Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - October 2017 | Page 21

“My property might be 10km away
from the Gautrain, but I’m going to get
much higher rentals and yields and cap-
ital value and price at which the units
sell by offering the building’s own link/
shuttle service to a Gautrain station or
a popular shopping precinct,” says Co-
etzee.
With less need for parking spaces,
property developers would have more
space to build more units or amenities,
such as a residents’ gym. “A parking bay
is 5metres by 3 metres. So, you end up
with 15 square metres of space. So, if I
take away 4 bays, that is a nice small 1
bed apt size you might be able to repur-
pose. What happens if you build a gym?
The amenities your property offers now
changes, making it more desirable. So
property investors are increasing values
and decreasing costs at the same time.
The opportunities are endless.”
Not only that, but this new approach
is more cost-effective than building
parking spaces, says Coetzee. “There’s
a new way to think about space, and
that’s rand per km. It makes no sense to
trap all that capital, locked up in a space
that effectively stores mobility. And it
will save you a ton of money: to build
a parking bay at current construction
costs is at least R100 000 per bay, and
then there’s costs around maintenance,
lighting and electricity. So, to build 1
000 bays, you’re spending about R100
million. Whereas, if you decide to offer
flexible mobility, you can connect a 5km
service of three busses running from
6am to 6pm, every 15 minutes, and that
would cost about R10,000 a day - which
means you could offer mobility options
to your tenants for the next 40 years for
the same budget.
Future-proof
Not only would this be beneficial to all
in the short term, but would also be more
in line with the way the future seems to
be headed. Just a few months ago, Di-
rector of MIT Senseable City Lab, Car-
lo Ratti told Wired magazine that the
impending driverless car movement will
mean 80 percent fewer cars on any given
highway: “In general, fewer cars could
mean vast areas of urban land currently
occupied by parking lots and roads could
be reinvented for a whole new spectrum
of social functions.” In the same article,
landscape and urban design firm SWA’s
Kinder Baumgardner says that “a reduc-
tion in cars will transform urban cores,
with entrepreneurs reimagining parking
lots, parking spaces, and garages by con-
verting them into housing, retail outlets,
and public spaces.”
So, if that’s the way we’re all headed,
then how come no one has done more
of this sooner?
Coetzee admits that the idea of flex-
ible mobility is such a new concept that
the average property developer or real
estate investor wouldn’t know the first
thing about putting in place a flexible
mobility solution for a building. Luck-
ily, there are a slew of startups and in-
novators around to do just that for you:
“Call us. Let us give you options. We’ll
work with you, whether you’re develop-
ing, innovating or just wanting to opti-
mise while figuring out your next move.
Think of us and other companies like us
as new mobility consultants, like engi-
neering consultants for optimizing your
movement.”
SOURCES
Wired, Vox, GoMetro