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Cape Town - Look no further than Cape Town's Atlantic Seaboard suburbs of Clifton and Bantry Bay to find the most expensive streets and developments in the country.
Market research company New World Wealth analysed data as part of its annual South Africa Wealth Report to determine the most exclusive suburbs, streets and developments in the country.
As for streets and developments, The Ridge and Cliff Road in Clifton top the list at R96 000/m², followed by the V&A Marina development (R90 000/m²) in Dock Road in the central city of Cape Town.
Next up are the Clifton streets of Victoria Road (R88 000/m²), Nettleton Road (R86 000/m²), Clifton Road (R84 000/m²) and Kloof Road (R83 000/m²).
The 7th to 10th places go to the Bantry Bay streets of Ave St Leon (R78 000/m²), De Wet Road (R76 000/m²), Ave Marina (R76 000/m²) and Ocean View Drive (R75 000/m²).
The most expensive streets outside Cape Town include Beachyhead Road in Plettenberg Bay (R42 000/m²) and Lagoon Drive in Umhlanga Rocks, Durban (R35 000/m²).
A property in The Ridge (pic with permission of Villas in Cape Town):
A 2-bedroom apartment in Cliff Road, Clifton (used with permission of Cape Town Beach Villas):
Properties along Victoria Road, Clifton (iStock):
V&A Marina (iStock):
Beachyhead Drive, Plettenberg Bay (used with permission of Home from Home Plett):
Sandton, Cape Town and Umhlanga are still the main areas for exclusive suburbs in South Africa, Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth, told Fin24 on Wednesday.
Sandton (iStock):
Nine of the top 10 most expensive suburbs are in Cape Town, namely Clifton (R80 000/m²), Bantry Bay (R75 000/m²), Fresnaye (R60 000/m²), Camps Bay/Bakoven (R56 000/m²), Llandudno (R54 000/m²), Greenpoint, Granger Bay and Mouille Point (all three at R47 000/m²) and the Cape Town city bowl (R45 000/m²).
Central Sandton comes in 10th place at R36 000/m².
Fastest growing suburbs
As for the fastest growing suburbs in SA over the past year, New World Wealth's research found them to be Seapoint and Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town (both R30 000/m²), Illovo (R17 000/m²), Parkhurst (R12 000/m²), Noordhoek (R11 000/m²), Franschhoek (R10 000/m²), Nature's Valley (R8 000/m²) and Zinkwazi (R8 000/m²).
Seapoint (iStock):
Franschhoek (iStock):
Amoils told Fin24 that However, one should note that all these suburbs start from a relatively low square meter price base when compared to the likes of Bantry Bay and Clifton.
Research
New World Wealth used two different measures to make the determination of the most exclusive suburbs as of the third quarter of 2017.
The first option used was to look at the price per square metre.
According to Amoils, this is internationally considered to be the best option to use. He points out, however, that this measure has some limitations, especially when it comes to valuating houses.
"There is a bit of a lack of information about square metre stats in SA. The way property price growth is calculated on the average price in an area is not great," Amoils told Fin24.
"If a big house is sold, then it just pushes the price up in an area. We also highlight issues when it comes to areas without apartments as square metre stats don't work well on houses."
In his view, price per square meter stats only work really well on apartments and some areas don’t have many apartments which makes it tricky.
"This is due to the garden element. For instance, how do you value the garden?" he explained.
The second option used was to determine the number of R20m homes in an area.
According to Amoils, this allows one to see how many very wealthy people are living in an area. He again points out that this measure can be deceiving as areas that are mainly large houses - such as Sandhurst, Plettenberg Bay and Bishopscourt - tend to outperform areas that are mainly apartments - such as Umhlanga. It is because very few apartments are large enough to cost over R20m.
Umhlanga (iStock):
Also, some suburbs, for instance Contantia, are much larger than others, for instance Llandudno, which "unfairly" favours them.
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