Cape Town Archives | Airport Property

Eskom Load Shedding Schedule for Airport Industria, Cape Town

December 4, 2018 By Guy de la Porte

Airport Industria has power supplied to it by Eskom. Due to coal shortages, Eskom is currently implementing load shedding. The quickest way to see when Airport Industria will be subject to load shedding power outages is to visit Eskom’s load shedding page here by clicking on this link

If you are an Eskom direct customer, just type in “Airport” in the search box (all Airport properties are on the same schedule) and you can see when your power will be down due to load shedding. Whilst load shedding is extremely disruptive to businesses, one has no choice but to try and work around it, unless you have a backup generator or UPS.

I think that Eskom’s current problems highlight the need for alternative power sources with their being a compelling business case for Solar PV now. Please read my post on earning income from your roof here

If you would like to know more about the Airport Industrial Property node, please read about it here

Tandem Tyres Lease new warehouse in Blackheath, Cape Town

October 12, 2017 By Guy de la Porte

Tandem Tyres has leased a 2038m² warehouse unit in Blackheath Industrial Park through Guy de la Porte of GDP, Cape Town’s Industrial Property Specialist. The property has been leased for 5 years at a rental of approximately R40 per m². The landlord will be building a new office and toilet block internally for Tandem Tyres.

Blackheath Industrial Park is a popular industrial park which was previously the Leyland Manufacturing plant in Cape Town. More details on this unit can be viewed here. Tandem Tyres has become a well-known, trusted and value-adding distributor of tyres within the South African and greater African markets. The Tandem Tyres team prides itself on delivering outstanding service and complete tyre solutions to its customers, no matter how big or small. Tandem Tyres website can be viewed here

Airport City Investment Property Sold by Guy de la Porte

April 13, 2017 By Guy de la Porte

10 Concorde Crescent has been sold by Cape industrial property specialist, Guy de la Porte of GDP industrial Property, to a private investor for R6.2 Million.

This 1400m² property consists of a two-unit, modern industrial building with a concrete yard in front. These are steel portal frame buildings, with good internal height and mezzanine offices/storage. Unit 1 consists of a 399m²Warehouse with a 67m² office/mezzanine component, totaling 486m². Unit 2 has a 414m² warehouse with a 92m² office component, totalling 506m².

This prime industrial property was sold in collaboration with Jonty De La Porte of De La Porte Property Group, who represented the owners of the property.

The property is fully let to national and international logistics and freight forwarding companies. More details on the property can be viewed here

Why my really hot industrial properties will never be displayed online

March 8, 2017 By Guy de la Porte

When I started off my career in commercial & industrial property broking in 1987, I obtained my leads as follows (in order of effectiveness):

1. Personal Contact ( These are Telephone prospecting, networking, meetings, established relationships & referrals resulting from good service)
2. Signboards
3. Print media (newspaper advertising, editorials and advertorials)
4. Direct Mail (Flyers & Letters)
5. Digital Marketing (in those days the only avenue was mass faxing using Winfax)

This has changed quite a bit now and now my leads are obtained as follows (in order of effectiveness):

1. Personal Contact (Telephone prospecting, networking, meetings, established relationships & referrals resulting from good service)
2. Digital Marketing (websites, social media, email marketing campaigns, property portals)
3. Signboards
4. Direct Mail (Flyers & Letters)
5. Print media (newspaper advertising, editorials and advertorials)

What hasn’t changed is that my No 1 source of business is still personal contact. I analysed my last 5 years of business and 80% of it was sourced from personal contact & existing relationships. The crazy thing is that 80% of a broker’s time these days is concerned with digital marketing, which brings less than 20% of really good leads! For this reason, I only put investment properties on my website that are generally not a big secret and generally out there in the market!

The reason is quite simple: when I get a really hot industrial Investment property listing, I can usually pick up the phone and make targeted calls to well-qualified clients and 99% of the time, I will sell or lease the property. If I put it on the internet, my opposition will get to know my hot listings and further propagate them on the internet!

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that digital marketing is highly important as it increases my market presence and it is a critical component of my overall marketing strategy. I do believe that the best quality leads are those you get by building relationships, adding value to those relationships and keeping in contact with them, so you know when they have a need and service it well, so they do not need to search property portals.

I am sure, that by now prospective industrial tenants, buyer and investors must be getting fed up with searching for properties on the internet, where every broker (usually inexperienced and lacking any knowledge of the market) is advertising the same properties as everyone else and 90% of the properties are out of date and have either been sold, leased or withdrawn from the market! Property 24 is the best example of this, where in my opinion, a big percentage of the properties searched on, are not actually available!

So bottom line, if you want access to my hottest properties before they are marketed digitally, contact me !

Mini units sold in Airport City and Capricorn Business Park

February 6, 2017 By Guy de la Porte

Sectional title industrial mini warehouse and factory units are in high demand with investors. The reason for this is they usually are priced in the one to three million range where there is a large pool of investors who wish to diversify from residential to commercial property investments. These units are usually in secure complexes and have well-run body corporates, who effectively do most of the management for the investor.

These investments are usually an easy way to start a commercial or industrial property portfolio. There is always a strong demand for small industrial premises and these units attract premium rentals. Generally, the yields are higher than those achieved for residential property and leases are longer, with rental escalations of a minimum of eight percent per annum, compounded. Mostly, the tenants for these type of properties have turnovers of over two million per annum year and the business entities are companies, so they are not governed by the consumer protection act. Guy de la Porte has recently sold sectional title units in Prodev Park, Airport City and Prodev Park, Capricorn to private investors. The combined value of these properties is approximately R 5 Million (ex VAT).

More details of the units can be viewed here:

Prodev Park, Capricorn

Prodev Park, Airport City

Where is the industrial property market headed in 2017?

February 5, 2017 By Guy de la Porte

This year, I have decided not to attempt to determine where we are in the property market cycle as I have done previously, using the Property Clock. Internationally, with Trump and Brexit dominating the news and locally with our own social, political and economic issues, I think there are many more questions than answers.

What I can tell you is, there is still strong demand for all type of investment property in Cape Town, with industrial property being particularly sought after. Supply of industrial investment property is at an all time low. It is interesting to note that despite low growth, relatively high-interest rates and political uncertainty, investors are buying this type of property at very low yields (below 8% is not uncommon). What are the reasons for this? I believe the reasons are as follows:

Cape Town has benefited from “semigration” more than most people realise. I am not sure that there are any reliable statistics to back up my claim but I am experiencing this first hand.
investors have been accumulating cash and although yields are low, they can benefit from escalations, growth and gearing when investing directly in property They do not get this when keeping their money in the bank.
The stock market is seen as being currently fully valued with an upside risk of correction
Local industrial property owners are reluctant to sell if they do not need to, particularly as many have bonds at well below prime lending rates. One must add to this, the effects of capital gains tax and the fact that there are few attractive properties for reinvestment.

Industrial property vacancies are also currently very low with major industrial property Landlords such as Growthpoint and Equities having only a few properties available to rent in Cape Town. There has been very little speculative industrial development locally and this is helping existing industrial properties to achieve rental growth.