Posted by Viruly Consulting on Tuesday, April 24, 2012,
This morning I attended a SAPOA breakfast in Cape Town. One of the speakers was Bulelwa Makalimia Ngewana of the the Cape Town Partnership . She gave an interesting synposis of the Cape Town bid to become the design capital capital in 2014. What was interesting is that the Cape Town Bid revolves around people and design , unlike what the other competitors - namely Bilbao and Dublin are saying . And she was right in underlining that we often pay insufficient attention to design when devel...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Tuesday, April 10, 2012,
The Property Investment data bank ( IPD ) has released the returns for the South African property Sector in 2011. It shows that total returns have declined to 10.5%, compared to the the 13.3% rcorded in 2010. The industrial sector continues to outperform the market with a return of 11.9%. What is possibly of greater importance is that the difference in returns between the sectors has become marginal with the industrial , office and retail sectors recording .11,9%, 11.2% and 10.1% respectivel...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Wednesday, September 14, 2011,
The latest Soouth African Reserve bank bulletin has provided a gloomy picture of the SA Economy. Consumer expenditure is slowing and the construction sector is under significant pressure. Numerous government driven prohjects are not seeing the light. As a result it is becoming increasingly probable that the SA Reserve Bank will leave interest rate sunchanged in the short run. The possibility of a decline in interest rates is also becoming a possibility by year end. Generally these conditio...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Wednesday, October 13, 2010,
The vacancy rate is probably the closest that the property market has to a coincident indicator. The recently published SAPOA vacancy rates suggest that the South African office market remains weak and that rentals will remain under pressure in 2010.
Of the twenty Johannesburg nodes measured by the SAPOA only six nodes showed an improvement in vacancy rates in the past quarter. These include Bedforview, Constantia Kloof, Houghton, Melrose and Randburg. But in general the conditions ...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Wednesday, October 6, 2010,
The Dubai property has a seen a decade of phenomenal growth, with the amount of commercial and residential space more than doubling every year. Easy finance, the availability of land, and a conducive regulatory environment provided the steroids for a property boom. But, things changed in 2009. Approximately half the planned projects have been put on hold and estimates suggest that there is sufficient stock to meet take-up for the next decade.
While this slow down can be blamed on the global ...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Saturday, September 25, 2010,
If you think that rentals are high in the standard South African Shopping centre , consider retail rentals on the corner of Jeppe Street and Delvers Street in the Johannesburg CBD .
A recent workgroup co-ordinated by Hannah Le Roux and sponsored by the Goethe Institute considered the dynamics around certain buildings in the Johannesburg inner city . What is interesting about these buildings is that they are primarily let to Ethiopian retailers – in a sense creating an i...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Thursday, September 9, 2010,
It is unlikely that the decision by the South African Reserve bank to lower the repo rate by 50 basis point will have a significant impact on the South African commercial property sector. Recent residential property data provided by ABSA and FNB suggest that the rise in residential values has stalled and that the sector could be experience a double dip.The commercial property sector continues to suffer from high vacancy rates, and property owners are finding it difficult to secure re...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Thursday, September 2, 2010,
There are strong indications that the South African housing market is entering a douple dip. FNB has just released its August 2010 House price index whcih indicates that the year-on -year growth in housing prices has declined to 7.2% compared to 10.1% in July. The report also makes the important point that while the nominal increase is weakening , property prices are showing strong real growth - but that reflects a declining inflation rate scenario rather than the strength of the propert...
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Posted by Viruly Consulting on Wednesday, September 1, 2010,
There are clear indications that SA interest rates will start to decline. This bodes well for the SA property market in general. In particular it should encourage retail expenditure. We remain of the view that the retail sector will come ouot of recession first, followed by the industrial and and office sectors.
Francois
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