04 January 2010

Camps Bay: Sales Hit The Brick Wall

Reader GD writes:

Saw this statistic posted over at this thread on relestateweb. If it's true... OUCH!

SAPTG suburb trend: Camps Bay






YearNo. Sales
2007120
200888
20093


Now assuming conditions don't get worse (highly unlikely), looks like Camps Bay is forecast for 12 sales year ending 2009 - an unhealthy 86% drop in volumes.


Update: This was originally posted on realestateweb in 2009. If anyone has current number of how many houses sold in 2009 in Camps Bay let me know.

13 comments:

dizzie89 said...

You may want to mention that the comment with these figures was posted in March 2009 on realestateweb...

propxchanja said...

64 sales in total for 2009 Camps Bay, freehold and ST, according to Lightstone

Zed Saldanha said...

"Bank to sell Constantia property after owner flees under cloud of debt.

A luxury Constantia mansion and its contents will be sold by public auction in January after its owner, Baroness Alexandra von Maltzahn, fled the country under a cloud of debt in Jul."

http://www.realestateweb.co.za/realestateweb/view/realestateweb/en/page228?oid=53577&sn=Detail

I'm not normally xenophobic but there's little that's sweeter music to my ears than stories of poms and krauts going bankrupt flogging their CT properties. Virtually every country on the planet has restictions on non-citizens owning property but not SA.
Pam Golding says: it's ok and actually of great benefit for me to compete with Rands against Pounds and Euros for living space.
I say: Eurotrash piss off home and stoke your own property bubbles! (rather this way than a night of the pangas)

Bean Counter said...

Benny, I have a soft spot for German in Germany, and Berlin is my hands-down favourite city in the world, but I live in Tamboerskloof and can tell you that the Cape Town Germans are the most awful qunts I have ever encountered in my life. Appallingly racist, imperialist notions of entitlement, and stunningly rude (I was recently asked not to park my car in front of my block of flats because Fritz had family coming and they couldn't all park in his 5-car driveway). I reminded him about who won the war and it didn't go down too well.

But yes, as I recently watched an early-20-something couple in slip-slops Aus Deutschland move into their new R4-million house - probably bought with Pappa Und Mamma's Swiss gold - I too had thoughts of pangas.

South Africa for South Africans!

Anonymous said...

It is kind of interesting to be taught that Germans are racists especially by South Africans. Lets not even respond to these stupid comments.
So I am one of these racists coming here for the last 15 years. I never bought, always rented.
I just wanted to mention one thing that annoys me really when I come here. It is the fact that about 80% of all nice places are only used for 2 weeks a year. I think this is a really disgusting behavior by the rich, that they buy every damn nice place and then do not even live in it. This I think is true all over the world.
Just one example here from Kalk Bay. A neighbor bought this nice house for 5 Mio. has a Porsche Chayenne in his Garage and is here for exactly 2 weeks over Christmas. (Yes he is from Joburg). The house is empty the rest of the year.
Just look around at Constantia, Camps Bay, if you are here off season. It is dead, the houses are empty.

Zed Saldanha said...

@ Anon

Germans are people. I've met plenty of nice ones. Thankyou for renting!

@ BC
I find there is a big diffirence between Euro Germans and Namibian Germans (of which there are plenty here). Most of the Euros I know have black girl/boyfriends so I don't know about them being very racist. The Namibian ones on the other hand display every pathology that makes white settlers so very great, from an enthusiasm for social Darwinism to a fetish for Axis momorabilia.

Back to foreign ownership.

Some of you might recall the quiet mini- saga in 2004-7 when the people first started seeing their city being ethnically cleansed of locals. The Government put out feelers with their "Report and Recommendation by the Panel of Experts on the
Development of Policy
regarding
Land Ownership by Foreigners in South Africa" which submitted the radical notion of suggesting that the nationality of property buyers be recorded during the transaction.

Summary and link to full report here: http://www.fanrpan.org/documents/d00398/

It died a still death, helped into the grave by Pam Golding's media whores in the property press. Assisting with the euthanasia was a flurry of "comments" and such drafted by the Free Market Foundation then ran by Leon Louw - an integrity free zone often to be seen parroting Ayn Randisms on Summit TV.

These are available on the FMF's
Submissions / Comments section at: http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/Publications.asp

http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/members.asp

I must say I like the Freemarket Foundation in the sense that it makes me feel clever. I like being able to predict the future and it's easy to figure out what they are going to say before they say it. All you have to do is figure out which of their sponsors would benefit from any particular position and then watch the FMF take that position.

Their membership page:
http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/members.asp

Oh look, (gasp! surprise!) Pam Golding is a corporate sponsor.

(Check out the FMF's little mini-sites on the evils of state health care, labour laws, envioronmental protection etc.. No need to read them mind you, just look at the member's page for the gist)

Bean Counter said...

@ Anon, it takes a racist to spot a racist. As a South African I understand that I am the product of 350 years of systematic racial indoctrination. Do you know that South Africans of all races can identify racial/genetic ancestry in others more accurately than anyone else in the world? We can tell Xhosa from Zulu, Dutch from English, 1/16th Persian from 1/16th Malay, just by looking at them. It's our sick little party trick. For my part I'd just love to know why all my Tamboerskloof Germans (who, I repeat, are NOT German-dwelling Germans, who are awesome) decided to emigrate to Apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe it was the weather. Or the wine. Or could it be the way clever Dr Verwoerd and Mr Vorster were treating the Schwartzes? If you're uncomfortable with the colonial attitudes of your unreformed compatriots, take it out on them, not me, bud.

@ Benny, I've known a few black women who were picked up by Euro Germans and in their cases it was still deeply bound up with racism. Not nasty hateful stuff, but instead an incredibly naive exoticising fantasy about strong, primal Earth Mammas. Basically these jolly German dudes with their money and liberal attitudes believed that white girls were cold and intellectual, and that black girls were warm and instinctive. Very f**cked up psychology at play. Suffice it to say that white Europeans haven't even begun to tackle real issues of racism because they are still in a huge majority in their countries.

OK, there, I've broken my own rule about going off topic. Mea culpa. Back on mission. Am trawling through the Cape Town council website which lists thousands of sold properties and their prices. Not very well arranged but still useful.

Bean Counter said...

The Economist has just updated its house price graph, interesting to note who pretty much everywhere (except free-falling Ireland) is heading up again.

SA's graph is shocking - barely a dip and now a steep upturn. It's like the crash never happened. Which suggests it still will.

See the graph at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14438245

Bean Counter said...

This from Property24 today.

"Data released by property economists Rode & Associates earlier this week show that flat rentals in Johannesburg and Cape Town were up by a meagre 2% in 2009. In Pretoria and Port Elizabeth rentals actually dropped by -0,4% and -0,1% respectively last year. Durban managed growth of only 4,9%. Rentals for freestanding houses showed equally poor growth in 2009.

"This is in stark contrast to the 10% plus rental growth that many buy-to-let investors were typically fetching 18 to 24 months ago. Rode & Associates economist John Lottering says there has been an alarming increase in flat vacancies in both Pretoria and Durban, which has no doubt placed pressure on rentals.

"Lottering notes that although the economy is technically out of the recession, the large number of rental flats standing empty in Pretoria and Durban clearly indicates the level of financial stress consumers in these cities are experiencing."

Anonymous said...

I want to buy for asking price less 40%.
Sellers won't sell for 40% less.

This shows that there is very little desperation amongst sellers,even though they might be financially underwater.

The banks are not foreclosing fast enough coz that will really force prices to realistic levels.
Looks like prices will be kept arteficially high.
Nobody wants to lose, but sooner or later the piper will have to be payed.

Anonymous said...

Cape Bubble,

I can't find your post posted a year or so ago about "housing used to be affordable because it was a factor of 3,now it's a factor of 18"

Can you guide me please ?
Many thanks.

Zed Saldanha said...

Just saw an ad in an Estate Agent's window in Adderly st advertising rental for a 2bed flat in Senator Park!
R3000pm!

Display obviously aimed at tourists.

"centally located" ... "close to everything"
No mention of Nigerian kidnappers, crack dens or cheap hand-relief.

Anonymous said...

According to the very trustworthy Comparitive Market Analysis (www.cmainfo.co.za) website, there were over 100 sales of full and sectional title properties in Camps Bay and bakoven last year.

This website provides information that eminates from the deeds office so its pretty accurate.