Property slump hits Cape Town city centre
Some choice quotes:
The slump has hit investors who bought in the CBD during the property boom and are now being forced to sell their apartments for less than what they paid for them. Some homeowners are losing hundreds of thousands of rand.
This comes as Eurocape, owner of Mandela Rhodes Place and the Taj Hotel, readies itself to release apartments it has held back for years.
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A Johannesburg resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his studio flat in Mandela Rhodes Place had been on the market for three years.
He bought the property a few years ago for just over R1.1m, R220 000 less than what the original owner paid for it.
“The market is shocking. This property’s moved from one high-profile estate agent to the next and it’s still not sold,” he said. “Now all I want is what I paid for it.”
Remax City Bowl estate agent Henry Voss said he has had to slash the prices of a host of apartments in the CBD, with the new buyers paying “considerably less”.
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Another Remax agent, Steven Delit, said many of the new developments in the CBD “didn’t live up to the sizzle”.
“A lot of them were set up as tourist Hotels and the returns have been dreadful.
“Occupancy rates are low across the board right now, and developments like The Icon are not achieving near what buyers were told they would get,” he said.
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