The Claremont is a fairly new development on Claremont Main Rd. Last year bachelor apartments had an asking price of R650000 while 1 bed apartments were going for R850000. This year a 1 bed is going for R550000 negotiable! I'm unsure if that's for a bachelor apartment (15% asking price drop) or for a 1 bed apartment, which would be a 35% drop in asking price!
11 February 2009
The Claremont: Asking Prices Crater
Reader BG writes:
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11 comments:
Asking prices at The Claremont are still loony - R2 million for a 3-bed - so this must be a very desperate seller, or else someone who's taken our advice and panicked first.
I smell serious fail for The Claremont. It was built during the boom and was supposed to be part of the rejuvenation of Claremont (Woolies Foods going up all over the place, yuppie gadget stores shunting out Pep and OK). But posh shops don't mean it's not still a crime-infested burb. And it seems to be getting worse - criminals following the new money. A mate of mine was attacked in broad daylight across the road from The Claremont - three guys just knocked him down, sat on him, knife to throat, and went through his pockets. The teenage sons of another mate were held up next to Cavendish Square by thugs carrying - I kid you not - machetes. This was at 10pm on a Saturday night. Violent crime is all about ease of get-away, and Claremont is pretty much as easy as it gets - Lansdowne Road is one big escape hatch for these guys.
In other words as the money tap gets turned off Claremont is going to revert to what it's always been - a few dodgy shops, an ugly main road, and a sleepy retreat for the non-hip set. The Claremont is going to end up just another block, full of hideously outdated shoebox flats. Anyone who paid seven figures for anything there was drinking the Koolaid.
Must admit that at R550 000, its not such a bad price but the levies must be crazy.
One reason I enjoy CT Propbubble is the realistic and enlightening postings and comments here..somewhere where people can grasp that the economy wasnt growing at a great pace over the last few years because of increased production, efficiency and capacity, but rather the property and stock market bubbles...looks great on paper, but its paper, now its gone.
At the best financial blog on the net... http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm there was a question asked today about why the MainStreamMedia or MSM is so bullish and it brought to mind the situation in SA:
The financial media has a two major interests in being bullish. First, and foremost, they are paid for by what? Advertising! And that advertising is for what? Investment outfits. If they were to be balanced (interviewing too many folks like Dr. Doom Faber, me, Schif, et al, people would likely start living a much more sustainable lifestyle, spending time putting in gardens and saving money in ways that can't be seized through inflation instead of working themselves into an early grave by focusing on a 401(k) that's almost certain to be taxed at some point. So that's reason #1.
Reason number 2: If people were told the whole truth about how economics and big corporations work --- you know, things like corporate boards that live by "We out-source because we can get someone to do your job cheaper than you, so don't whine, we're international and we're here to make money and anything that gets in our way is just tough shit..." --- the normal humans of the world would not stand for it.
THAT gets to be dangerous stuff because the PowersThatBe at the top of the various heaps (like newspaper magnates, Council on Foreign whatevers and Trilateral this and thats - they don't want the apple cart upset quicker than they can clamor back to the top of the heap where they can live off the efforts of others. Why do the Obama 'change' artists have such outfits on their resumes and in their backgrounds, do you suppose?
By keeping people mesmerized, the MSM financial outfits are doing their part to preserve the current [powers] paradigm and for this they are richly rewarded. I have no doubt that some time between now and the close on Friday, each of the major financial channels will have someone or other on pimping the idea that "This is a great time to be buying...by historical stands, things are cheap! Buy 'em while you can..." Yada, yada, yada.
Oh sure, some time they will be right, as a broken clock is still right twice a day, but not until we first drop the Dow down to the 6,500 (or lower) level, if I have it dialed in right.
It really surprises me when people don't delete their old ads. Especially when these people seem to be doing this as their business! You can see the history of the place, not always a bad thing if you need a quick sale.
This from the same guy was odd I thought. Wonder what happened, as he hardly changed the text each time (but never put a photo up....if you say great view of the vlei, go to the effort of posting it!)
House in Lakeside:
19 dec avail 1 feb R5500pm
23 dec avail 1 feb R5500pm
14 jan avail 1 mar R5500pm
27 jan avail 1 mar R6000pm..but now I want 2 months deposit upfront!
http://capetown.gumtree.co.za/c-PostersOtherAds-W0QQUserIdZ13780927
There is this urban myth that Saffers love...if it doesnt move then raise the price and it will fly out the door...now they even doing it on rentals lol
South Africans are all in denial of their situation. They think Obama is going to save the whole world, and the trickle down is going to save SA!! First, America is about to topple, and the fat times are over for good. At least a decade of making ends meet is ahead. SA is never going to feel the affect of any American comeback...they need to be more concerned about their own government instead of crying that Obama got elected.
They were also in denial about the property bubble. How do they think that the prices should shoot up the roof since 2000? Property prices almost tripled in a few years...did income? Nope. Fucking amazing how many greedy people, who had the money, got loans and gobbled up property and jacked the prices up. Did they not notice that the majority of people that live there are living very meager lives, scraping to get by, living in townships, or homeless? Do they not see the berghies that line the streets? The people selling junk at stoplights during the day and holding knives to your throat at night?
These Capetonians who think they are living in London or Manhattan and drive Mercs and BMWs are the ones for the property bubble. SA is going to fall and fall hard, and they will find a way to blame the rest of the world because they live in denial. And have been before and after 1994.
I lived in Cape Town for quite a few years before coming back to the states. SA is fuct. A bloated upper class, oblivious middle class, huge lower class. There's no integration between the races, and then there's the Afrikaaners to boot!
Everyone lives behind bars and razorwire and attack dogs and they just take it as normal.
Living in the best neighborhoods in die Kaap is like living in the American ghetto. Except, we dont have a tourism industry that tries to lure people over by advertising nice pictures of rapist and thugs and junkies and AIDS victims as if these people live in a harmonious society. Plus, you can make a lot more in the American ghetto as an ex felon than in SA as a university graduate. SAfricans need to realize how delusional they are.
Of course, most of the people that can even read have left for the UK or Australia. The rest are at the beach wondering why the water is so flipping cold.
Crazy Legs, the trouble with posts like yours is that they only betray all your failings without adding the tiniest bit of value to the debate at hand. It's a bit like a child walking into a panel discussion between adults and announcing that he's bored and wants to take a pee. I'm not going to engage with each of your points because they're barely sentient and frankly we've heard it all before, but I will say that all you've done is reveal the extent of your own racism, fear, insularity, bitterness and powerlessness.
I pity you. I'm not saying that in the normal condescending way that's intended to make me look superior and to get you riled up. I really mean it. The kind of stuff you've written here comes from a very ugly little place in your soul, and I'm sorry for you that you have to live alongside that ugly little place.
Take care.
Bean Counter
beancounter ftw
While I dont agree with the vociferousness of crazylegs' post, he has a few good points.
"A bloated upper class, oblivious middle class, huge lower class" is a very accurate assessment...
Bean Counter, you sound just like a bean counter. You are a skinny little accountant yuppie type who giggles at financial disasters like the property market and its unlucky victims. You make comments like 'Anyone who paid seven figures for anything there was drinking the Koolaid,' and you think its brilliant.
You pity me? Thats great, because I think you are a spoiled little yuppie terd, part of the upper class in SA that didn't really work for whatever it is you have. Are you still riding on the coattails of your oppressive yuppie white father?
I don't think you, or most yuppie SAfricans understand the impact that this financial crisis is about to have on the socio-political status quo of your ridiculous country. You are in utter denial of it because you have had it so good for so long and now the tables are turning and you can't even see whats happening. Your country is on the precipice of imploding and you and your buddies are bitching and laughing at...THE PROPERTY MARKET! I guess thats because you are blind to the poverty that your little boatload of yuppies floats on in S Africa.
Yeah, I was ranting quite a bit in my previous post because I had just read a few interesting articles online and then looked at this website. It amazes me how ridiculously blind you white yuppie SAfricans are. Here in this little blog you poke fun at people who have played this losing real estate game. They bought impossibly overpriced properties with horrible returns and you just type little 'omg's all over the place. Many people ruined themselves financially in a country that won't allow most to come back from that dark hole.
You fail to acknowledge that a certain class of people and specifically a certain type of person in this class is responsible for the financial catastrophe. The spoiled white yuppies of S Africa are going to get a rude awakening when people get wind of what is going on and how S Africans ended up in this predicament.
In America the unlucky ones are foreclosing on homes and going onto unemployment. In SA the unlucky ones will starve like they already are...but the numbers will increase exponentially. They won't be invisible to your eyes then. People will do anything to keep eating. But, you most probably won't be in SA when things turn grim. In a year's time you'll probably be looking for a job in the UK just like everyone else on this blog.
You think I've got an ugly little place in my soul? You think I'm racist? Well, maybe, but that ugliness is a reflection of the world's current reality. The racism you think I portray is more of a disgust directed at a certain greedy little yuppie class that just happens to be of a certain race.
Now I have to go take a piss all over your rich pale face.
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