Three of the largest property companies on the JSE reported the same week, and all three are moving money the same way: out of Gauteng offices, into Western Cape logistics (warehouses).

Growthpoint has cut office exposure from 46% of its portfolio a decade ago to 39% today, sold R4.9 billion of property in a year, and is spending R1.4 billion on logistics next year against R0.3 billion on offices. Hyprop sold half a Gauteng mall for R825 million to cut Gauteng exposure and grow in the Western Cape. Fortress has recycled R11.6 billion of old stock into R17.5 billion of new since 2019, and now calls itself a logistics company.

The Play:

Work out one number: what share of your income comes from Gauteng offices versus coastal logistics. That ratio tells you which side of this you are on. Then build the sheet, one row per property: province, type, the rent a renewing lease signs at versus the old rent, vacancy, and lease-end month. The buildings renewing below the old rent with an expiry close are the ones to deal with before the valuer does.

A number that should reset how you price every deal: listed property now yields about 1.5—1.8% less than long-dated government bonds. A risk-free bond now pays more income than the average REIT, when over 28 years property paid slightly more. The cushion for taking property risk has gone negative, about as stretched as it has been outside the 2020 crash.

Listed property reprices daily, so it is the market's live read on what property income is worth, and that read is: priced for perfection. Last time the gap ran the other way, in 2020, buying in returned 30—50% a year over three years.

The Play:

Use the long bond as the floor under every deal. Pull the current 10-year government bond yield, one number off any financial site, and write it at the top of your acquisition sheet. Then put each building's income yield next to it. If it does not clear the bond by a real margin, you are being paid less to take property risk (vacancies, a new roof, a tenant walking) than to take none. A building that made sense at last year's bond yield may not at this one.

Every landlord treats a national supermarket anchor as a safe covenant. This year the numbers say it depends entirely on which one. Checkers grew sales 10% to R105 billion for the year, taking record market share and pulling extra footfall through its stores with Sixty60 deliveries. Over roughly the same period, Spar's South African business saw earnings per share fall 55.5%, and transactions drop 2.3%, after a botched warehouse system rollout in KwaZulu-Natal.

Same job, anchoring a centre and drawing the traffic the smaller shops pay rent for. Very different reliability. A Checkers anchor is compounding; a Spar anchor right now carries real risk. That difference flows straight into the value of the centre and the safety of its whole rent roll.

The Play:

Sort every retail lease you hold by anchor brand, then pull three things for each anchor: the sales trend at that specific store if you can get it, the anchor's lease expiry, and whether the lease has a turnover-rent clause tying your income to their sales. Flag every Spar-anchored centre for a covenant review and stress its income assuming a weaker anchor. On anything you are buying or renewing, price the covenant off the data instead of the brand on the door.

Growthpoint's vacancies hit a seven-year low. The biggest landlord reported SA vacancies down to 6.1% from 9.9% two years ago, led by logistics and the Western Cape. The recovery is real but concentrated: carried by the assets the big funds are buying, dragged down by the offices they are selling.

A court struck down BEE licensing for estate agents. The North Gauteng High Court ruled the regulator may not refuse a licence solely because a business lacks a BEE certificate, declaring that part of the Property Practitioners Act unconstitutional. It goes to the Constitutional Court for confirmation.

Inospace is rolling out fulfilment centres. The last-mile logistics group has opened a fulfilment centre in Johannesburg after starting in Cape Town, offering small tenants warehousing plus packing and delivery under one roof. It is a read on where demand is going: not just space, but space with the e-commerce plumbing built in.

A secret plan for new Makro stores. Documents point to new Makro stores planned after years of the big-box format looking tired. A national anchor actively expanding is a covenant worth tracking, especially against the grocery-anchor split in this issue: know which of the big-box names is growing before you sign one.

A private "new Sandton" rents its land, doesn't sell it. Waterfall City near Midrand keeps growing, with its own malls, schools and homes across 2,200 hectares, all built on leased land: you own the building but lease the ground beneath. Full-title freehold is not the only structure that pulls blue-chip tenants and capital.

A large residential and mixed-use portfolio was paying rising municipal water bills while boreholes it had already drilled sat under-used, because nobody could see what those boreholes were actually contributing. The water data was scattered across invoices and separate meter readings, so every decision was a guess.

Pulling municipal and borehole readings into one dashboard, per building, made the water visible for the first time. It surfaced R15.8 million a year in savings, showed boreholes could supply 54% of demand once balanced, and put 350,000 kilolitres of annual use under watch.

Built. A newsletter by The Awareness Company.