One of the big surprises in the Cape Town residential property worldthis year has been the way in which Bothasig, formerly seen as a low cost suburb, has been able to change its image – and increase its average house values very rapidly.
Marc Vladislavich, Rawson Properties’ franchisee for Bothasig/Edgemead and certain adjacent suburbs, said that five or six years ago Bothasig was defined by the fact that it had a fair number of prefabricated homes. These, he said, dated from the immediate 1945 post-war period when Bothasig was selected as an area in which to house returning servicemen cheaply and quickly.
The homes built at that time, although efficient and serviceable, said Vladislavich, were never aesthetically pleasing, nor did any initially have lawns or gardens. These homes gave Bothasig a rather bleak, low-cost image, from which, he said, it has only recently broken free.
Today, said Vladislavich, only some 15% of Bothasig homes are prefabricated and many of these have external brick walls and tiled roofs.
Even more relevant to Bothasig’s popularity, however, said Vladislavich, is the fact that being 18 km from the centre of Cape Town, it is now seen as an ideal commuter suburb. (The trip from Bothasig to the city can be done in 15 to 20 minutes, out of peak hours.)
“These days,” said Vladislavich, “demand at Bothasig definitely exceeds supply: prices have risen by 7 to 9% this year, with the result that even an entry level home here will cost R850,000 - and any fairly priced home will be snapped up in two to four weeks.”
“For the first time ever, Bothasig is being compared favourably to Edgemead, where the house prices range in value from R950,000 to
R2,6 million. Nevertheless, it remains true that Edgemead’s garden city image is still superior to that of Bothasig.”
The new popularity of Bothasig can cause problems because a great many potential buyers come here with inaccurate ideas about price levels – and are very disappointed to find that they can no longer afford a Bothasig home. Furthermore, there can still be difficulty in getting the banks to accept today’s greatly improved values on low-cost houses, especially if they have a prefabricated element in them.
The Rawson Properties Bothasig team is selling ten to eleven homes per month, but this figure does include sales at Summer Greens, where prices can be as low as R350,000 and where demand is even stronger than in Bothasig.
Asked to predict the future for Bothasig, Vladislavich said that further price rises are inevitable here because there is no land for new development and demand gets stronger month-by-month.
Those looking for a good long-term prospect, he said, should visit Burgundy, which, unlike Bothasig, is very definitely not a sellers’ market at the moment.
The original developers here, said Vladislavich, sold large tracts of land to a wide variety of residential developers, who are now committed to bringing some 6,000 units, mostly sectional title, onto the market. These are currently selling from R550,000 to R1,1 million and in many cases these prices are lower than those at the original launches two to three years ago. However, in five years’ time, he said, once the existing stock has been taken up and the presence of builders on the site has come to an end, Burgundy, being designed as a genuine country estate with excellent communal and sporting facilities, will, Vladislavich predicts, become exceptionally popular.
“This, I believe, will be another prime example of how, once an area has matured, it becomes the flavour of the month.”
