Cluster living - ant like

From where I sat outside the hospital coffee shop I had quite a good view. Below, and to the front, about 500 m away was Eagle Canyon. It's a secure estate of 1000 units. All up market luxury residences. The plots of ground in there sold for between R600k initially to around R1.2m today. Building costs were average R6k/meter square. That’s pretty expensive by our standards. Interestingly it's built in an area which used to be an old, disused quarry!! It's a massive area. What they have done though is clever. Around the outer borders of the property are all the houses. Probably about 5-7 deep. Inside this is a 9 hole golf course, with a lake / dam right in the middle where the quarry was obviously at its deepest. There is a natural river course running in at one end and out the other so the dam gets flushed / filled continuously!

In between there are also "Green Belts" so that there is a lot of park like areas for walking, jogging, etc. Very nice, and very expensive!
Only downside is that it added an extra 2000 cars to the roadways in the immediate area!! It's chaos now around here first thing in the morning, and late afternoon. If truth be told, I am surprised at how many of these luxury estates have sprung up in the past 10 years.

There's Feather brook Estate, about 900 free standing units, and about 300 Cluster units within the complex. Then there's Ruimsig Estates, another 1000 units. These are all complexes where the average selling price for a unit today exceeds R2m!
That’s about British Pound 200, or USD330k! A lot of money!

Personally I don't think I would like to live in an estate. Not now anyway. I like to have a bigger property, and have my own boundaries. Estates come with their own problems, not least of which is close proximity to neighbors, levies, "public areas" all around your immediate home.

Benefits include being safer (or so they say), having freedom to go for walks within the estate relatively safely, which we can really do in town. The kids can ride their bikes around safely. There are benefits, make no mistake. But not for me. Not now.

So what is it with humanity that we want to live in secure estates, smaller homes and plots of land, but still don’t make any effort to get to know our neighbors! After all, they would / could be our first line of defense / assistance in times of need.

Across the valley from our home there are numerous complexes, and now there is a new development where I hear they want to put up 104 duplex homes on a piece of ground not big enough for 50 normal 3 bedroom houses!

I’ll attach some photos.

At the rate they are building it is also questionable if this structure will be fit for human habitation beyond their “use by” date.

I’ve been to look at some of these places. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, lounge / kitchen / dining room all open plan, and all in about 90 – 120 square meters!
And two garages! Some bedrooms are so small you have to stand on your bed to be able to open the BIC doors!!!!

You can cook, eat and watch TV without having to move 2 meters in any direction!

But, I suppose with the economic growth we are experiencing, and the continued demand for housing, and the growing middle class, these units will continue to be in demand, and sell.

The upside is that the demand keeps pushing the value of homes, which means that in 2 years I have almost doubled my investment! It’s my pension fund! Worth more than the stupid pension fund my company has in place for me. After 10 years service, my provident fund is worth about 12 months current salary!!!!