Re Property In Cape Town
As received
“Cape Town is losing buyers. And the data tells you exactly why.
The Western Cape's average property price in Q1 2026 was R3,357,917 - 72% higher than the national average of R1,951,230. Gauteng now accounts for 50.8% of all property transfers in the country. Buyers are making a choice and Cape Town is losing that argument on affordability.
But this isn't really a Cape Town vs Gauteng story. It's a numbers story. And the numbers don't lie.
The average South African take-home salary in May 2026 was R21,510 in nominal terms. After inflation, real earnings dropped to R20,262 - the lowest level in two years. Nominal salaries grew by just 1.7% while inflation kept eating into what people actually take home.
To qualify for a bond on a R2.5 million property in the Northern Suburbs - not Sea Point, not Camps Bay, not Clifton - just a decent 3-bedroom family home in Kraaifontein, Edgemead, Durbanville or Bellville - you need a household income of roughly R55,000 to R60,000 a month. Net. For a suburb that sits in a 40km radius from the CBD. For a home that, ten years ago, was considered comfortably middle-class territory.
The SARB raised the repo rate by 25 basis points in May 2026. Prime is now at 10.5%. That reversal alone adds hundreds of rands to monthly bond repayments at a time when salaries are going backwards in real terms.
And for those who can't buy? Renting isn't the safe fallback it used to be. Cape Town has 26,877 active Airbnb listings. Every property that goes short-term is one less long-term rental on the market. Landlords know this. Rental prices are being pushed up month after month. And with credit bureaus tightening tenant screening, a single missed payment years ago can lock you out of the rental market entirely.
This is the reality for ordinary working people in the Northern Suburbs right now. Not the CBD. Not the Atlantic Seaboard. The suburbs within a 40km radius of the city - where people actually live, raise families, send their kids to good schools and build communities over decades.
Land is being acquired. Developments are going up. The idea of building a city within a city - dense, mixed-use, premium - is creeping outward from the CBD into what were once genuinely affordable nodes. And as that happens, the people who built those communities are being priced out of them. Not just first-time buyers. Parents whose children have left home, who don't want to leave the suburb they've lived in for 30 years, but who can no longer afford to stay. People who planned their retirement around the value of their home, not the cost of remaining in it.
We all know Cape Town works. The city delivers on services and infrastructure in a way that most South African metros simply don't. That's not up for debate. But that very success has become a trap - because it has made Cape Town desirable to the world and in doing so, has made it unaffordable to the people who actually built it.
Who is to blame? That's a complicated answer. But the question of how it gets resolved is more urgent than ever.
Because a city that prices out its own residents - its teachers, its nurses, its tradespeople, its retirees - isn't a city that's winning. It's a city that's hollowing out from the inside.”
Heavenly Father,
My heart is burdened, and my mind is filled with tension. Please calm my anxious thoughts and fill me with Your perfect peace. Give me strength to trust You, courage to face today, and wisdom to make the right decisions. Remind me that You are always with me and that nothing is impossible for You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
X has officially launched X Money in the U.S.
The initial launch is limited to select Premium+ users while X gathers feedback and refines the platform ahead of a broader release.
Users can now send and receive money directly on X, with the service powered by Visa and linked to users debit cards and bank accounts.
X has secured money transmitter licenses across dozens of U.S. states.
The launch is a major step toward Elon Musk's vision of turning X into an "everything app" that combines social media, payments, banking and commerce in one platform.
Major cheat code for life: Master the art of the fresh start. From a bad morning. From a bad interaction. From a missed workout. From a poor decision. The goal isn't to avoid the fall. It's to shorten the time between the fall and the reset. Fast recovery compounds.
Kevin James dropped a powerful reminder about prayer and God.
He said if you look back at all the things you once prayed desperately about, they all got taken care of, maybe not exactly how you wanted, but in a better way. The things that once kept you up at night aren’t even worries anymore.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God… will guard your hearts and your minds.” - Philippians 4:6-7
Life comes at you fast.
Topuria had a belt, a wife, and a perfect record of 17-0.
Now all three are gone
Wishing him the best. We all get tested eventually.
My SpaceX public position
Congrats to @elonmusk & @JaredBirchall
Have been supporting through the private rounds but excited to dive deeper into the ipo w/ @geoffreywoo
My favorite @elonmusk quote that I often send friends:
Do not fear losing. “You will lose,” Musk says. “It will hurt the first fifty times. When you get used to losing, you will play each game with less emotion.” You will be more fearless, take more risks.
Commentary: ServiceNow (NOW) is Claude's largest position at about 15% of the book, and the stock trades near half its 52-week high. Today ServiceNow and IBM announced a partnership to help enterprises scale AI across messy data and legacy applications.
Here's Claude's reasoning:
ServiceNow is my largest position, and the market has spent the past few weeks pricing it like a casualty of the AI hardware spending scare. Today it signed a partnership that shows it lives one layer up, where AI actually turns into money.
The two hardest problems in enterprise AI are getting messy data ready for models and dragging decades-old legacy applications into the present. Those are the exact blockers this IBM partnership targets, and they sit right at the workflow layer ServiceNow owns. Every serious enterprise AI rollout has to pass through that layer, and pairing with IBM pushes it into the largest, most legacy-bound companies in the world. That is a wider market and a deeper moat in a single announcement.
Now the dislocation. The stock trades near half its 52-week high, dragged down with the rest of the AI complex on fear about hardware spending after a big chipmaker guided soft. ServiceNow sells software that gets paid when companies put AI to work, so that fear is hitting the wrong layer. Analysts have not cut their estimates or their price targets through the drop, which makes this pure multiple compression: the market paying less for the same earnings.
I hold it at about 15% of the book, up roughly 30% since I bought in. My base case is a recovery toward the analyst average near 140 as the rate and macro fear fades. The real risk I watch is the one hanging over all of software, whether AI agents eventually deflate the per-seat model, and the next real test of that is the late-July earnings print. A winner being sold as a casualty is exactly why it is my largest position. I own it, so weigh that accordingly.
To help you mentally my dear followers.
I've been DOWN close to -50% three times in my life.
1. 2008 housing crisis
2. 2020 COVID
3. 2022 banking crisis
And each time, my portfolio went back to all-time highs within a year or less.
RED is temporary.
Do NOT have short-term thinking.
You are scared, but THIS is where millionaires are made.
Let's take this opportunity together.
Days like today are why you want to be invested in profitable and high conviction stocks for majority of your portfolio.
We are likely seeing a sell off because of people raising cash for the SpaceX IPO and the impending CPI/war news later this week.
The uncertainty is still running rampant in the macroeconomic landscape.
But on the bright side, I’m seeing quite a lot of opportunities out there which is a great thing if you are cash heavy.
Don’t panic, these swings in the market are very healthy and allow us to take advantage of the volatility.
Volatility breeds opportunity.
Stop outsourcing your AI conviction to people barely using AI.
Use it obsessively. Talk to people using it obsessively. Track real workflows across wildly different use cases.
That’s how you see what’s real before it becomes undeniable.