Nigerians snap up beach houses

The weak rand has spurred African property buyers to snap up high-end homes on Cape Town's luxurious Atlantic Seaboard and the City Bowl.

Ian Slot, managing director of property and real estate company Seef, said the shaky currency has revived "foreign buying activity".

Slot said his company has sold 75 properties for almost R566-million since January.

These include nine sales above R20-million, four of which were to African buyers.

The company's total sales for the whole of last year were R570-million.

"African buyer activity has more than doubled with 12 property sales to the value of just over R142-million compared to about six property sales in 2012," said Slot.

"Nigerian buyers top the list with four properties, [including] an apartment at the V&A Waterfront for R25-million and a luxury home in Bantry Bay for R30-million. An Angolan buyer also paid R30-million for a home in Camps Bay."

The company has sold 10 properties to buyers from India and China for a total of more than R61-million .

Annien Borg, managing director of Pam Golding Properties in the Boland and Overberg regions, said she has been inundated by Chinese businessmen looking for wine farms in the Cape Winelands.

The Chinese are looking at farms starting from R25-million.

"The appeal of wine farms is that they offer status and the ability to export high-quality wine to China," said Borg. "Over and above this, we are seeing enquiries from large international companies [and] from various countries for agricultural fruit farms."

Slot said European buyers have bought 28 properties this year, worth almost R155-million.

Of these, 18 properties worth R63-million were bought by British buyers.

"While foreign buying activity has improved over the last few months, overall volumes are still down since 2009, when 435 properties with a combined value of over R1.5-billion were sold to foreign buyers," said Slot.

"The positive foreign buyer sentiment in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup [was] stifled by the continued uncertainty in the UK and European economies.

''The upside of this is that many UK and European buyers have looked to shift their funds into South African property and the weak rand has served as a significant incentive."