Residential investors need to club together to gain scale before they can compete in the listed property sector, Octodec Investments MD Jeffrey Wapnick said last week at a tour of his fund’s inner city Pretoria properties. Octodec owns residential property in the Johannesburg and Pretoria CBDs. It earns income of about R400m a year from these assets, with vacancies at 3%. Wapnick said SA’s inner cities were in need of investment and care and Octodec and a few other firms could not provide this on their own. He hoped for more competition in the residential market. "People are interested in residential property but I think we really need long-term competition. We see entrepreneurs and investors pop up, but they often struggle to find scale. These groups need to club together and make long-term investments in inner city buildings and their surrounds," he said. Octodec’s residential property portfolio includes 9,500 apartments and serves 14,500 tenants. Octodec is one of a handful of pr...
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