Greymont, situated at the bottom of Northcliff Hill is a small suburb that offers reasonable property prices as well as the convenience of access to transport routes and educational establishments.
The suburb, with sits in between the parks of Albert’s Farm and a number of smaller parks offers buyers an average property price in 2011 of R717 000, up slightly from the average in 2010 of R686 000. Both averages are below the average municipal valuation of R833 000, indicating that there is some room for price escalation in this suburb. Interestingly, the suburb has not topped this average municipal valuation in the past eight years and R717 000 is the second highest average over the last years.
There are two distinct areas to the suburb, upper and lower Greymont with properties increasing in scale and price the further up the slopes of the hill you get. The majority of sales (22/36) in the last 12 months fell into the R400 000 – R800 000 zone with nine coming from the higher R800 000 – R1.5 million bracket.
The suburb is comprised almost entirely of freehold properties with only 18 out of the around 800 properties in Greymont coming under the sectional title banner. Property owners seem to be quite loyal to the suburb with almost 40 percent of the owners having held onto their properties for 11 years or more.
The older owners, which make up just under 20 percent of residents, also make up a much larger percentage of sellers, with around 30 percent of sellers coming from the over 65 bracket. Younger buyers, likely attracted by the reasonable prices and good location make up around 30 percent of buyers but the 35-50 age bracket accounts for by far the largest amount of buyers, totalling around 50 percent.
For day to day shopping there are two Spars (Greymont and Bromhof) close by and Cresta shopping centre is within easy reach. It is also possible to access the N1 highway via the Gordon Road onramp and Ontdekkers Road is reasonably close for getting into the CBD.
For those looking for education the better schools in the Northcliff area, Northcliff, Cliffview, Franklin Roosevelt and Risidale primaries are all within easy reach as is Northcliff and Roosevelt Park high schools. For those looking at university education it is possible to take a shortcut through Sophiatown and Westdene to get to UJ and to the new Rea Vaya bus route that will provide a link directly to Wits.