Something is happening in Cape Town. The tourists feel it, the developers feel it, and this morning, Growthpoint Properties put hard numbers behind what everyone in the Mother City already knows.

Stand at the V&A Waterfront on any given morning and the city announces itself. The harbour glitters. The cranes on the horizon turn slowly. Tourists with cameras and locals with coffee cups share the same stretch of waterfront, and somewhere behind it all, money is moving.

This morning, Growthpoint Properties, South Africa's largest listed property company released its interim results for the six months to December 2025. Tucked in these numbers is a vivid portrait of a city in full stride.

The headline from Cape Town is the V&A Waterfront, where Growthpoint holds a 50% stake in one of Africa's most visited destinations. Like-for-like net property income at the V&A grew 8.7% in the period.

The number carries more weight when you learn it was achieved while the iconic Table Bay Hotel sat closed for a major rebuild. One of the precinct's best-known addresses, a hotel that has hosted heads of state, honeymooners and business delegations for decades, was dark during this period.

The V&A delivered growth anyway as hotels that remained open traded better. Retail footfall rose on the back of stronger tourism. The precinct's own desalination plant, a quiet piece of infrastructure that gives the V&A independence from the city's water pressures, generated meaningful cost savings that flowed directly into the numbers.

The Table Bay is being replaced by the InterContinental, which is expected to be fully complete by April 2026. It is a premium asset, and it will take until 2028 to reach its full earning potential as the hotel settles into a stabilised yield. When a precinct can grow income at 8.7% with its marquee hotel under wraps, the arrival of a brand-new flagship property is an accelerant.

Growthpoint expects the V&A to deliver double-digit earnings growth for the full 2026 financial year, supported by residential sales at 5 Dock Road during the second half. The Lux Mall, also undergoing redevelopment within the precinct, will add further lettable space when complete. The Waterfront is not standing still. It is being rebuilt upward, outward, and in the direction of an even more premium offering.

Pull back from the harbour and the same energy runs through the rest of Cape Town. Growthpoint has made a deliberate choice to concentrate its development spending in the Western Cape, citing "more attractive property market fundamentals" than other regions and the results bear out that judgment. During the six months to December, the company invested R545 million in development and capital projects nationally, with Cape Town absorbing a significant share.

The redevelopment of 36 Hans Strijdom in the city bowl received R110 million, a sign of confidence in the CBD's trajectory as a live-work destination for a new generation of professionals. Longbeach Mall in Noordhoek received R42 million in upgrades, and La Lucia Mall in Durban, part of the company's strategy to reposition all long-term retail holdings, received R34.5 million.

The company has also been investing quietly in something that does not make headlines but matters enormously to tenants and investors alike which is energy independence. Across its South African portfolio, Growthpoint now has 61.7 megawatts of installed solar capacity, spread across 84 solar plants representing more than R1 billion in cumulative investment.

Renewable energy now accounts for 14.5% of the group's total energy consumption, up from 7.9% just six months ago. In October 2025, the Boston Hydro plant achieved Grid Code Compliance, and wheeling of energy through a power purchase agreement with Etana Energy began, generating 6.6 gigawatt-hours of clean power in the period alone.

For tenants, this means buildings that stay lit and air-conditioned regardless of what Eskom is doing on a given afternoon. For investors, it means lower operating costs and a portfolio better insulated against South Africa's infrastructure risks. It is the kind of unglamorous, brick-by-brick work that makes a property portfolio genuinely durable.

Zoom out from Cape Town and the Growthpoint results become a temperature check on the entire South African property market, province by province, sector by sector.

The logistics and industrial sector is the standout performer nationally. Vacancies in that part of the portfolio sit at just 3.3%, essentially full. Average escalations are running at 7.5%. The warehouses, distribution centres and last-mile logistics facilities that keep the country's shelves stocked are in short supply and high demand, and the landlords who own them are benefiting accordingly. Growthpoint is actively expanding this segment, building new logistics warehouses in growth nodes and recycling capital out of older, less strategic assets.

Retail has turned a corner. For the first time in years, the portfolio delivered positive renewal growth of 1.5% which is a modest number, but the direction matters. Vacancies are at their lowest since 2019. Footfall is recovering. Consumers, buoyed by easing inflation and a cumulative 150 basis points of repo rate cuts since 2024, are gradually spending more. The malls that serve large, defensive catchment areas and the kind of centres people drive to regardless of economic conditions, are performing particularly well.

The office sector tells a more complicated story, and it is largely a Gauteng story. Johannesburg's decentralised office market carries a vacancy rate of 14.2%, with Tshwane at 11.3%, both deep in double-digit territory, reflecting years of oversupply that the market has yet to absorb.

The numbers in Growthpoint's own office portfolio shows renewal growth rates in that segment were dragged negative by a handful of large Gauteng leases renegotiated at lower rates. Five leases covering 57,340 square metres renewed in the period at terms that reflect the reality of a market where tenants hold the cards.

Cape Town's office vacancy, by contrast, sits at 7.5%, a number that belongs in a different conversation entirely. The coastal metros including Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, are all in single digits. In these cities, businesses looking for good office space find themselves competing for it. That dynamic produces healthier rental growth, longer lease commitments, and stronger investor returns.

Often overshadowed by the Western Cape's louder narrative, KZN quietly delivered positive office renewal growth in the period, outperforming expectations and posing that Durban's property market has more life in it than the national conversation suggests. Port infrastructure, industrial nodes, and coastal lifestyle demand are driving genuine momentum in the province.

South Africa's property market is a collection of micro-economies, each province, each sector, each node following its own rhythm. What Growthpoint's results reveal, is that the country's property cycle has entered a growth phase although the cycle is with an uneven geography.

The cumulative 150 basis points of repo rate cuts since 2024 are working their way through the system. Inflation is sitting at 3.5%, load-shedding has receded, business confidence is edging upward and the macro conditions that make property investment attractive are assembling themselves, slowly and imperfectly, for the first time in years.

In Cape Town, those conditions are arriving on top of a structural boom that was already underway. Since January 2010, average house prices in the Western Cape have risen by 179.6%, compared with 79.7% in Gauteng and 76.7% in KwaZulu-Natal. That gap has been built over fifteen years by semigration, governance, lifestyle demand and constrained supply, forces that do not reverse quickly.

In Gauteng, the conditions are arriving into a market that still needs time to clear its overhang of empty offices and reset its rental base. The recovery there will come but it will be measured, not spectacular.

The cranes at the V&A are turning. The InterContinental is nearly ready. The solar panels are generating power. The logistics warehouses are full. And somewhere in the numbers Growthpoint released this morning is the clearest picture available of where South Africa's property story is heading and which cities are writing the most exciting chapters.