Estate Living Magazine Smart Moves - Issue 38 February 2019 | Page 20

P R O P E R T Y
&
I N V E S T M E N T
DON’T BOTHER ABOUT THE TV ANTENNA
Kruger says that when Safricom do their fibre installations, they
deliver FTTH (fibre to the home) and DStv satellite television
connectivity on the same line. ‘We recently did a new student
housing complex here in Potchefstroom,’ he says. ‘That complex
has 92 units, and of those, 60 took fibre connections while only three
took DStv.’ It may be anecdotal, and it may be a small sample size
… but it reflects national trends. As Kruger explains it: ‘A lot of those
students can legally use their parents’ online DStv accounts to watch
live TV via fibre if they want to.’
PROXIMITY IS A PRIORITY
The Premier
EMBRACE A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
Today’s young people – and, more to the point, today’s students
– don’t see their student housing as simply a place to sleep
between their days on campus. Their lives are about community
and connectedness, and their living arrangements reflect that.
International trends continue to move towards accommodation
that provides common areas like lounges and meeting rooms,
where students can gather together and interact. And while the
South African market may not yet be accustomed to communal
bathrooms, studying and socialising remain equally important
factors to local students.
A recent trend in US student housing has focused on pedestrian-
accessible locations that are either on campus or as close to it as
possible. ‘I feel that most developers would rather do a 250- to
300-bed project right on top of campus than 500-plus beds even
a half mile off,’ one developer told commercial real estate news
site Rejournal. This is pretty much the case in South Africa as well –
particularly as most students do not own cars, and public transport
is pretty dismal.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Students, universities and the learning culture in South Africa are
vibrantly changing concepts, and savvy developers and investors
need to keep abreast of changing norms, fashions and, yes, even
fads.
GREEN LIVING IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
Today’s students grew up in an environment where sustainable
living is the baseline, and where everyone recycles paper, watches
their water consumption, saves the rain forests, and is generally
careful with their energy use. It follows, then, that energy efficiency
is a dominant trend in student housing – and (housing shortage
notwithstanding) the more attractive residential units are those that
enable efficient and sustainable living.
IT’S ALL ABOUT CONNECTIVITY
Today’s varsity students, who have grown up as digital natives,
demand an always-on home environment. Wi-Fi and fast fibre
internet are, as you’d expect (and as alluded to earlier), in
increasingly high demand. Johan Kruger, CEO of fibre company
Safricom, confirms that this is very much the case in his market of
Potchefstroom – home to North West University and its campus of
52,000-odd students. ‘We’ve already done builds and installations
for about 5,000 student apartments in Potch so far,’ he says, ‘and
we’re scheduled to do another 5,000. On average you’ll get about
two students per apartment. Some have four, while others are single-
tenant bachelor apartments.’ All of those 20,000-odd students,
Kruger says, will have the option of high-speed fibre.
Mark van Dijk