Featured Development / Pecanwood Estate boards and management teams should be wary of complacency. They need to be particularly cognisant of changing issues and new threats, and must be proactive in finding solutions to these problems and steering a safe path forward.
Rethinking
Pecanwood embarked on an intensive programme of reinvention in 2016. This involved a period of reflection in which management realised that it is not enough to efficiently run the estate’ s day to day operations and keep costs down, but that it also needs to be creative and continually innovative in order to stay ahead in terms of new opportunities and changing threats so as to maintain or improve the estate’ s market position and property values.
The reinvestment in infrastructure and improved maintenance procedures has been across the board. Coupled with consistent marketing and promotional activities this has reversed the national trends in golf of lowered course rounds and membership numbers. The figures for Pecanwood are statistically significant in their own right( an increase of just on 15 %) but this value is considerably amplified when viewed against the overall trends. These changes show particularly strong growth in visitors’ rounds, which has been achieved by improved marketing activities, and offering better value packages – and without discounting.
Happily, it would appear the benefits of the interventions have not been limited to the golf course’ s numbers as the median property price has now returned to its pre-2015 levels and to this can be added the fact that, based on research by Lightstone Property Solutions, the growth in Pecanwood’ s retail property prices at 6 %, beats the national average of 4 %, and is well ahead of Gauteng’ s 3.5 %.
The estate is almost 22 years old, so it was essential to identify a strategic plan that addressed changing demographics and lifestyle expectations. In this key context Pecanwood HOA’ s CEO Francois Schoeman comments:
‘ One of the key challenges is to differentiate between the benefits of preservation and the dangers of stagnation. I say this because many estates’ boards feel
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