New range of urban homes for Cape Town city centre

Cape Town - Cape Town urban property developers Blok recently announced its latest product - Blok Raw - aimed at introducing a new range of urban homes in a new price band and new locations within Cape Town's growing urban centre.

Blok has selected FORTY ON L, located on Lion Street in the Bo Kaap, as the development in which to not only unveil the new Blok Raw product, but also a new development model that they wish to pilot.

Dubbed the 80:20 model, it is built upon local and international research and looks to adapt the current model to allow developers to deliver a more diverse mix of housing in well-located urban areas.

According to Blok, the model exemplifies inclusionary housing which are homes supplied by the private sector to a market that would not have had access to the development nor the area within which the development takes place.

Unlocking potential bulk

This approach depends upon unlocking potential bulk on existing sites earmarked for development, which in this case, will add 20% more apartments to the original scheme that will be sold at a 40%-60% below the open market value through an audited, open draw system.

This is because the sale of the apartments in the originally planned-for development, accounting for 80% of the total number of units, are to be sold on the open market at market-related values to subsidise the land, finance and planning costs of this 20%.

To ensure that the strategy behind this new model is tested, part of this process is to engage with the City of Cape Town, architects, town planners, social housing specialists, and the community to clearly ascertain issues and needs, according to Blok.

Ongoing workshops, called Urban Working Groups (UWGs), have been held, yielding a wide variety of insights spanning from economic and social to legal and financial.

"The goal is to evolve a model that can be used to illustrate the potential role of developers in shaping our city and to create awareness around their ability to undertake similar projects that will begin to assist in contributing well-located, inclusionary urban housing that is targeted at the stretched middle market," according to Blok.

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