Image By ©SA Affordable Housing |Rory Macnamara

Image By ©SA Affordable Housing |Rory Macnamara

By Rory Macnamara

Leroy Slava, a born and bred man of Boksburg on the East Rand in the Ekurhuleni Metro, loves property, and has a few houses and rooms for rental but ‘@Fourteen’ was his first venture into multi-storey rental.

Seeing a run-down building that previously had nine flats and housed a fast-food outlet and video store, going to waste, was Leroy’s opportunity to enter the bigger but modest property market.

Being an inner-city property, with good security, close access to schools, retail, and transport, and close to the lake, the idea developed into an inner-city housing development of 13 ground-floor flats, 13 first-floor flats and five on the second floor. The flats range from bachelor, I bedroom and two bedrooms on each floor.

Completed in six months, Leroy attests to having learnt a great deal about design, building, contractors, municipal requirements and so on. The rebuild was completed by February 2020 and March saw Covid strike which was a worrying and rough time for Leroy which he came through, nonetheless.

Each flat has its own metered electricity supply including the hot water storage units.

The building is managed by a management company, leaving entrepreneur Leroy to seek other opportunities to grow his portfolio and there is no shortage of ideas in and around the current area.

Moving into Boksburg was also a first for TUHF, who are committed to inner city developments. TUHF basically requires a 20% deposit from the investor. In this case Leroy did not have the full 20% deposit, so was referred to the Intuthuko Equity Fund (IEF), a unique inner-city finance initiative supporting previously disadvantaged individuals. This enables them to enter the property market and TUHF and IEF helps address the demographics of ownership of property in South Africa to drive the entrepreneurial spirit of inner-city rejuvenation and development.

  • Total Investment – R 8.5 Million +
  • Rental scope – R 3 800 to R 5000
  • Occupancy – 100%
  • Completion period – six months

“None of this would have been possible without the guidance from TUHF and their programme for Property Entrepreneurs.”