Video tour – Hartenbos Heuwels house

Thinking of getting a place in Hartenbos? Consider this beauty.

The large family home is situated on the sea side hills of Hartenbos Heuwels, the popular holiday mecca in the Garden Route region of the Western Cape, South Africa. It is a short drive to Hartenbos beach with all its attractions and entertainment facilities. The Langeberg Mall and the N2 highway are just as close by.

The current owners had built the home only a few years ago, and they have looked after it lovingly. As a result the property is in pristine condition and the face-brick finish offers a low maintenance, solidly built family structure. You will be able to move into the home as it stands immediately with no major renovation or maintenance required.

The home is situated on a large stand and boasts a beautiful indigenous garden. There are a number of contemporary rock features and rest areas to be found throughout the large garden. With the water restrictions recently lifted in Mossel Bay, this will offer a delightful weekend activity to those with green fingers who love to potter in the garden. If you are less inclined to while your hours away in the garden, the garden can be maintained easily.

Check out the full listing with photos on our website.

The end of 2008

What a year we’ve had. Worldwide and right here in (not always as) sunny SA. The year just started along the wrong lines with Escom’s infrastructural and coal supply hangover. The free-falling Rand and skyrocketing fuel prices and interest rates didn’t improve things for the ordinary South African. Then, of course, we all had to learn how to deal with the National Credit Act and its freezing effect on the banks. All along we were still importing much more than we were exporting and our trade deficit started to look really unhealthy. Couple that with political instability – remember our ex-President, a certain Mr. Mbeki who was asked to step down and Julius Malema of the ANC Youth League vowing to kill for Zuma – and it is clear that 2008 was a very challenging year for South Africans.

Ironically, it was the NCA, exchange control and our banks that insulated us from the real crisis that developed: the credit crunch and the collapse of the international banking system in 2008. When you hear names like Lehman Brother collapsing, you know things are serious. No surprise then that household consumption in SA nosedived with property prices. According to Absa’s latest figures, the real prices of most properties have been declining for about 9 months in a row now.

Goodness.

However, as with everything, so too this shall pass. The governor of the Reserve Bank, as predicted, lowered interest rates by half a percent at the December 08 meeting of the Monetary Policy Comitee. It is our belief that interest rates will be lowered at each of the coming sittings of the MPC until they’ve been lowered with another 2,5% to 3% by second to third quarter 2009. Of course, fuel prices have also come down hard and the South African consumer already felt the benefit a week ago at the fuel pumps with petrol going down by a whopping 161 cents.

2008 was a difficult year for everyone. Much of 2009 will still be difficult, that much is clear. However, one gets the feeling that there is an end in sight, don’t you? From the second half of 2009 South Africa will get the soccer world cup fever with all the optimism that it brings. Looking at the massive infrastructure spending going on currently, how could it not be positive? Even the new American President, Barack Obama, believes the answer to America’s problems is increased infrastructure spending. The point is that we’ve been here before.

Thank you to all our clients who shared their hearts, thoughts and time with us this year. We are very excited about 2009 and building our relationship with you. As always, we will serve you with integrity and honesty.

This is our last blog post for this year. Take care and God bless. See you on this blog again next year.

The human touch

I recently made a phone call to a company I do business with in my private capacity. It was very clear that they recently installed one of those automated telephone systems. You know what I’m talking about: “Good day. For help with ______, please press 1. For help with ______, please press 2. For help with_______, please press 3.” Etc. Etc.

If you’re anything like me, and I am definitely not that unique, all those automated options are great, but I also want the option to speak to a real person. You know, if you cannot fit your particular problem into category 1 to 8, you would hope that there is an option to “…hold on for a consultant”. A real person.

In this day and age of cost-cutting, employee down-sizing, automation and efficiency, I sometimes get the impression that businesses do more and spend more to remove themselves from their clients. Sure, words like customer relationship management (CRM), client feedback, regular communication, and so forth are still thrown around, but do they really actually still mean something? I do not want to speak to machine or to some third language English speaker in an outsourced call centre in India, 5000 kilometres away from here. I want to speak to someone who knows something about his or her business, the areas they operate in and (do miracles still take place?) me, the client.

How does this apply to real estate? Modernisation, better websites, automated marketing, bulk text messages, mail merges, etc. These are the buzzwords in real estate offices all across the world these days. They’re great ideas and there is definitely a need to modernise. We have one of the most modern back-office systems and websites in this part of South Africa. Those tools are a great help to our agents and clients. They will, however, never replace our human touch, our friendly voice or a knowledgeable agent that takes you to your dream house.

Contact us if you’d like to speak to a real person.

Why people are moving to the Garden Route

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Mossel Bay was South Africa’s Town of the Year in 2007. There, I said it. I am bragging with my new hometown. All you Gautengers, eat your heart out. I know you’d love to live here down by the sea. How do I know that? Oh, it’s quite simple. I used to be a Jo’burger myself until very recently.

One of South Africa’s big daily newspapers, Die Beeld, recently reported that The Garden Route (Southern Cape) is currently experiencing a major immigration from the major metropolitan centres in South Africa. Of course, it isn’t called the Garden Route for nothing. The scenery is breathtaking, the quality of life is great and the pace is laidback. It’s perfect for someone who wants to escape the breakneck pace of city life.

The whole region has been experiencing fantastic economic growth during the past five years. In fact, the real economy of the Eden towns, which include Heidelberg, Riversdale, Mossel Bay, George, Oudtshoorn and Knysna, has been growing at an average of more than 9% from 2003 to 2007. Compare this to the real economic growth of the Western Cape and Gauteng during this period, which increased at an average of 5% during the last 5 years.

Furthermore, at a time when the general South African property market is experiencing a crunch, the Garden Route is still doing somewhat better than the national average. Nationally, about 83% of properties were sold for less than their initial asking price during the first quarter of this year. In the Garden Route this figure stands at 72%. George, the biggest metropole in the area, is still showing average house price growth of 27% year-on-year, even though the number of sales reduced by 38% year-on-year. Mossel Bay is still showing average house price growth of 16% year-on-year, even though the number of sales reduced by 35% year-on-year. Sedgefield shows similar figures. Knysna is the only town in this region that shows negative house price growth.

This all shows that, even though you might have your property on the market for somewhat longer than before, the Garden Route is still a very good place to be if you’re a property owner. Talk to one of our knowledgeable agents to help you find your dream property.

*Image from gardenroute.com

Affordability: addressed

I recently read the following extract of a news article:

“According to the latest Absa house price index, released on Thursday, South African house prices in the middle segment of the market slowed to a nominal 6.8% year-on-year (y/y) in April from 7.8% y/y in March, taking growth to an eight-and-a-half year low. This is also the fourth consecutive month of single-digit growth in nominal house prices since a growth rate of 11.2% was recorded in December last year.

In real terms, house prices in the middle segment of the market dropped by 2.5% y/y in March 2008, compared with a decline of 0.9% y/y recorded in February, based on headline CPI inflation. “This was the biggest negative real year-on-year growth rate recorded in house prices since May 1997, when it was at a level of 3.4% y/y, based on nominal price growth of 5.7% y/y, and a headline CPI inflation rate of 9.5% at the time,” noted the researchers.”

In essence, what they are saying is this: the value of your house currently appreciates only at 6% per year. Compare this with a normal investment account at a bank that can earn you between 9% and 11%. Now this is before you bring in the effects of inflation. If you consider our current inflation rate, the value of your house is actually reducing.

Not very good news, is it? Times are tough and in these times people try to get rid of those second and third investment properties that became so unaffordable after all these interest rate hikes. Similarly, most potential new entrants to the property market are now discouraged because of the same affordability constraints. Of course, you still cannot drive down any street in any neighbourhood these days without being bombarded with the boards of the same estate agents, all trying to sell the same properties belonging to the same sellers at the same prices to the same people who aren’t buying for almost exactly the same reason – affordability.

It hardly seems to make any sense, yet they all still do it. We believe in doings things different when those methods have proved themselves ineffective. That is why we are using innovative solutions to address the affordability issue. We are still selling high-end, spacious, luxury properties all over the Garden Route in the Southern Cape applying our innovative techniques.

Why don’t you talk to one of the experts Terblanche Property Solutions? We’ll help you capitalise on those hard-to-sell property investments… even in this market.

A buyers’ market

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Look, if you are a seller, you’re probably not going to like this post. In fact, you probably haven’t had too many things to smile about the last few months. However, if you’re looking to buy property as an investment, read further by all means.

Nominal house price growth slowed to 8,7% year-on-year last month, the lowest growth recorded in almost nine years, according to the latest Absa house price index. This was a further reduction from the 9,9% recorded in January and the lowest growth since the end of 1999 when house price growth was 9,3%. Higher interest rates, the effects of the National Credit Act and pressure on housing affordability were all factors influencing the continued slowdown. In a sense, we find ourselves right in the middle of a perfect storm.

Some of the experts believe that house prices could start declining in real terms if inflation continues to rise and nominal house price growth continues to slow down. The residential property situation is in line with other interest rate-sensitive parts of the economy, such as the motor vehicle sector. Retail sales are also showing negative growth. Still, in South Africa we have so much more to be thankful for than our American and even some of European counterparts.

If you are a property investor this may be a good time to invest because price growth is not strong and should pick up over the next three to five years. However, if you are an ordinary home buyer, bear in mind that this is more of a buyers’ market than a sellers’ market. Buyers are selective, taking their time to consider their purchase and looking at a wider range of options. For the first time in a while buyers are spoilt for choice. Many are only putting in offers on well-priced properties, while others are negotiating price. Increasingly, sellers have to price more realistically and competitively and these properties will find buyers quickly.

At Terblanche Thomas Property Solutions we believe sellers in the top-quality estates can still find willing buyers, provided they price realistically. There is also still a lot of activity in other trend-setting areas like the townships and entry-level areas where properties are priced from about R400 000. Buyers now have a wider range of options and should take their time before putting in offers. While it is harder to obtain finance these days after the NCA, putting down bigger deposits will definitely speed up the process considerably.

As always, our doors are open. If you’re a seller or a buyer in the Garden Route, call or e-mail us for relevant advice.

*Gatty Images