Episode 43: An inspirational 8 year journey to developing 14 units

In this week's episode we talk to Khosi Makolota, from Senaoane, Soweto and she shares her inspiring 8 year journey on building 14 units from scratch.

 

Khosi's grandmother owns property in Soweto, which got her interested in property. 

She shares how she grew up believing townhouses were for White people, but her grandmother explained to her that she could build townhouses in Soweto.

So in 2012 when her grandmother's friend decided to sell some of his land (3 stands), her grandma offered to help her buy the land. 

She spent years trying to get funding to develop the stands, the banks refused to lend her money and she was met with many challenges, one of them being that she'd get quotations for labor and materials for the development, raise the funds with her grandmother, and then go back to the contractors and be told that prices had gone up. 

 

She even considered selling her primary home to get the money she needed to start developing the land, but after finding out that she'd only get R320,000 (US$18,387) from the sale, she decided against it. 

She ended up quitting her job as a travel agent and selling one of the stands to raise the money for the project, but it was still not enough to get her started. She started attending real estate seminars and eventually connected with Henry Chitsulo, who then connected her with Victor at uMastandi (episode 4), which is how she got funding in February, 2019.

 

Getting funding definitely sped up the process but even that had it's own hiccups - in the process of construction, her contractor fell ill and passed away and she had to manage the contractor's team and eventually hire a new contractor. 

Construction on the property was completed in January 2020 and by February 2020, Khosi already had 9 tenants in her 14 unit property. 

Apartments rent from R2,500 (US$144) to R3,500 (US$201) per month. 

 

Click play to listen to this week's episode and share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.