Property investment in Cape Town’s CBD reached R9-billion in 2025, up from R7.2-billion the year before. (Photo: Supplied / Ryan Warneke) There is no time like the present – actually 14 July, when The Rockefeller opens its sales books for the remaining 60 units – if you were thinking of investing in Cape Town CBD residential property. Hell, if you can handle the service fees and are willing to live without a car, you could even make it your home.
It’s the last bit about not having a car that another property development – the Acre – is banking on. The historic Golden Acre will drop the “Golden” and just be “the Acre” (with a lower-case “t”, according to the developers’ branding) when its redevelopment is complete.
The 301 long-term residential living apartments and 115 hybrid-living apartments are being pitched at medium to high income young professionals to live and work in the CBD without the burden of long commutes and inflated petrol bills.
These are the two ends of the Cape Town (CT) housing spectrum driving the market, staying in step with a broader premiumisation trend we’re seeing across retail, as property developers and FMCG purveyors all chase the milk of the golden calf: the luxury consumer.
Playing the game
It shouldn’t surprise anyone monitoring the housing policy situation in CT that in the real estate game, these moves are literally being incentivised. Like, it’s actually called the GB7 Residential Incentive.
Under the City of Cape Town Development Management Scheme (DMS), General Business 7 (GB7) zoning allows for a 30% increase in maximum allowable floor space (bulk). In plain speak it means that developers are directly subsidised to build high-density residential towers, provided that at least 30% of the augmented floor space is utilised as residential flats.
And in The Rockefeller’s case, a special hotel floor space concession applies where all communal, dining, and hospitality areas are completely excluded from the total floor space (bulk) calculations for proposed hotels of at least 30 rooms.
That concession allows developers to incorporate massive premium lifestyle amenities like rooftop bars, gyms, restaurants, and co-working spaces without sacrificing sellable residential square meterage.
The true power behind the flood of construction obscuring the Table Mountain vista (if you’re at street level, of course) is the Sars-administered Urban Development Zone incentive (recently extended in the 2025/26 budget to 31 March 2030) which offers accelerated tax depreciation.
This means developers and buyers can write off construction costs against taxable income: 20% annually over five years for improvements/conversions; or 20% in year one, and 8% annually for 10 years for new builds. This transforms micro-apartments into highly lucrative, yield-generating tax shelters.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pressly-CapeTown-DebtTW-option-2.jpg "A view of Cape Town, South Africa, from the ocean. (Photo: Leila Dougan)")
Park and ride
While there are big plans for the current parking garage at the Golden Acre – think Sixty60 rider rest areas and EV charging bays – there are also deal sweeteners for not needing parking space for your building…
Historically, adding structured parking bays made converting older office blocks cost-prohibitive. The zero-parking minimum in PT2 zones eliminates major excavation costs, unlocking the financial viability of premium conversions.
Yes, technically the Golden Acre redevelopment is one of the many office-to-residential conversions that are popping up due to hybrid working models and the relocation of corporate tenants to managed northern nodes (such as Tyger Valley and Century City).
The Cape Town CBD has experienced high office vacancy rates (sitting at 11.4% in Q1 2026 compared to a decentralised metro average of 2.7%, according to the latest SA REIT Association chart book). This surplus of B-grade and C-grade office space has provided the primary raw material for an adaptive reuse boom.
At the celebration marking the first anniversary of the new ownership, Gary Moore – who, alongside his partner in the joint venture Putirex, Roelof Delport, owns the grand old lady of the Cape Town skyline – outlined a transformative civic and commercial vision for the Golden Acre, saying that the project transcends mere real estate development.
The event was inside the gutted old cinema and the developers praised the original brutalist architecture and mid-20th century construction as superior to anything that can be achieved today.
Moore framed his mission around restoring the complex to its former glory and revitalising the surrounding inner-city environment:
“Our retail vision for 18-hour trading in an upgraded more shop-friendly environment... will improve the experience for our existing commuter base plus create an enhanced retail destination for CBD residents and office workers alike. We want the Golden Acre to reestablish its role as the primary CBD retail destination.”
Besides for the incentives listed above, Moore’s broader vision aligns with a deep sense of civic duty, focusing on upgrading the public realm – including the Golden Arrow bus terminal, MyCiTi bus stops, Strand Street pedestrian bridge, the railway station underpass, and street lighting – to ensure the precinct is “safe, accessible, and pedestrian-friendly”.
Condo-hotel investment model
Meanwhile, Daily Maverick learned on a recent tour that at The Rockefeller it’s all about pioneering South African execution of the global condo-hotel model. Unlike traditional short-term letting models where revenue is tied directly to the occupancy of an individual unit, The Rockefeller operates a Participation Quota pooling system managed by Newmark Hotels, Reserves and Lodges.
Revenue is completely decoupled from individual unit occupancy. At month-end, the total net profit generated by the hotel’s room divisions is aggregated and divided by the total square metres of the hotel pool (read: not the very nice splash pool on the roof; the pooled room inventory instead).
An investor’s monthly payout is calculated by multiplying this rate by the exact square metres of their unit.
This system guarantees a return for every participating investor, even if their specific room was vacant during that month. And, importantly, it shields individual owners from the volatility and seasonal dips of the independent Airbnb market.
The hotel rental pool launched with 100 bedrooms in 2021 and has expanded to 330 rooms (of 395 total units in the building) due to strong investor demand. The model has delivered proven net yields of up to 11%.
If you put your unit in the pool, everything is managed and marketed by Newmark at a fee of approximately 8% of gross revenue, compared to the 20% typically charged by independent Airbnb property managers.
/file/attachments/2994/SuperiorSuite12_794995.jpg "The majestic views promised from the 275 square metre, three-bedroom/three-bathroom penthouse suites on the 19th floor of The Rockefeller. Yours for R24-million, four are available. (Photo: Supplied)")
If you want to stay in your unit (or another room in the building), the general manager books the accommodation at a heavily discounted owner-only rate. The revenue generated from this discounted booking is paid back into the hotel pool, preserving the collective returns of all participating investors.
You can choose to retain the unit and manage it yourself but that comes with hotel services (cleaning, maintenance, linen) that must be paid out-of-pocket as services are requested. And you can’t somma just give the keys to someone or rent it out willy-nilly. The hotel pool maintains strict control over building access to prevent unauthorised short-term subletting.
On the ground floor
Outside of these ivory towers, however, is a fierce fight for the soul of CBD living. Civil society groups, most notably Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City, are against this hyper-financialised shift.
While micro-apartments are marketed as “affordable” due to lower absolute purchase prices (R1.5-million to R1.7-million), their rates per square metre are highly inflated: ranging from R46,162/m2 to R57,000/m2 compared to the CBD baseline average of R41,287/m2.
They also argue that units of 15 to 30 square metres are physically unable to house working-class families, effectively restricting inner-city living to single, high-income professionals and transient tourists.
Studio apartments at the Acre come in 22m2 and 29m2 flavours of micro and standard. And a 25m2 studio at The Rockefeller is selling from R1,745,000.
So the naysayers are definitively not wrong. It’s just that they may be barking up the wrong tower for social justice. There be only profitable investments on these floors. DM