THE South African listed property sector is arguably the fastest-growing sector on the JSE, with about six new property funds having listed on the main board of the exchange in the past two years.

These included Emira Property Fund, Ambit Properties, Vukile Property Fund and MICC Property Income Fund. More recently retail fund Siyathenga and rural retail fund Diversified Property Fund were listed on the JSE.

Now Cape-based property company CBS Property Group, which has also recently acquired a portfolio of properties in Gauteng, plans to list on the JSE next month.

At the moment trade in the company’s linked shares is facilitated by Barnard Jacobs Mellet Private Client Services through their over the counter market.

CBS Property Group CEO Gary Fisher says the company was established in 1993 and has a portfolio that includes an equal mix of offices and retail properties.

Initially all the properties in the portfolio were located in Western Cape but in the past two weeks CBS Property Group has announced acquisitions in Gauteng.

The first was the acquisition of the Brait Place building in Illovo, Johannesburg for R70m.

Last week the company announced it had acquired a portfolio of eight properties from Yieldgro Group for R186,1m. This acquisition of the predominantly Gauteng-based office buildings increases the size of its portfolio to about R800m. This portfolio of properties includes 46% of The Wedge Shopping Centre in Morningside.

Two well-known Johannesburg property players, Martin Ettin and Derek Greenberg, have also joined Fisher and CBS financial director Sean Mackay as executive directors of CBS and have been involved in getting the fund listed on the JSE.

Ettin and Greenberg were joint founders of listed property company Primegro Properties, and were later instrumental in the merger between Primegro and fellow listed property loan stock company Growthpoint Properties, where they also served as executive directors. Growthpoint is the biggest property fund on the JSE.

Fisher says that when CBS lists it will have close to R1bn worth of properties and will continue to grow their portfolio.

He says ultimately about 45% of the property portfolio will be based in Western Cape; about 35% in Gauteng and the remainder in KwaZulu-Natal.

The group is about to begin a road show to introduce the fund to property analysts and investors.

CBS will not be the end of new listings on the JSE’s main board. Grapnel Property Group, the fund managers of blue-chip listed property unit trust Sycom, plans a new hotel listing on the real estate index.

The new Hospitality Property Fund will be the first specialised hotel listing on the real estate index.