Cape Towns Milnerton a thriving property hub
Cape Town’s greater Milnerton area, which includes suburbs such as Woodbridge Island,Edgemead, Bothasig, Lagoon Beach and the popular Century City, has a fair mix of property investment opportunities, whether it be freehold, estate or sectional title properties.
This four bedroom house in Milnerton offers an open-plan kitchen, dining area with fireplace, air conditioning, an entertainment area with built-in braai and solar heated pool. It is on the market for R3.25 million - click here to view.
This is according to Michael Bauer, managing director of IHPC estate agency, who says it is interesting to analyse, according to Lightstone’s property data over the last year, what trends seem to be and what sort of market is represented in this area.
Bauer says 53.3% of Milnerton’s property is freehold, with 30% in sectional title schemes and the balance in estates. Of the property owners, the majority have had their homes for less than five years.
This corroborates the theory that people tend to move, either to downscale or upgrade, every few years, which is presenting a problem in the current market as there is a dire lack of stock, he says.
“At present, we could sell 100 units with the list of buyers we have, but the problem is still that there is little stock available. Homes we do get sell fairly quickly when they are priced correctly,” says Bauer.
“We recently had a listing in Edgemead for a home selling at R2 million, where four offers were put in within two days of it being listed.”
The majority of homeowners are in the mature age group, from 50 to 64 years of age, with those in the 36 to 49 age group coming in second, percentage-wise.
Bauer says the average property prices in Milnerton are attainable for most middle-income groups, as freehold properties are selling for an average price of R1.362 million, sectional title for R1.252 million and homes in estates for an average of R1.517 million.
He says what does buck the trend of many of the traditional suburbs in Milnerton is Century City, in that there has been no freehold property listed as sold in the last year, with the bulk sold being sectional title.
The average sales price of sectional title property in Century City is listed as R1.849 million, and R2.162 million in estates. The average income group here is listed as high (LSM 10), and the majority of property owners are in the mature age group.
Century City is one of the few areas where there have been few sales in execution over the past few years, only two in 2013 and three in 2014, and numbers have come down dramatically since the high of 2010, where there was a total of 16 properties sold at auction, says Bauer.
“An apartment in this area was recently sold within a few days of being listed at R1.8 million, in cash, to a Russian buyer, and we see the foreign buyer market increasing steadily,” he says.
Bauer says buyers, while being more astute and aware of what the market is doing, are serious when they make a decision, and most sellers should be able to get the market-related price for their property more readily than in the past.