Property Talk

Author: Andreas Wassenaar
Date: 2014-02-28

Something extra-ordinary is happening 13 km north of Ballito at Palm Lakes Family Estate. This 88 ha estate is located just west of the Tinley Manor turn-off from the N2 freeway and has rapidly gained the attention of developers along the Dolphin Coast.

How has this estate rocketed up the rankings in terms of annual sales volumes to take the number four position just below Seaward Estates in third position and Dolphin Coast heavy weights of Simbithi Eco-Estate and Zimbali Coastal Resort that dominate the top two positions?

Palm Lakes is now placed ahead of Brettenwood Coastal Estate and Dunkirk Estate in terms of annual sales activity. Wow! Somebody must be doing something right for the market to respond so positively and so quickly to a destination.

If we look closer at the deeds office figures of actual registered transfers a picture of an estate on the move begins to emerge. The current registered stock of properties is provided as 259 sectional title homes and 431 freehold properties representing a pool of just below 700 existing properties.

However this is only part of the picture as a pipeline of new properties is in place which will see the freehold properties growing to 652 by 2015 and the sectional title properties growing by an additional 228 units to 487 over the same period. This will then represent a formidable estate of around 1,139 properties.

The 2013 year saw 24 sectional title sales registered with a value of R23,1m and 72 freehold properties registered with a value of R45,9m. A total of R69m in registered sales across 96 transactions is impressive. The average price of transactions taken from all transfers over the past twelve months in Palm Lakes is currently R1,439,163.

This represents a very affordable price bracket and it is where the bulk of the market activity currently is. An age analysis of recent buyers at Palm Lakes in terms of the details recorded in the deeds office indicate that 34,94% are aged from 18-35, 40,96% are aged between 36-49, 22,89% are aged between 50-64 and only 1,2% are aged over 65.

When over 75% of buyers are below the age of 49 this gives you insight into a youthful first time buyer market who want a high quality yet affordable and modern solution within a safe living environment. The new Palm Lakes retirement village sales are not yet included in these figures and ultimately once this large-scale 500-unit development within Palm Lakes is complete it will impact the buyer age-profile somewhat.

To get further insight into the property transactions taking place I analyzed all the transfers that have taken place within Palm Lakes over the past two years from 1st January 2012. This pool of transfers is represented by 133 sales amounting to R114,7m.

Of these sales, 89 were freehold sales (vacant land and built homes) amounting to R72,1m. The selling prices ranged from a low of R200,000 to a high of R2,300,000 with an average of R810,302.56 over this period. The average erf size traded was 672 sqm and the average price per sqm (land size) was R1,205. The sectional title transactions represented a pool of 44 transfers to the value of R42,6m.

Selling prices ranged from R526,000 to R1,650,000 across a total of 5,224 sqm of space. The average rate per sqm actually traded over this period was R8,151.23. What does this tell us? Value with a capital V. And this is what is currently driving the Palm Lakes property market at the moment.

For further information and an interactive analysis of this article follow my blog: andreaswassenaar.blogspot.com.

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