WORDS: DEBBIE HATHWAY :: IMAGES: SUPPLIED
Hard-wired for investment success, real estate all-rounder Jade Barkhuysen has a knack for unearthing promising deals and converting them into income-generating assets
Behind every successful entrepreneur is unwavering vision, courage, and determination to achieve a business goal, invariably against the odds. Jade Barkhuysen has had more than a decade of practice building his property portfolio in his hometown of Gqeberha, mainly through self-study, seminars, and coaches who showed him how to find good deals on properties worth renovating and selling for profit or adding to his portfolio as an income-generating asset.
Gqeberha is in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, plagued with challenges such as water shortages and load-shedding like the rest of the country, forcing property investors and financiers intent on developing the region to dig deep for solutions to overcome them. North End, the location of Barkhuysen’s latest project, Bayside Lodge, was once purely residential but today shares space with factories, warehouses and offices.
Transforming Bayside Lodge represents a few firsts for Barkhuysen. It is a brownfield site, his most significant redevelopment and the first undertaken with TUHF, a commercial property financier providing specialised financial services and solutions to clients in the urban areas of large metropolitan areas across SA.
Jade Barkhuysen, Bayside Lodge
Safe inner city living
Bayside Lodge speaks to Barkhuysen’s passion for providing clean, affordable accommodation in the inner city of Gqeberha. He and his team converted the former commune with 19 bedrooms into 17 studio apartments, ranging from 14m² to 25m², each with a bathroom comprising a shower, basin and toilet, and kitchenette. There is a communal laundry facility. Tenants are primarily young professionals aged 21 to 35.
“The most important thing for property investors in Nelson Mandela Bay is to efficiently manage their electricity and water expenditures in the face of ongoing load-shedding and the persistent water shortages in the Nelson Mandela Bay area. The pricing for water, in particular, has skyrocketed, which has derailed many a property investor who didn’t account for it in their plans,” Barkhuysen says.
The solution for Bayside Lodge was to ensure tenants had their prepaid electricity and water meters and could be individually accountable for the utilities they use. Providing fibre connectivity is more of a challenge, as facilities still need to be available in the area. Barkhuysen is investigating other options.
Mitigating development challenges
The good news is that Bayside Lodge has its own borehole. “If there’s ever a problem with the municipal or borehole water supply, we can switch between the two. That gives this property an important advantage because the tenants know they will always have water,” he says.
The water from the borehole is regularly tested at a lab and approved as safe for cooking, washing, and consumption. A comprehensive filtration system further safeguards it. Additionally, bearing in mind the critically low water levels in the area, all the taps and showerheads in the bathrooms have low-flow fittings. Solar power is on the cards within six to 12 months once Bayside Lodge is fully leased and generating the requisite cash flow.
However, all this could only materialise once the building plans were approved. This proved to be the most significant of the challenges. Despite blueprints for the land being approved in the 1920s, it took another three rounds of rejections before the new plans were accepted and two-week delays between resubmissions. “That was quite a nerve-wracking stage, because I needed the building plans to be approved before I could get the financing,” says Barkhuysen.
Solutions-driven success
That meant taking a leap of faith, buying the property for cash to prevent it from being relisted on the market and refinancing it with TUHF. “A key takeaway from this [experience] is that it is a collaborative team effort. As a developer, while you need to bring everything together, you don’t have the individual skills to do everything yourself. It is essential to have the support of a competent team of professionals and an organisation like TUHF,” he says.
He advises other aspirant property developers to find the right deals in areas where TUHF offers commercial property finance and approach them with a plan to work together.
“I intend to continue following my passion for investing in the inner city because there’s a unique fulfilment that comes from creating an environment where people can feel safe and live well.”
