Sandton sets new R180m property price record
Sandton will soon be able to claim it has SA’s most expensive apartment, nudging Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront off the rooftop of luxury living.
A 2 100 m² penthouse in The Leonardo, the Legacy hotel group and Nedbank’s new mixed-use skyscraper, a stone’s throw from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, is expected to fetch a staggering R180m.
Sol Kerzner’s One&Only Waterfront hotel holds the record for the highest price ever achieved for a sectional title property in SA — a 1 076 m² penthouse at the One&Only was sold for a cool R110m in 2008.
The R2bn Leonardo development at 75 Maude Street, diagonally across from the Hotel Balalaika, will be Sandton’s tallest building, at 42 storeys or 150 m. Construction will begin this year.
While an R180m price tag for a sectional title property may have been unheard of in SA until now, apartments in international capitals that cater to the world’s super rich and famous can sell for more than 10 times as much.
Last year a penthouse in London’s most exclusive residential address, One Hyde Park, fetched US$240m. At 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York, a penthouse on the building’s 96th floor sold for $95m.
The Leonardo’s triple-storey penthouse, known as The Leonardo Suite, will give new meaning to the phrase “rooftop garden”. Apart from views all the way to Pretoria’s Voortrekker Monument on a clear day, it will have a 900 m² garden, a 20 m lap pool, its own private lift, staff quarters, six garages, a gym, a cinema and expansive entertainment areas.
Legacy chairman Bart Dorrestein, the driving force behind the development of Nelson Mandela Square in the early 1990s, says prices of penthouses such as The Leonardo Suite are not comparable with the general property market because they are “irreplaceable collectors’ items”.
The Leonardo will comprise 200 apartments, including eight 500 m² penthouses plus The Leonardo Suite, and nine floors of offices. Apartments are priced from R45 000/m² to R80 000/m².
Dorrestein says 50 of the 200 apartments have already been sold off-plan even though the development hasn’t been officially launched. One of the 500 m² penthouses fetched more than R35m.
“We quietly went into the market at the end of 2014 with a few private placements and so far we have had an excellent response.”
Dorrestein says the capital appreciation already achieved by buyers in Legacy’s The Michelangelo Towers, The Raphael and The DaVinci on Nelson Mandela Square underscore the demand for luxury apartment living in the Sandton CBD.
At The DaVinci, apartments that sold for around R40 000/m² at launch shortly before the soccer World Cup in 2010 are now reselling at around R80 000/m².
In 2010, a 650 m² penthouse at The DaVinci sold for R50m, back then a record for Gauteng. Before that, a 500 m² unit at neighbouring Michelangelo Towers went for R35m.
Joan Muller mullerj@fm.co.za
WHAT IT MEANS
THE LEONARDO SETS NEW BENCHMARK FOR HOUSE PRICES
CAPE TOWN’S ONE&ONLY FETCHED PREVIOUS HIGH