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Originally Posted by london_girl
The banking mall is just before Nelson Mandela Square (Used to be Sandton Square)
WHAT!!!!! :shock: your kidding me right!!! when did this renaming thing happen???
About 2 years ago when they put "Madiba's" Statue there
am in total shock about the prices. was not this bad when i was there. i think, if my brain is thinking correctly today  , a box of smokes was about R5-00ish.
i think it was some time in the mid 80's an article was written and put in all newspapers and magazines and said that if a loaf of bread reached a certain price and a ltr of milk cost a certain price that it was time to leave the country.
petrol seems to be the hot topic at the moment, over this past weekend petrol went up here to about £1-00 a litre. the cheapest place i ever saw petrol was in canada in 2002.
so is it true that Sandton and (going towards) Rosebank has become townhouse city?
i was chatting to a friend and they said that some beautiful old houses were torn down and in their place a load of townhouses where built.
houses prices must also be hectic there. the same friend, his father had their house valued and 3 years ago they would have gotten just under R1 million for it 2 years on and its worth R2.5 million!
shocking thatÂ’s all i can say! |
You don't really notice the price increases of everyday goods too much when you live here... the thing you do notice is the petrol price increase...
about 2-3 years ago the price was less than R2-00 a litre
and of course the petrol price affects the cost of transport which in turn affects the costs of everyday goods...
Ther cost of housing has gotten way out of hand... effectively what happened was the dollar weekened and the Rand/Dollar exchange rate (and the Rand/Pound exchange rate to some degree) become really good... this had the affect of lowering the interest rate so much that the demand for porperty grew out of all proportion...
I could actually kick myself, as about 6 years ago I bought a 4 bedroomed house, with Study, Lounge, Family Room, Diningroom Kitchen, 2 and a half Bathrooms, Double Garage, Double Carport, Servants quarters and Swimming Pool for R230 000-00...
Due to circumstances, I sold the house a year later for R280 000-00 (effectivley losing about R15 000-00 in the deal due to transfer/agents costs etc)...
You cannot even buy a 3 bedroomed house in that area now for less than R1 Million... I could have made myself a tidy little profit if I'd hung on to it...
The house prices are actually starting to drop a little now as the average person just does not qualify for a Bond that high and people can't sell...
It's also true that Townhouses are going up all over the place, no matter where you live...
Midrand has also gotten way out of control... there is barely any open land between Pretoria and Johannesburg anymore, due to all the townhouse complexes being erected... The side affect of this is the Power substations can no longer cope with the demand, so there are constant power blackouts... the water supply grinds to a near halt and the roads are just not coping anymore... When I lived in Midrand, I was about 18 KM's from work, which during a off peak time (say about 4 am on a Sunday Morning
) it would take about 15 minutes to drive... during Rush Hour, I couldn't do it in less than an Hour and a half... Instead of trying to improve the road infrastructure, the Govenrment in there wisdom are building a subway system to run between Pretoria - Sandton - Johannesburg and the East Rand called the Gautrain at the cost of R21 Billion... all the analysts have said that this going to be a total disaster and that the money could be better spent elsewhere but there you go... they want to get this done by the 2010 world cup and all that has happened so far is a survey of they land has taken place and a route proposed.No construction has started as yet, and if they get it finished I can just imagine the chaos...