Towards the end of our interview, Belinda Moleko muses, calmly determined: ‘We will change the face of townships. We will. We are more at home with our own.”
Moleko’s company, Bella Casa, is the developer of Tembisa’s first cluster-home development. The Willows, a security estate of 25 free-standing homes, priced from R225 000 for 61 square metres, sold out within three weeks of its launch. Now she’s planning Xanadu, a 68-unit development, in Mabopane, also already sold out. In between, she’s built a complex in Buccleuch and has other contracts, but I can see that developments like The Willows and Xanadu are where her real passion lies.
At her home in Waterkloof Ridge, one of Pretoria’s upmarket eastern suburbs, architectural drawings are pinned to the walls and overflow on to desks. Her office is quiet, but there are people everywhere, answering the phone, filing documents, working on computers. This is a busy woman, and the day is sweltering, but she is cool and collected. She has the kind of face that reveals just what she is thinking.
Moleko is a trained estate agent but, after spending eight or nine years in the industry, she says she got bored. ‘Not even bored,” she adds. ‘It was like, I would go to the townships and I would see the type of houses they have — Our people are forced to emigrate to suburbs because they want better houses.”
She became involved in property development after marrying her husband, an architect, in 2000. ‘I’m not good at sales,” she says. ‘It’s a very tough market. And trying to sell for friends and family is hard. They don’t expect to pay full commission and so you end up losing money.” So she decided to concentrate on building suburban-style homes for township buyers, in the form of gated estates.
Moleko is scornful of the kind of houses other companies build for the township market, which lack tiling, stoves and cupboards. ‘This person can barely afford a bond, let alone a grand for cupboards,” she says. ‘It saddened me.”
The cluster model was chosen because it offers full title to the units. ‘We love to have our own space,” she says. So residents can have their own stands with their own gates, but share common areas such as roads. Xanadu, her third development, will also include a playground for children.
‘I’m a township girl. It’s easy for me to ask my neighbour for sugar. The lifestyle in the suburbs is very cold.” She tells me a story about a neighbouring suburb. The family had gone on holiday and left their helper in charge, who died. No one knew how to contact the owners. Moleko says that would never have happened in a township, where the residents know both their neighbours and the neighbours’ next of kin.
‘I’m trying to bring back that ubuntu. We must start taking care of each other in the complex. We can’t run away from our culture of ubuntu. We can’t. It is just not us.”
Cluster homes and consumer rights are new concepts for her buyers. She says there is a great need for education, particularly as many buyers don’t understand the home-buying process. It’s easy for con artists to pose as estate agents and fleece their clients’ savings, as buyers don’t realise that home deposits should be paid to lawyers. They also don’t realise that banks will offer financing for homes.
‘They think you need a huge bank balance to own a home,” Moleko says, adding that she has negotiated 100% bonds for her clients. ‘You get them a bond and they throw a party. They haven’t even moved in yet! They are very lovely people to work for. Owning a property gives anybody pride. You can say, I’m a real person now. It’s your first pride.”
She’s trying to make her buyers realise that houses can be assets. ‘Township people say, ‘I want a home, not a house.’ There are no resales in the township. It’s a culture carried over from our ancestors, that a home you must leave for siblings. We need a different mind-frame. Two people in Tembisa bought for R220 000. They sold for R320 000. We need something that says property is an investment, not just a home.”
But she says many of her clients would prefer townhouse developments, which offer security and convenience for single parents. ‘It’s a question of land,” she explains. Vacant land is available, but the owners hold out for high prices. Moleko says she was offered one 40ha plot on the East Rand for R40-million.
‘It’s a bit too high, [especially as the rate for] bulk services doesn’t change. People who own land don’t want to budge, but we have a problem with vacant land in the townships. It creates a culture of squatters. We need to be given the opportunity to upgrade the townships, make them similar to the suburbs.”
She’s building low-cost Reconstruction and Development Programme houses for the government, and housing for Daimler-Chrysler workers in Port Elizabeth next year, but she won’t give up on the middle-market developments. ‘I can be the first person to do a golf estate in the township. Why not?”
Despite Moleko’s efforts, and those of other investors, there is a gap between low-cost and affordable housing. Most of her clients are professionals, such as teachers, but police salaries aren’t high enough to qualify for her products. They need housing priced around R150 000, and she thinks that, with help from the department of housing, they can get it.
‘My building cost is R1 800 a square metre. We could build 50 square metres at R1 700, R1 600,” if the department helped with building-material suppliers. She supports the idea that bonds in this price range should get a rate concession from banks. ‘Because, in this market, R100 is a lot of money.”
She looks directly at me. ‘Anyway, I’m just trying to make a difference. It might not be a very big one, but it affects that person — I just find myself being a lone ranger.”