Pam Golding Properties, the residential company within the Pam Golding Property group, South Africa’s largest independent real estate group, has reported record turnover of R12,9-billion for the financial year to end-February 2005, up an impressive 36% compared with R9,5-billion the previous year.
Announcing its final results on Monday, PGP said that over the past four years the group has more than trebled its sales turnover, while unit sales have more than doubled over the same period. Also of note was the fact that total unit sales of 14Â 931 were 16% up over the previous year.
Included in the turnover was the company’s largest sale — a wine farm, Grande Provence, located in Franschhoek that sold for R39,6-million. Also included were sales of units at new developments, to a total value of R2,52-billion.
Commenting on the group’s strong performance, CEO Andrew Golding said: “While we have benefited from the exceptionally buoyant trading conditions and growth in the residential property market, we are pleased that our strategy of increasing penetration in the market, coupled with innovative marketing, resulted in increased market share and above average sales and unit growth across all regions.
“The high accessibility of our outlets to the country at large was further boosted by our empowerment division, which now has a firm foothold in the marketplace with five black-owned offices launched in recent months and with a further eight such offices scheduled to open over the next five to six months alone,” said Golding.
PGP now has 176 offices in Southern Africa, with about 30 offices opened during the past financial year.
“Despite the strong rand, the company continued to experience good demand for South African properties among overseas buyers, with unit sales to international buyers accounting for approximately 4% of total unit sales over the past year. This translates into roughly R1-billion in terms of sales value.”
The bulk of PGP’s foreign buyers were from Britain, followed by Germany, Ireland, America, Zimbabwe, Namibia, France, Italy and Nigeria. The average foreign purchase was for properties in the region of R1,55-million.
Expanding their global reach, PGP now has offices in Holland, France and most recently, Croatia.
Commenting on the year ahead, Golding said he anticipated that residential property prices would increase by approximately 12-15% on average, which still represented sound growth and was indicative of a buoyant property market — but also one that was sustainable.
“Given the current trading conditions with a stable economy, controlled inflation and historically low interest rates and taken in conjunction with ongoing tremendous investor confidence in the property market and in South Africa in general, we have every reason to believe the current year will continue to see good sales and sound growth in property values.
“The strong demand for homes is further fuelled by the ever increasing emerging market and the forthcoming 2010 Soccer World Cup, which will result in greatly increased exposure for South Africa and its property market,” Golding predicted.
From a commercial perspective (and not included in the above sales figures), the Pam Golding Commercial Leasing and Sales division also performed strongly during the year, concluding transactions with a value of R183.5-million. The highlight of the year was facilitating the highest single property transaction in the group’s history, the sale of the Sanclare office block in Cape Town for more than R80-million.
Over the past year, Pam Golding Commercial, in a joint venture with Athanor Investments, had successfully marketed internationally the acquisition of UK commercial properties to the value of 31-million pounds. – I-Net Bridge