The World Cup is 5 days away and it's time for the open thread!
14 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Who owns what in Cape town? Is there any common knowledge as to big property portfolio owners in Cape Town. For instance we know that the Cadogan family owns vast portions of West London, and Donald Trump has a chunk of NYC. I have heard that The surname Solomon is synonymous with the Camps Bay beachfront - but who else. This could be a useful insight to us all on this blog. Getting a good insight as to whether Cape Town CBD, Tyger Valley, Sea Point, Green Point, Claremont main road, Century City and Blouberg beach front have major single players behind them. Or is it spread out across the many developers that make up the CT developer community?
I don't know how singular large landowners there are these days.
Certainly back in the day Cecil John Rhodes owned large areaos of the Southen Suburbs (Groote Schuur for example) and the Graaff family owned (and still do own) large tracts and farms from Milnerton to Durbanville.
These days I believe the largest singular property owner in Cape Town is the University of Cape Town.
I've heard that Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are big players in upper Fresnaye. They are fighting it out to get control of the "hood" but there are too many old Ethels and Sidneys holding them back from their dream of a pink candy coiffed strip.
Historically there is also the van Breda family that owned the farm that is now called Oranjezicht.
Solomon Bros are a big player sure, but I look at the auctions particularly for the commercial land and there is a small, but definite group of players: Jews, Afrikaners, WASPS etc.
So how are property sales in the City bowl/ Atlantic seaboard at the moment? I'm not talking about trophy mega mansions. Are things selling? What is the ratio of selling prices to asking prices? Is there anywhere I can find out exactly what places are being sold for? Or is that a state secret?
"As the crowds of strikers in Athens understand, it is not the banks that are important but the people who raise children, build communities and sustain life. And when a government forgets whom it serves and why it exists, it must be replaced." ~Chris Hedges
"Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare-the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it. ~Chris Hedges
This thread is a waste of time. Does anyone read the prior postings or do you just copy and paste random quotes from the internet? Is anyone even reading my comment? HELLO??? *echo echo echo*
Personally I dont care who owns what in CT. That said, major players are always going to be behind most blocks of flats and shopping centres.
Whats more interesting is the amount of auctions in the wealthier areas of CT; Bakoven, Camps Bay, Hout Bay, Constantia. Is this because better prices are being realised at auction in the current market, or are the sellers control with reserve pricing and ghost bidding as per the previous thread a factor, or is a sale quicker and easier than an estate agent now?
My experience with auctions depends very much on the auction house. Although im not buying property I find that regular auctions with less fanfare and advertising and many dealers bidding is the only time good deals are found. The rest are made up of people who have no preset price they will spend for an item, no concept of the value of an item and get caught up in the excitement of bidding or just want it at any price. Even worse are the smaller town auctions which are social events with every wealthy person measuring each others ****. Bid prices are above new never mind with auctioneer fees and VAT lol.
What about insisting on speaker phone for ghost-bidder? They are really starting to irritate the shit outa me. I need to urgently counter this, 10% equates to up to 2.5 years bond payments...
Well, well . I guess that shows us exactly where we are on the realization curve of what goes on in our city. Not only do we have no idea who owns what in Cape Town, we also put it down to "who cares". Cape Town has expanded enormously over the past two decades and it has been controlled by a few parties. Now i am not talking about a few private residential facelifts in Constantia or Camps Bay, but rather examples like the massive rolling sand dunes that were once Table view to Parklands, West beach, Bloubergrant ect. Let' s take a look at that as an example.30 years ago there was nothing there - now there are literally thousands of homes with shopping malls, schools, public services, ect. It all sprung up from nowhere. Conceived and developed by essentially one central low profile kingpin company which consists of 3 individual owners. Thats ASKA. They did a brilliant job of turning nothing into something, so there is no fault at that. They also must have made a fortune doing it. Can you imagine what each plot stood them in at and for what each one was sold for. I cannot imagine any plot ( now consider this is a subdivision at an unprecidented scale) standing them in at more than 70 000 ZAR, and that includes all services. They also in many cases would have chosen development partners, builders, ect - and earned from each. This has been a spectacular business for them. Just take a helicopter flip over this expanding mass of development and think that it was all done at 3 man central. It's impressive. Now there's one story of a major segment of Cape Town that was in the hands of few. You want to tell me no one knows any more. I suggest this blog chats about this for a while and gets to know the facts about how Cape town has been developed and will continue to do so . Once this intel is fathomed and shared. I sense some new mind maps emerge. Thanks and regards
In response to the original comment . NYC's largest land owner is the church and then Columbia University. CT is not far different, it has large pieces of land owned by the church, UCT, the government - eg dept of education owns huge tracts of land.
14 comments:
Who owns what in Cape town?
Is there any common knowledge as to big property portfolio owners in Cape Town. For instance we know that the Cadogan family owns vast portions of West London, and Donald Trump has a chunk of NYC. I have heard that The surname Solomon is synonymous with the Camps Bay beachfront - but who else. This could be a useful insight to us all on this blog. Getting a good insight as to whether Cape Town CBD, Tyger Valley, Sea Point, Green Point, Claremont main road, Century City and Blouberg beach front have major single players behind them. Or is it spread out across the many developers that make up the CT developer community?
I don't know how singular large landowners there are these days.
Certainly back in the day Cecil John Rhodes owned large areaos of the Southen Suburbs (Groote Schuur for example) and the Graaff family owned (and still do own) large tracts and farms from Milnerton to Durbanville.
These days I believe the largest singular property owner in Cape Town is the University of Cape Town.
I've heard that Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are big players in upper Fresnaye. They are fighting it out to get control of the "hood" but there are too many old Ethels and Sidneys holding them back from their dream of a pink candy coiffed strip.
Interesting question.
Historically there is also the van Breda family that owned the farm that is now called Oranjezicht.
Solomon Bros are a big player sure, but I look at the auctions particularly for the commercial land and there is a small, but definite group of players: Jews, Afrikaners, WASPS etc.
They are definitelty Jewish, they are definitely old and they are definitely not going to tell you.
So how are property sales in the City bowl/ Atlantic seaboard at the moment? I'm not talking about trophy mega mansions. Are things selling? What is the ratio of selling prices to asking prices? Is there anywhere I can find out exactly what places are being sold for? Or is that a state secret?
"As the crowds of strikers in Athens understand, it is not the banks that are important but the people who raise children, build communities and sustain life. And when a government forgets whom it serves and why it exists, it must be replaced." ~Chris Hedges
"Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare-the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
~Chris Hedges
This thread is a waste of time. Does anyone read the prior postings or do you just copy and paste random quotes from the internet? Is anyone even reading my comment? HELLO??? *echo echo echo*
Personally I dont care who owns what in CT. That said, major players are always going to be behind most blocks of flats and shopping centres.
Whats more interesting is the amount of auctions in the wealthier areas of CT; Bakoven, Camps Bay, Hout Bay, Constantia. Is this because better prices are being realised at auction in the current market, or are the sellers control with reserve pricing and ghost bidding as per the previous thread a factor, or is a sale quicker and easier than an estate agent now?
My experience with auctions depends very much on the auction house. Although im not buying property I find that regular auctions with less fanfare and advertising and many dealers bidding is the only time good deals are found. The rest are made up of people who have no preset price they will spend for an item, no concept of the value of an item and get caught up in the excitement of bidding or just want it at any price. Even worse are the smaller town auctions which are social events with every wealthy person measuring each others ****. Bid prices are above new never mind with auctioneer fees and VAT lol.
What about insisting on speaker phone for ghost-bidder? They are really starting to irritate the shit outa me. I need to urgently counter this, 10% equates to up to 2.5 years bond payments...
ja - speaker phone makes sense.
But I suppose an accomplice "caller/s" can also be quickly organised by the auctioneer prior to auction.
Well, well . I guess that shows us exactly where we are on the realization curve of what goes on in our city. Not only do we have no idea who owns what in Cape Town, we also put it down to "who cares". Cape Town has expanded enormously over the past two decades and it has been controlled by a few parties. Now i am not talking about a few private residential facelifts in Constantia or Camps Bay, but rather examples like the massive rolling sand dunes that were once Table view to Parklands, West beach, Bloubergrant ect. Let' s take a look at that as an example.30 years ago there was nothing there - now there are literally thousands of homes with shopping malls, schools, public services, ect. It all sprung up from nowhere. Conceived and developed by essentially one central low profile kingpin company which consists of 3 individual owners. Thats ASKA. They did a brilliant job of turning nothing into something, so there is no fault at that. They also must have made a fortune doing it. Can you imagine what each plot stood them in at and for what each one was sold for. I cannot imagine any plot ( now consider this is a subdivision at an unprecidented scale) standing them in at more than 70 000 ZAR, and that includes all services. They also in many cases would have chosen development partners, builders, ect - and earned from each. This has been a spectacular business for them. Just take a helicopter flip over this expanding mass of development and think that it was all done at 3 man central. It's impressive. Now there's one story of a major segment of Cape Town that was in the hands of few. You want to tell me no one knows any more. I suggest this blog chats about this for a while and gets to know the facts about how Cape town has been developed and will continue to do so . Once this intel is fathomed and shared. I sense some new mind maps emerge.
Thanks and regards
In response to the original comment .
NYC's largest land owner is the church and then Columbia University. CT is not far different, it has large pieces of land owned by the church, UCT, the government - eg dept of education owns huge tracts of land.
Post a Comment