Taking a leap of faith with property

I should probably be writing about the steamy three-way that's going on in the Middle East, but there are times when those who live in civilised nations need to avert their eyes when the more primitive nations begin banging one another, and simply let the barbarism run its course.

- BEN TROVATO

Turning to matters of a similarly brutal but less violent nature. The property market in Cape Town features often in the news.

It's an ongoing bloodless crime story and the victims keep piling up. If you're looking to buy within 15km of the mountain, and you engage the services of an estate agent, you should prepare to be sodomised. Metaphorically, obviously. Unless that's something you're looking for.

This is Cape Town, after all. The city doesn't discriminate. Unless you're poor. Or black. Apart from that, you're good.

If I sound bitter, it's only because I missed the property boom that slammed into Cape Town like a Shahed drone hitting a building full of Israeli generals. Instead of schadenfreude, though, all I have are regrets. I moved there from Durban in 1998 at a time when the city was seven women to one man.

By the time I caught my breath, property prices had quadrupled.

My salary stayed the same. Having befriended the kind of people who shared everything except sensible financial advice, I continued to rent with a vague idea of one day buying. I look back and laugh at that idealism, even though the laughing increasingly ended in weeping.

I could've so easily been a multimillionaire today. So many people made a fortune out of buying and selling property at the right time in that city. It seems damnably unfair that I wasn't among them. I keep looking around to find someone to blame, but there's never anyone there.

So, when I saw that the Good Hope Centre had been snapped up for a mere R135 million, I was furious. That could've been mine.

I always wanted a huge, ugly place I could convert into something decent - 7000 people can fit in there. That's my idea of a house party.

A proper bank would've given me a loan. The FNB bond calculator said I'd need a minimum monthly income of R338409.65 to pay off the loan over 20 years.