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Spike In African Buyers For Cape Town Real Estate

Spike In African Buyers For Cape Town Real Estate

Cape Town Realtor Denise Dogon sold a $5.86 million Bantry Bay house to a West African businessman.

A Nigerian bought a Clifton penthouse for $2.98 million and then spent $900,000 upgrading it.

A Nigerian couple flew their London decorators to Cape Town to deck out their new house.

Cape Town is a choice location for luxury homes for the world’s wealthiest people, and Africans are increasingly getting in on the act, according to a report in TimesLive. Now real estate agencies catering to the Cape Town home market — such as Pam Golding Properties, Seeff and Denise Dogon Group Properties — say they’re seeing more African buyers investing in Cape Town homes.

“In the last two years there has been a significant rise in affluent African buyers,” Dogon said. “We have had some of our top sales from African buyers, usually those from oil-rich countries.”

Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl properties valued at $155 million sold to non-South African citizens in 2013, according to Seeff. Of those, 20 percent were African —
a 50 percent increase compared to 2011-2012.

The weak rand is one possible explanation, said Seeff’s Ian Slot.

Slot said the establishment of South African Tourism’s first office in Lagos is expected to draw increasing visitors and buyers from growth markets.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is producing buyers who want to invest in Cape Town, TimesLive reports. This includes an increase in buying activity from Zimbabweans, Seef said.

SADC is an inter-governmental organization headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana that complements the role of the African Union. Its goal is to increase socio-economic, political and security cooperation and integration among 15 Southern African countries.

In 2013, 73, 282 Nigerian tourists visited South Africa, according to South African Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, who spoke at the recent opening of SA Tourism’s Lagos office.

In the past 10 months, 22 percent of buyers in Cape Town have been foreigners, said Laurie Wener, managing director for Pam Golding Properties in the Western Cape, in a TimesLive interview.

“Over the past quarter, apartments close to the universities in the southern suburbs have been in high demand by parents for student children from African countries,” Wener said.

Cape Town is building on its reputation as a beautiful destination, said Nils Flaatten, CEO of Wesgro, the Western Cape’s tourism and investment promotion agency. “It makes sense that when the rand drops, we see increased foreign interest on all levels.”