By the time that this information is made public, Rawson Developers, the company in the Rawson Property Group which focuses on the provision of new residential units, particularly those in the sectional title field, could be completely sold out at its new R278 million 179 unit ‘The Beaumont’ development.
This is sited on Grove Avenue and Brooke Street in southern Claremont, just half a block off the Main Road and 400 metres from Cavendish Square.
“In the last few weeks,” said Trevor Weston-Green, Rawson Developers’ Property Development Analyst, “sales took a big upswing and this, I think, was mainly due to the fact that stock was running out and our show unit was completed, furnished and became available for potential clients to view.”
The show unit, said Weston-Green, had been open since the first weekend of July and had helped reassure potential buyers that the layout, the fixtures and the finishing materials would, as promised, be ‘well above average’. Such features as heated towel rails, granite countertops and underfloor heating in certain sections of the units are standard in all apartments.
By mid-July the sales team had 20 units still to sell and by early August they were down to only three apartments.
‘The Beaumont’ is made up of a 12 storey block which topped out in June this year and a five storey block where the top level was reached in February this year. Right now the construction teams, having completed all the brickwork, are into plastering and completing the finishes. Dale Nortje, the project manager for this scheme, expects to start handovers in late November/early December. This date, he said, will suit the large contingent of buy-to-let investors because traditionally tenants (and particularly UCT students) look for new premises in December and January either when they arrive in Cape Town or when their old leases expire.
Carl Nortje, Rawson Developer’s Managing Director, said that construction work is now roughly six months ahead of schedule and this, he said, is “perhaps the best performance by our team as yet”.
On offer at ‘The Beaumont’ have been bachelor style single bedroom apartments with 32 m2 to 45 m2 of floor space, one bedroom apartments ranging from 41 m2 to 50 m2 and two bedroom units with up to 105 m2 of flooring and five top floor penthouses with magnificent views, two of which are being combined into one by the purchaser. The top price paid for a penthouse was just under R5 million.
Some idea of how prices are escalating at this development can be gained from the fact that, at the launch in late 2012, an ‘early bird’ buyer could have obtained a single bedroom unit from below R900,000. By the end of 2015, said Weston-Green, prices of such units will probably have topped R1,3 million mirroring the growth rates in Rawson Developer’s recently completed Rondebosch developments. Typical two bedroom units which were sold for around the R2 million mark will, he estimates, be attracting prices of almost R3 million by the end of next year.
Apart from its strategic position (just 4 km from the UCT campus on the Jammie Shuttle bus route and 12 km from the centre of Cape Town) ‘The Beaumont’, said Carl Nortje, will offer good views of the mountains and the southern section of the Cape Peninsula and these will be enjoyed by the large number of units in the scheme which have balconies. Another big attraction of the scheme, he said, is that on the two basement levels there will be 202 parking bays and 64 visitors’ bays. Equally important from a sales point of view, said Nortje, is the fact that the security of the scheme has from the start been a high priority: residents will be protected by guards on duty on a 24/7 basis, by 32 close circuit cameras and by the fact that entrance to the complex can only be achieved through biometric fingerprint recognition.
Weston-Green said that although Rawson Developers’ plan must remain confidential until full discussion and approval has been achieved, it can, he said, be taken for granted that we will continue to be closely involved with Cape Peninsula residential developments and have already ensured ongoing activity for our teams by securing several good strategically placed sites, two of which will be launched soon.
