With four franchises now active in the area, Rawson Properties has become a force to be reckoned with in the Southern Cape’s very attractive Garden Route district, says the Rawson Property Group’s Managing Director, Tony Clarke – and, he adds, there are still franchise opportunities available there, notably at Plettenberg Bay (one of the most glamorous real estate territories in South Africa), Jeffrey’s Bay and Humansdorp.
“Our goal,” said Clarke, “is to be the number one estate agency group on the Garden Route with a highly efficient referral system that links in with all the local agencies and ties in with franchises countrywide.”
Right now, said Clarke, all the Rawson Properties Garden Route franchises can offer buyers quite exceptional value because there have been no discernible price rises in residential property for some two years and because the majority of sellers have now, at last, become more realistic in their pricing.
These statements have recently been confirmed by Mariaan Lubbe, franchise principal for Rawson Properties George franchise (where her husband Stephen is her business partner).
“This year,” said Stephen Lubbe, “we have sold relatively few upper bracket homes, but strong demand in the R800, 000 to R1, 2 million bracket has resulted in the number of sales in our district picking up by 20% this year – and we see this improvement continuing from here on – especially in the upper market where buyers are starting to enter the luxury segment again.
The Rawson Properties George franchise, he said, is in the strong position of covering a wide territory with over 15,000 residential units. The franchise, in fact, stretches from Herolds Bay to Wilderness and the area is one which has always appealed to upcountry buyers, especially those from Gauteng and Free State, said Lubbe. Cape Town buyers also find the area attractive and very often have holiday or retirement homes here.
“The factors which led our family to relocate to this area from Johannesburg,” said Lubbe, “were the same as those influencing most other buyers. These can be summed up as the desire for a more wholesome, rural outdoor lifestyle, the attraction of good schools which give a sound education and perhaps, above all, the fact that the security situation here is a huge improvement on that of Johannesburg. Crime throughout the area is almost negligible.”
Lubbe said that many potential buyers from other areas live in rented accommodation for their first six months or year in George. This, he says, along with a lack of development, is one of the reasons why the rental market here is giving good, steadily increasing returns. Three or four bedroom homes with a swimming pool and a garage can command rents of anything from R7, 500 to R10, 000 per month – and a shortage of stock means that most homes coming onto the market at sensible prices rent out within two to four weeks.
Looking ahead, Lubbe commented that the greatly reduced number of distressed properties in the area (which was never excessive anyway) has come down markedly this year and will, he predicted, lead to a stabilization of property prices and, as already indicated, he believes that a slow, but discernible improvement in sales is now becoming evident. By mid-2013, he sees the now low priced big homes in the upper bracket once again being in demand because this trend is already being noticed in South Africa’s main centres.
George property, added Lubbe, has survived the downturn far better than that of most coastal areas because it has such a large permanent residential population.
“Now,” he said, “we expect the sales and price graphs to start moving steadily upwards, making any buy in George at this stage, a wise and sensible one.”
