Balwin pipeline eases its Sandton walkaway
On the face’ of it, Balwin Properties decision to can an ambitious 1,290 apartment project in Sandton, is embarrassing. But SA’s largest sectional title company still has an impressive pipeline of about 62,500 residential units across numerous other developments and the market is unlikely to be too bothered.
Balwin said on Wednesday that the Wedgewood Sandton project was just too risky partly because it would need to be built in one phase, once the company had achieved a large number of presales, say 70%. Balwin usually rolls out its developments in multiple phases.
Chances are Balwin just could not get enough funding out of a small investor network interested in buying apartments in Sandton and then renting them out. The company’s forte has been developing large sectional title schemes in underserved areas, and not lifestyle apartments.
While the Sandton node is being converted from an office hub into something that offers more mixed uses, including new residential options so that it can attract young professionals, a megadevelopment hasn’t yet worked in Sandton.
Balwin has offered any customer who bought an apartment predevelopment a full refund and the option to buy another Balwin unit in a different development, at a discount.
While the company lost a bit of money on some marketing costs, the decision to walk away from Wedgewood may prove to have saved costs that have been growing in the two years over which the project was built.
AUDIOMACK TAKES STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION
Online music streaming service Audiomack is looking to expand its reach in Africa in a big way through a recent deal with Africa’s largest mobile operator, MTN, in the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria.
On Thursday, Audiomack said it had partnered with MTN Nigeria for streaming unlimited music and accessing content free of data charges.
The partnership will allow access to the US-based streaming service to be bundled with weekly and monthly data subscriptions. While access to Audiomack is technically not free since customers would have to buy the bundles to stream content, it is a step in the right direction as international music players look to gain their next billion users in Africa.
According to Statista — a German company specialising in market and consumer data — digital music in SA is expected to be worth $73m (about R1.1bn) in 2021, with $57m coming from music streaming. Compare that to the UK where streaming is set to reach $1.5bn in 2021.
Despite the digital revolution, artists in Africa have tended to rely on earnings from live performances to make a living, given the high cost of internet access and minuscule amounts paid per stream, which have resulted in low penetration of streaming services as a whole.
MTN’s partnership with Audiomack may go a long way in tackling these issues. The network provider has 76-million customers, a large potential market, and is offering data at a fraction of the cost in SA.
Getting more people to stream music may help artists earn more online revenue from the likes of Audiomack, which makes its money from advertising and through a premium fee for an ad-free experience.