee for this district, gained popularity steadily in the last year, particularly from January this year when a marked upswing in enquiries was recorded.
“Even in the middle of winter we have been achieving sales here and this is very unusual for this area. Judging by the number of enquiries that we have received, the coming summer we will see record sales,” said Jones.
Asked to what she attributes this, Jones said that countrywide, there appears to be a revival in the second home/retirement home market and this is particularly noticeable in her area because all the towns in the Agulhas district – Agulhas itself, Struisbaai, Suiderstrand, Arniston, Bredasdorp and Napier - have quiet, peaceful atmospheres and exceptionally low crime figures.
In addition, said Jones, the coastal towns can provide excellent fishing (at Struisbaai perhaps the best in the entire Western Cape), whale watching (“as good as that at Hermanus”), attractive warm water beaches and an excellent golf course in Bredasdorp.
The area is especially popular, said Jones, with residents from Robertson and Worcester, but recently buyers have been sourced from as far afield as Ceres, Gauteng and even as far as Lephalale – and a growing number of Capetonians are also now moving in here.
The big attraction of the district, apart from its peace and quiet, said Jones, are its low prices: the majority of sales being achieved by herself and her agents, are in the R795,000 to R1,5 million price range. R795,000 would buy you a small two bedroom apartment in The Tides at Struisbaai, while R1,5 million would buy you a substantial three bedroom home in the same town.
These prices, said Jones, work out at half the cost paid per m2 by property buyers in the popular suburbs of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Somerset West and Paarl. To give just one example, Jones mentioned a four bedroom home in Napier close to the centre of the village and now on the market at a price of R675,000.
This year Jones has also sold a 58 ha farm with a magnificent five bedroom home for R7 million. This type of sale, although rare in her area, she said, could become more common in future as the popularity of ‘retirement farming’, i.e. farming on a small scale, is also on the increase.
Like many other Rawson rural franchises, the Cape Agulhas franchise covers a very big territory. It stretches 60 km along the coast and some 100 km inland. The size of the territory, said Jones, has opened up many hitherto untapped opportunities and has enabled her to raise her turnover by over 25% in the 17 months since she bought this franchise. However, she repeated, the coming summer months are likely to see a higher level of sales than have been experienced for the last five or six years.
“I am happy to be able to say with complete confidence that our area is once again becoming ‘the place to be’,” she said.
