Cape Town has dropped a notch from the list of the most expensive cities in which to live in South Africa, going from number two on the list, to number three .
A research paper conducted by Expatistant shows that it is more affordable to live in the Mother City than in Johannesburg. A number of goods and services were used as a benchmark to measure the cost of living, showing that it is 10% cheaper to live in Cape Town as compared to living in Tshwane, for example. A basic food item such as a loaf of bread costs R12.44 in the Cape, while in Pretoria you’re likely to pay R13.77 and in Johannesburg R13.10.
Transport, food, housing, utilities and entertainment were among the items that were used as the benchmark to determine the cost of living, and, according to the research, the City’s price index is 98 following Jozi and PTA at 105 and 130 respectively.
Just over a year ago, Cape Town was ranked as the 383rd most expensive country in the world, meanwhile Pretoria was ranked at 366 and Joburg trailing ten places behind. In Africa, we are the ninth most expensive city to live in with Luanda leading the pack.
This shocker comes amid reports that the Cape Town has unreasonably high property prices. According to Numbeo, a person who has aspirations of renting a house in Cape Town could end up paying more than R21 000, a month, while to buy an apartment one would pay a whopping R32 000 per square metre.
The ease of mind is that these prices generally apply to the city centre. A person who wishes to settle outside the centre would pay half and even less than half. Clifton, one of the most upmarket suburbs in the city, recently headlined the news as the most expensive suburb with an average selling price of R23 million and today’s news that the stretch between Clifton and Camps Bay is set for a R1 billion development.
Photography HSM Images
