Cape Town features as international second-home destination

A recent study by New World Wealth places Cape Town in 17th position globally for second home buying by multi-millionaires.

London is in first place, followed by New York City and Hong Kong. In the southern hemisphere, the Mother City is one position below Sydney and both trail Rio de Janeiro.

Second homes are bought either for leisure purposes, which is mainly the case for Cape Town, or as accommodation for business trips. Most second home buying in Johannesburg is from individuals from other African countries for this purpose.

Cape Town's foreign buyers are mainly from the UK and Europe. David de Waal, CEO of Steeple low-cost estate agents, states that the city is attractive to these buyers in particular because the time zones are very similar and a cold northern hemisphere winter can be swapped for a sunnier African summer.

Andrew Amoils, the analyst at New World Wealth, explains that the company tracks ultra-high net worth individuals and makes statistical estimates based on samples of these multi-millionaires. A person would need to have net assets of at least $10m to be included in the survey.

He estimates there are 2500 foreign multi-millionaires who have second homes in South Africa, in addition to about 2000 local multi-millionaires. Of this total of 4500 multi-millionaires, 2100 have second properties in Cape Town, 400 in Johannesburg and 2000 elsewhere in the country.

According to his analysis, the suburbs in the Western Cape with the highest numbers of second homes owned by multi-millionaires are the usual suspects: Camps Bay, Clifton, Bantry Bay, Fresnaye and Llandudno, together with Stellenbosch and Franschhoek.

Source: Steeple Press