look before you leap.
posted by David F in South Africa forum
Hi Nadya,
I will try and answer as best I can but it would help out a lot if you included where it is you are goingto be moving within SA. Costs and build times can vary quite a bit depending on where you are.
Car shipping - expensive and you must have a right hand drive car now, they are not letting cars with the typical left hand drive as in the u.s.a. be imported anymore. They also charge a huge import fee, about 25% of the cost of the car when it was new. That being said, cars in south africa are 2 to 3 times more than they are in the states.
Depending on where you are, build time can take from 6 to 9 months. Size also will be a factor as well as building type or style. There are a lot of odd steps you have to go through to get the differrent permits and lots of places have restrictions on what you can build and what you cannot. You would need to check with the local municipality to find out.
I dont think it will cost much to ship your animals but they may have to be in some sort of quarantine, it should be easy enough to check out.
Real estate costs are just like anywhere else, location, location, location is the key.
If you are living in the rural areas it can be very cheap 30 to 50K in dollars or you can pay 250K and upwards for a decent place in the city or one of the nicer wildlife areas or anywhere along the coast and cape.
We bought a place near Kruger park on a couple of hectars and wound up paying about 250K in dollars. But I wouldnt trade it for anywere else its sunny, clean and like living in the park itself.
I hope this helps a little but I would not even consider buying anything without doing a lot of shopping around and checking out not only the house but the whole area within several miles of the house. Crime can be a problem if you are not selective about where you purchase and values can go down quickly if it is not in a well planned area also. We visited several times over a period of a couple of years and checked out places in the cape, garden route, karoo and lowveld before we decided on our place.