Property Newsletter | February 2022

West Coast property market blossoms during Covid

The West Coast residential property market recorded its best year in 2021 since 2015, confi rming a trend seen elsewhere in the country – smaller coastal towns have benefi ted from Covid-19 as remote off ice workers and people seeking a quieter life have been leaving cities and larger towns.

The West Coast stretches from Yzerfontein in the south to Velddrif in the north and inland as far as Darlington and Hopefield.

Property transactions jumped more than 30% in 12 months, from 1 982 in 2020 to 3 355 in 2021.

Volume of transactions

Interestingly, unlike in many towns, Freehold transfers still dominate although Estate living is on the rise as the graph below shows. The next graph shows development of Freehold properties far outstrips Estate and Sectional Title.

Transfers by property type

Development by property type

West Coast towns are predominantly attracting buyers in the R250k-R1m and R1m-R3m value bands. Buyers in the R250k-R1m band nearly doubled in numbers from 736 in 2020 to 1 380 in 2021, while the R1m-R3m band jumped from 587 to 1 055.

Transfers by purchase band

The R250-R1m and R1m-R3m property bands accounted for 73% of all transfers in 2021. St Helena Bay, a fi shing town, and Langebaan, internationally acclaimed for its wetland and tidal mud fl ats of the lagoon, together accounted for 56% of the transfers in these bands (R250m – R3m) in 2021.

In St Helena Bay, transfers were predominately in the R250k-R1m band while Langebaan’s transfers were most evenly split.

Velddrif was the best of the rest at 13%, followed by Yzerfontein and Vredenburg. The more iconic town brands of Darling, part of the Cape Floral Region, and Paternoster, one of the region’s oldest fi shing villages, accounted for just 5.5% of transfers between them.

There were 42 012 properties registered (see table and graph below) in the towns reviewed ie Saldanha, Paternoster, Vredenburg, Velddrif, St Helena Bay, Langebaan, Hopefi eld, Darling and Yzerfontein as at February 2022, of which 24% were valued at between R0-250k, R250k-R1m accounted for 24.5%, R1m-R3m for 46.5% with properties over R3m accounting for 5%.

Current property value bands

The number of first-time buyers and repeat buyers have remained consistent from 2015 to 2021, but in 2022 fi rst time buyers accounted for 32% as opposed to the previous norm of around 20%. It will be interesting to see if the early activity in 2022 holds true for the balance of the year.

First time and repeat buyers

The age of buyers across the three property types reveals the 50-64 and 65+ categories prefer Freehold, with Estate buyers being more evenly split to include all categories although dominated by 36-49 and 50-64, while the < 35 age group has been buying less Sectional Title properties over the years.

Age of buyers: Freehold

Age of buyers: Estate

Age of buyers: Sectional Title

Did you know

While the West Coast is best known for its 26-kilometre beach at Yserfontein, the lagoon at Langebaan and quaint fi shing villages such as Velddrif and Paternoster, it is also home to acclaimed satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys’s “Evita’s se Perron”.