Asking prices breach R100m

It’s no longer unusual for big-ticket properties on Cape Town’s smart Atlantic Seaboard to come with price tags of R100m or more.

Besides the sale of an uber-luxury Bantry Bay house to a German couple last month for R290m — the highest price ever paid for a house in SA — at least four Fresnaye and Clifton properties are on the market with asking prices topping R100m, says Seeff luxury market specialist Lance Cohen.

He notes that the mini-boom of 2013-2015 pushed values and confidence at the top end of the market to a new level. Investors are so confident that a villa in Clifton’s Nettleton Road that was sold early last year for R111m is now back on the market for R150m.

Cohen says homes in this price bracket typically boast world-class architectural design, magnificent sea views, well over 1,000 m² of floor space and just about every luxury that one can imagine.

He refers to a Fresnaye listing at R125m, a multistorey villa that towers above the ocean, and compares it with Hollywood celebrity-style homes.

It includes, among other things, a hi-tech cinema, bar room, several living areas, sea-facing terraces and a magnificent rim-flow swimming pool (pictured above).

However, despite the rise of the Atlantic Seaboard’s R100m-plus homes, latest figures from the PropStats database show that the average sales price in the area for the first half of 2016 stands at R13.1m (this excludes the recent R290m sale).

It represents an increase of close to 10% (or R1.1m) year on year for the area.

In Fresnaye, for example, more than 80% of sales in the year to date were below R15m, and almost half of all these sales were concluded within a month of listing.

Moreover, the R5m-R10m price band still remains the busiest sector by far, accounting for almost half of all sales achieved on this stretch of coastline in the year to date. About 40 units sold at an average price of about R8m, compared with R7.6m during the same period last year. The bulk of these sales have been in Fresnaye and Camps Bay.

The next price band, the R10m-R20m range, accounts for about 30% of all sales on the Atlantic Seaboard so far this year at an average price of R13.5m.