Nedbank Corporate Property Finance has put together the funding for 345 000 sqm of prime industrial land in Pomona along the R21 heading from the East Rand towards Pretoria for the JT Ross Group.

The group plans to develop the Plumbago Business Estate on the land between Pomona Road and the Benoni Road interchanges. It is situated in a growth corridor heading towards Pretoria and provides excellent access to the R21 highway.

The Plumbago Business Estate is due to be completed by November this year. The JT Ross Groups has extensive experience in commercial and industrial property development.

The estate will offer controlled security, design conformity and visible profiling for a broad range of tenants, both large and small. It will also consolidate large storage and distribution facilities and provide excellent transport links to the highway network.

The JT Ross Group is a Durban-based company with division in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, Rawson Auctions’ legal expert and strategist, Jason Lee says that smart money is being invested in commercial and industrial property at the moment and indications are that this trend will continue for the next 12 months.

He warns that banks will seldom provide more than 60% bonds on commercial units and insist that the bond is amortised over a period of between 10 and 12 years.

“This limits the participants in this field to those with available cash reserves which, in turn, ensures that prices are kept low. Unbelievable opportunities exist for savvy investors,” he says.

He says that anyone investing in commercial and industrial property now will see prices increase significantly over the next five years.

“This type of property is giving a better return that those offered by the money markets or by the residential buy-to-let market,” says Lee.

He says that in the tight economic conditions landlords are excepting deals that are as much as 20% lower than in previous years but this invariably means that the annual escalation clauses allow for higher increases typically of between 10% and 15%.

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