October 23 2026 16:20
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Capital is on the move. A UK healthcare landlord with a JSE listing brought in a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund. A Western Cape Reit spent R1.4bn on new property. A veteran financier handed over listed shares worth more than R200m to transform part of Braamfontein.
Beneath the deal-making ran a quieter thread. Green building is no longer pitched as a moral obligation. It is increasingly backed by hard numbers on rentals, vacancies and values, and next week the industry gathers in Cape Town to talk about turning ambition into action.
Here is what happened in property this week:
PHP brings in GIC to cut debt
The week opened with a significant deal from Primary Health Properties (PHP), the UK healthcare Reit with a secondary listing on the JSE.
PHP has agreed to form a 50:50 joint venture with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC, to invest in private hospitals. The venture will be seeded with 27 private hospitals from PHP’s portfolio, valued at about £700m. They will be transferred at a 5% discount to their book value at the end of December 2025, with a weighted average unexpired lease term of 22 years backed by index-linked leases.
PHP expects net proceeds of about £500m when the deal completes in November. The money will go mainly towards repaying variable-rate debt, including the remainder of the bridging loan it took on to buy rival Assura in 2025.
The deal should cut PHP’s net debt to about £2.9bn from £3.4bn at the end of June. That matters because the group’s loan-to-value (LTV) ratio stood at 57% at mid-year, well above its 40% to 50% target.
PHP is not walking away from the hospitals. It keeps a 50% stake and will manage the portfolio, which gives it a new stream of fee income. CEO Mark Davies said the deal would reduce borrowings, improve returns on invested equity and give the company a long-term institutional partner to help fund further investment in UK hospital infrastructure.
The underlying business is in good shape. Adjusted earnings per share rose 9% in the first half, and PHP is targeting a fully covered dividend of 7.3p for 2026, which would be its 30th consecutive year of dividend growth.
Calgro M3 holds its margins in a tough market
Also on Monday, JSE-listed Calgro M3 released its interim results for the six months to 31 August 2026. They showed a company in consolidation mode.
Group revenue edged up 1.22% to R465m, and the gross profit margin held at 29.46%, comfortably above the group’s target band of 20% to 25%. Net asset value rose 4.49% to R17.21 per share. Headline earnings per share slipped 4.67% to 78.99c, however, and no interim dividend was declared.
The standout was the Memorial Parks business. Revenue jumped 20.04% to R47.81m, gross margins widened to 54.78% and cash collections rose to R60.83m. It is still only about a tenth of group revenue, but it is growing fast and producing predictable, annuity-style income.
CEO Ben Pierre Malherbe said the group continued to execute its board-approved strategy of selling non-core assets, building infrastructure, reducing debt and expanding Memorial Parks. There was progress on disposals, with an offer accepted for the Cornubia land parcel and a memorandum of understanding received for the Vredehoek development.
Calgro is also building only what it has already sold. About 55% of its 1,418 units under construction or in stock are already committed to rental investors through guaranteed off-take agreements.
The outlook is cautious. Calgro expects the affordable housing market to stay constrained, and it warned that the coming municipal elections and the related uncertainty over local government budgets could slow approvals and service delivery.
Seabrooke’s R204m gift to reshape Braamfontein
One of the most unusual stories of the week was about philanthropy rather than a property deal, although it has real implications for Johannesburg’s inner city.
Sabvest Capital CEO Chris Seabrooke, through the Seabrooke Family Trust, has donated 1.4 million Sabvest shares worth about R204.4m to the Wits Foundation. The gift will cover R200m of the R341m cost of the planned Wits Cultural Precinct in Braamfontein, with the university funding the rest.
The five-year project will link and expand Wits’ arts facilities, including the Wits Art Museum, the Chris Seabrooke Music Hall and a new digital arts building. It will also add restaurants, coffee shops and bookshops to draw the public in. Construction is due to start on 1 January 2027.
The structure is unusual. Rather than writing a cheque, the trust handed over listed shares, which the Wits Foundation can sell through block trades or in the market over the life of the project. Wits says it is the university’s largest share donation to date.
“The arts have an extraordinary ability to bring people together and to change the character of a place,” Seabrooke said.
For property watchers, it is a significant anchor investment in one of Joburg’s key regeneration nodes, at a time when Braamfontein is trying to reinvent itself as a mixed-use, student-driven district.
SA Reits outperform in September
We also republished our look at how the listed sector fared in September, based on the SA Reit Association’s Chart Book compiled by Ian Anderson of Merchant West Investments.
SA Reits gained 1.6% in September while the All-Share Index fell 5.8%, putting the sector back in front for the year to date. Rolling 12-month distribution growth climbed to 11.09%, the strongest reading since 2017 if you set aside the distorted comparisons of 2021 and 2022.
Anderson warned, though, that growth of 11% is unlikely to be repeated next year. Companies are guiding to mid-to-high single digits for 2027, and the Reserve Bank’s 25 basis point rate hike in September will weigh on that.
Green building goes commercial
On Tuesday we previewed the Green Building Council South Africa’s (GBCSA) 19th Green Building Convention. It takes place at the Century City Conference Centre in Cape Town from 27 to 29 October, with more than 800 delegates expected.
This year’s theme is “The Green Revolution: From ambition to action”, and the GBCSA is making a firmly commercial case. It is the first convention under new CEO Georgina Smit.
“Most people are not going to go green simply because they think it is the right thing to do,” Smit said. “An empty building is a property owner’s worst nightmare.”
The numbers back her up. The MSCI Green Annual Property Index shows that green-certified offices delivered annualised total returns of 6.98% over the ten years to December 2025, against 5.26% for non-certified offices. Green offices also had lower vacancies (10.3% against 13.1%) and higher valuations (R21,251/m² against R14,510/m²).
Speakers include Kenyan climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti, political analyst Prince Mashele and Play Braam founder Adam Levy. Rand Water is a partner for the fourth year running, and Balwin Properties is also among the convention’s supporters.
That theme returned on Thursday when Redefine Properties’ Blue Route Mall in Tokai, Cape Town, earned Net Zero Waste Level 2 certification from the GBCSA. The certification requires the mall to show it diverted at least 90% of its operational waste from landfill over 12 months.
The mall runs an integrated waste management plan with a strong focus on organic waste, and it hosts a collection point for Ladles of Love’s Feed the Soil composting programme.
“The days of sustainability being a niche consideration are behind us,” said Smit.
Ursula Mpakanyane, head of ESG at Redefine, said the certification “reflects our broader commitment to improving the environmental performance of our properties.”
Red Property Finance takes the pain out of bond applications
On Wednesday, estate agency Vered Estates and fintech mortgage originator MortgageMarket launched Red Property Finance, a joint home loan platform.
The service gives buyers access to finance from South Africa’s major banks through one application. It carries the Vered name but is open to all buyers, whether or not they are buying through Vered.
MortgageMarket runs the platform from start to finish using its ZeroCapture technology. ZeroCapture uses AI to pull information from uploaded documents and fill in the application, so buyers can start in under two minutes. Because documents go directly to MortgageMarket and the banks, buyers no longer need to send payslips and bank statements over WhatsApp or email. Vered itself has no access to buyers’ financial documents.
“Finding the right property is only part of the journey. Securing the right finance is equally important,” said Vered CEO Jonathan Novick.
MortgageMarket CEO Tim Akinnusi said the aim was to give buyers “access to multiple lenders without the complexity traditionally associated with applying for a home loan.”
With interest rates rising again, buyers have every reason to shop around for the best rate, and that makes the timing good for a tool like this.
Spear beats guidance and raises it again
The week’s standout set of results came on Thursday from Spear Reit, the JSE’s only pure Western Cape Reit.
Spear grew distributable income per share by 8.02% to 47.29c for the six months to 31 August. That is already above the top of its original full-year guidance of 6% to 8%, so it has raised its guidance for the 2027 financial year to 9% to 11%. It declared an interim dividend of 44.92c per share.
The growth came from both its existing portfolio and acquisitions. Occupancy is 96.60%, collections are at 99.23% and rental reversions are positive at 7.98%. Industrial property, which makes up about 63% of Spear’s lettable area, is 98.22% occupied, with new leases and renewals signed 13.49% higher.
During the half Spear transferred four properties worth R1.402bn into its portfolio, at a blended yield of 8.99%. They include the Santam Precinct office complex in Tygervalley and Watergate Centre in Mitchells Plain. Because they only transferred in late August, most of their earnings will show up in the second half.
The portfolio is now worth about R8.8bn, and Spear’s LTV is a conservative 21.91%. It also has developments under way in George and Blackheath, plus land in Century City.
“Strong occupancy, rental growth and collections have supported earnings,” said CEO Quintin Rossi.
Compliance in a hurry
Finally, compliance platform InTouch showed how quickly automated tools can now move. Its continuous sanctions screening re-checked its clients’ entire books at 06:02 on Friday 16 October, after spotting changes to the UN sanctions list. That was almost ten hours before the Financial Intelligence Centre’s own alert went out at 15:52.
For estate agencies, conveyancers and other accountable institutions under the FIC Act, the message is clear. Sanctions designations take effect when they are adopted, so firms that wait for the FIC’s email are already behind.
“Manual processes simply cannot keep pace,” said InTouch founder Karl Nimmo.
What to watch
The coming weeks are busy.
The Green Building Convention runs in Cape Town from Tuesday to Thursday. PHP’s joint venture with GIC is due to complete in November, and Fairvest’s new B shares from its R1.25bn bookbuild start trading on the JSE today.
Results season also picks up. Dipula Properties reports annual results on 11 November, Sirius Real Estate releases its interims on 16 November and Vukile’s interims are due on 30 November, with Octodec also reporting in November. Investors will be watching closely to see whether the strong distribution growth of 2026 is holding up as interest rates rise.
The municipal elections loom over all of it. Developers such as Calgro M3 are already warning that local government uncertainty could slow approvals. As Property Flash has reported, property experts disagree on how much the outcome will matter. For a sector that depends so heavily on municipal services, though, it is the biggest event on the horizon.
By Alistair Anderson
