Day 385 – Quite the bathroom(s)

A house near our old house has just gone on sale. I had a quick wander round the photographs. It needs (a lot of) work, but the potential is incredible.

The house is going for a cool R7.2 million. Decent value if you’re able to spend about the same again doing it up.
I’m not going to buy it. Just so you know.

The bathrooms were especially striking:

Seriaas, bra?

Met eish, ja?!

Ay Caramba!

Looks like the same ‘tog that did our place has been at work here, again. Huge overuse of the Dehaze and Clarity sliders is clearly evident throughout (I rejected a few of the images that we were sent for approval because it looked like a cartoon house in a cartoon world). But then, you can’t really blame her for the tiles or the decor. I know very well that there’s only so much that you do when presented with something awful that you have to photograph and make it look nice, and with that kind of scene, perhaps attempting to camouflage it in post as much as possible is probably the best way forward.

Day 247 – Recaps and explanations

Right. Lots to discuss here.

I’m sitting outside in the sunshine on another perfect day at the cottage, the gentle breeze taking the edge off the heat of the late spring sunshine, my computer in front of me and the blackest of Carling Labels at my side. Christine and Queens is playing on my Spotify Daily Mix and life seems generally rather good right now.

It wasn’t always this way, though. The Other Project, which I have mentioned a few times over the last couple of weeks, was selling our house. And that has been extremely stressful, with suspensive clauses everywhere and deadlines being stretched until the very last moment.

Long story short, the last of those clauses was met yesterday, which was incidentally the last day of one of the deadlines. And that’s every reason to celebrate, which we did last night, before crashing into bed just before 9, dead from stress, insomnia and physical exhaustion. Hence yesterday’s blog post*.

It’s been a great measure of just what the human body is capable of on auto-pilot.
And yeah, ok, that blog post wasn’t a good example.

And so we’re all done on our house, which means that we can now move to our new place. And no. It isn’t in the UK or Canada or New Zealand or Perth. It’s here: in SA; it’s in Cape Town.

It’s actually just up the road, which makes me wonder why we are paying so much for it.

Hmm.

Of course, nothing happens quickly in these real estate things, and so we’re looking at a few months before we actually do move anywhere. And by ‘anywhere’, I mean the new house that we have bought, I hope.

There’s loads to do, but we’re not doing any of it this weekend. We deserve the break that we’re having right now. And if this lunchtime drink makes me sleepy this afternoon, well, guess what?

I will happily nap this afternoon.

It’s been a horrible couple of weeks, but I think we’re through it now.
And we have a lot to look forward to, which is a real privilege this year.

* it’s a personal thing.

Top End Untroubled

While the hoi polloi continue to struggle under the hefty cosh of financial hardship, there’s some good news on the horizon. Apparently, all you have to do to avoid this sort of troublesome existence is to earn pots and pots of money.

Who knew?

But here’s the proof that those at the top of the tree aren’t really struggling very much at the moment:

TROPHY homes are back in vogue with estate agents reporting a strong increase in property sales in wealthy suburbs where price tags typically exceed R10m.
Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby’s International Realty in South Africa, on Tuesday described the top end of the market in Cape Town and Johannesburg as being “on fire”. Neither the upcoming election nor the prospect of further interest rate increases had done anything to slow demand for luxury housing.

Fortunately, I don’t think it’s the actual homes, so much as the market that Mr Geffen was referring to. And he’s not alone in his observation: Andrew Golding of Pam Golding Properties, Samuel Seeff of Seeff Properties and Dave Property24 of… er… well, never mind… all agree that sales of properties costing more than R10,000,000 are on the up, giving the media the opportunity to use phrases like “swanky homes” and “leafy suburbs”, in a completely irony-free piece centring around estate agents.

“Until recently, there has been little interest for properties priced above R10m in Constantia,” said Gerald Romanovsky of Rawson’s Constantia franchise. The change became evident soon after the start of this year when we suddenly found ourselves in a new ballpark, handling five or six genuine enquiries per month for this type of luxury property from both local and foreign buyers.”

For me, Gerald’s comments raise more questions than they give answers, namely as to why they haven’t been selling ballparks and exactly how many faux enquiries they’ve been handling each month around luxury property.

All in all (and heavily dependent on your political viewpoint), I suppose that it’s good news that there are still people out there with money to spend, whether it’s from within SA or from investors abroad. These people generally know what they are doing (or at least employ people who do) and if they are still happy to put large amounts of money into large houses here, then maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.