Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa July 2015 | Page 14

he invested in artist’s impressions,
building plans and sales material
and pre-sold all the units in the
development.
“I conceptualised the Billion
Group from developing one single
home to the next, brick by brick,”
says Sisa. “I then moved into
developing clusters in Kyalami and
Dainfern and Hyde Park. I picked
the top end of the market because
the margins were higher.”
Building Billion
Although the company started out
in residential property, Sisa’s next
move was into the commercial
property market, when he started
the Billion Group in 1997. He says
that his background in commercial
law and finance gave him an
edge: “I’ve got the commercial
background and I know how to run
the numbers.”
At a time when companies
were moving out of the CBDs, he
recognised the opportunity and
started acquiring buildings in the
Johannesburg and Pretoria CBDs.
Sisa notes that at the time, big
companies were dumping their
stock, so he bought buildings
cheaply, including the Liberty Life
building in 2003. “I was blessed to
be there at the right time and at the
right place,” says Sisa.
His first retail development
was Mdantsane City, a regional
mall located in a township
between East London and King
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JULY 2015 SA Real Estate Investor

Williams Town. A super regional
mall called Hemingways in East
London followed and propelled
Sisa into the spotlight, having
beaten SA’s biggest investment
and development guns - Atterbury,
ZenProp and Investec Property to build Hemingways Mall. Today,
Hemingways is one of South
Africa’s 20 largest malls.
In developing regional shopping
centres, Sisa was blazing a trail as
an independent black property
developer at a time a when retail
property development was the
exclusive domain of institutional
investors, such as Old Mutual and
Liberty.
Today, the Billion Group is
an award-winning 100% black
owned property development and
investment company, specialising
in retail developments, commercial
properties, residential developments
and mixed-use developments.
Some of its recent achievements
include Forest Hill in Centurion,
Gauteng, a R1.6 billion mixeddevelopment that combines office,
retail and residential space. In May
this year, the Billion Group and
Abacus Asset Management opened
the doors of the R 1.75 billion
90,000m2 super-regional Baywest
Mall in Port Elizabeth, a stateof-the-art modern centre. The
60,000m2 R1.3 billion BT Ngebs
shopping centre, named after Sisa’s
grandfather, is currently under
construction in Mthatha and the

Ngcobo shopping centre, located
on the R61 near Mthatha, is under
planning.
The Group has identified and
acquired a number of strategic
sites for mixed use developments
across South Africa and its current
development pipeline adds up to a
reported total value of R7.1 billion.
It also has a rapidly growing
African strategy, and is working
on developing regional shopping
centres in Ghana, Nigeria and
Angola.
Raising Rebosis
As the Billion Group expanded,
the company needed to raise
capital to facilitate the purchasing
of additional properties and
reduce the group’s overall gearing
levels. In 2011, the Billion Group
packaged a portion of its property
portfolio of about R1.5 billion
and listed it on the JSE under the
name Rebosis Property Fund, with
the Billion Group providing the
asset management and property
management for the Rebosis
portfolio.
On listing in 2011, the company
was distinguished as the first blackmanaged and substantially blackheld property loan stock to come to
the JSE Limited. In July 2013 the
fund was approved as a Real Estate
Investment Trust (REIT).
Today, Rebosis’ high-growth,
defensive portfolio comprises 19
quality properties covering a Gross
www.reimag.co.za