Urban property developers Blok, recently announced its latest innovation – Blok Raw. The project is aimed at introducing a new range of urban homes in a new price band and new locations within Cape Town’s growing urban centre.
Located on Lion Street in the Bo Kaap, Blok has selected FORTY ON L as the new development in which to not only unveil the new Blok Raw product, but also a new development model that they wish to pilot.
Built upon local and international research and dubbed the 80:20 model, the project looks to adapt the current model to allow developers to deliver a more diverse array of housing in well-located metropolitan areas.
This approach depends on unlocking potential bulk on existing sites marked for development, which in this case will add 20% more apartments to the original scheme that will be sold at 40% – 60% below the open market value through an audited, open draw system.
This is because the sale of the apartments in the original plan for development, accounting for 80% of the total number of units, are to be sold on the open market at market-related values to subsidise the land, finance and planning costs of this 20%.
According to Blok, to ensure that the strategy behind this new model is tested, part of this process is to engage with the City of Cape Town, architects, town planners, social housing specialists and the community to clearly ascertain issues and needs.
Workshops, called Urban Working Groups (UWGs), have been held, yielding a wide variety of insights spanning from economic and social to legal and financial.
“The goal is to evolve a model that can be used to illustrate the potential role of developers in shaping out city to create awareness around their ability to undertake similar projects that will begin to assist in contributing well-located, inclusionary urban housing that is targeted at the stretched middle market,” according to Blok.
Photography Blok