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Page 1 of 2 Posh buyers pay SA's top price for Cape home
Geode Hoop, an early 20th century house in Noordhoek, Cape Town, has been sold by the British Aspinall family to another British family for about R150m. The highest price a buyer has paid until now for a house in SA is about a fifth of that, R30m. Pam Golding Properties CEO Andrew Golding confirms that the sale was finalized at the end of last week. "The property was in what we call our international Signature Collection" he says. "But the buyer and seller don't want us to say anything more, other than to confirm that the selling price was, as you have ascertained, more than R100m," he adds. Sources have since told the FM that the price was at or near R150m and was negotiated in London at £13m. That price is not unusual for a grand home in the UK and about one-fifth the price of London's most expensive house, a former Russian embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens bought by steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for about £75m (R860m). The buyers of Goede Hoop are believed to be titled and enamored of Cape Town. Casino- and private zoo-owner John Aspinall bought the house from the family of a former Nationalist government cabinet minister, the late John Wiley, in the late 1980s. The house, including a 17 ha portion, was subdivided from the rest of the property, which was developed into a gated estate called De Goede Hoop. Aspinall's wife inherited the house on his death in 2000. According to the SA Property Transfer Guide, it was then transferred for R52m - the highest-priced sale up to that time - in the name of Cape Town Estates Ltd. However, ownership is believed to have remained with the Aspinalls. Businessmen have built houses in Johannesburg which have cost as much as R100m.
This mine's-bigger-than-yours trend began, perhaps, with insurance tycoon Douw Steyn, who is believed to have spent R28m in 1994 building a 3 500 m² home in Saxon Road, Sandhurst, which has since become the boutique hotel, Saxon. "There are international connoisseurs who appreciate unique houses of great charm and taste," says Golding. "De Goede Hoop falls into that category." If anything, he adds, "the fact that the price makes news shows that Cape Town remains an undiscovered jewel".
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