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What Would It Take For Families To Stay In The City?

What Would It Take For Families To Stay In The City?

From first apartments to forever homes - how developers can bridge the gap

October 12, 2025

Cape Town is building more apartments than ever.
But somehow, fewer people are building lives in them.

Every year, thousands of young professionals flood into the Mother City — drawn by its mix of opportunity, mountain views, and café-culture energy. Developers respond in kind, launching wave after wave of “urban lifestyle” apartments across Woodstock, Observatory, Salt River, and the City Bowl.

Yet as these same young buyers or renters hit their late 20s and 30s — start thinking about kids, or simply want an extra room — they leave. Durbanville. Parklands. Somerset West. The Southern Suburbs. Anywhere but the urban core.

It’s the same story in every cycle:
Cape Town attracts the ambitious — then pushes them out once they start families.

The Urban Family Drain

Census data already hints at it: Cape Town’s central districts have seen population growth, but a decline in child-aged residents. Meanwhile, outer suburbs like Kuils River, Sunningdale, and Haasendal have quietly become the default for middle-income families priced out or sized out of the city.

Developers aren’t blind to this — but the system rewards the wrong product.
Small units lease faster, deliver higher rent per square metre, and fit neatly into the conservative models of banks and investment committees.

And so the cycle repeats:
We keep building for the move-ins, not the stay-ons.

Why We Build These Products

It’s not greed — it’s structure.

South African residential projects are shaped by two powerful forces: short-term market pressure and institutional conservatism.

Market pressure: Rising construction costs, high interest rates, and tight margins push developers toward smaller units that “pencil” — typically studios and 1-beds.
Institutional conservatism: Funders and professional teams prefer proven layouts. A “safe” 40 m² one-bedroom that’s been built a thousand times is easier to underwrite than an untested 2-bed+study concept.

Even in areas where land allows flexibility, for example Bellville TOD nodes, developers often shy away from rebalancing toward larger apartments.

The irony?
Those smaller units churn faster. The high per-square-metre rent comes at the cost of constant turnover — repainting, re-tenanting, re-marketing — eroding the very yield they were meant to protect.

Bedrooms Matter — Literally

A U.S. survey by the Institute for Family Studies found something surprisingly simple: people — even singles — prefer more rooms.
When shown identical floor plans, respondents consistently chose apartments with an extra room or den, even at the same total square footage.

Translated into the Cape Town context, the message lands the same:
Bedrooms matter.

Not just for families.
For remote workers who need a home office.
For couples who want a nursery — or a space that can be one, someday.
For renters who simply want flexibility.

Walk through almost any new Cape Town apartment development and count how many 1-bed+study or compact 2-bed layouts exist. You’ll likely find them in single digits, while studios and 1-beds dominate the mix.

Yet these extra-room units often:

Stay occupied longer.
Attract a more stable demographic.
Deliver better long-term rent growth.

Even a small “+den” configuration — 50 m² instead of 45 m² — can transform the target audience from a transient tenant into a long-term resident.

A Developer’s Opportunity Hidden in Plain Sight

Family-oriented apartments are often seen as a niche — but they may be the most defensible asset class in a cooling market.

Cape Town’s rental inflation has been strongest in the Western Seaboard and Northern Suburbs, precisely where units tend to have two bedrooms or more. In contrast, City Bowl studios may hit price resistance — there’s only so much rent a 35 m² unit can command.

As vacancy rates normalize post-COVID and insurance and municipal costs keep climbing, developers can no longer rely on perpetual rent growth to paper over turnover losses.

The smarter play?
Build homes that people stay in.

That means:

Rebalancing unit mixes to include more 2-beds and “+den” layouts.
Designing deeper floorplates with flexible partitions or sliding walls.
Re-thinking amenities — crèche spaces, stroller storage, kids’ courtyards — within existing density allowances.
Marketing stability, not just lifestyle: “Grow here, not just live here.”

Proof Emerging in Cape Town

Some local developers are already reading the signals.

Rabie Property Group has evolved its Burgundy Estate and Century City products to increase the share of two-bedroom units, responding to families wanting security, proximity, and space within a managed estate.
Blok’s smaller coastal blocks, though branded as boutique urban living, include several two-bedroom plus layouts — a rarity that sells fast among long-term owner-occupiers.
Even in the Southern Suburbs, new infill schemes around Rondebosch and Claremont are quietly introducing 2-bed “compact family” units, often with 65–75 m² footprints, signalling a slow rethink of the city apartment typology.

This isn’t just a design choice — it’s a financial strategy. Lower turnover, lower vacancy, longer leases.

What Cape Town Could Learn

If Cape Town wants to hold onto its working-age families, it needs to stop designing apartments as stepping stones — and start treating them as homes.

Our zoning already allows it in many General Residential zones. The real constraint is belief: that families don’t want to live in apartments. But they will — if those apartments are built for them.

A compact 2-bed with a courtyard beats a long commute from the Northern suburbs any day.

The challenge is to make that unit viable, not just possible — through smart design, efficient construction, and financial partners willing to back medium-term stability over short-term yield.

The Bigger Question

Cape Town can’t keep exporting its families to the fringes and expect to stay inclusive, sustainable, or economically balanced.

If the city’s new urban plan is serious about density, liveability, and sustainability — it must mean more than building smaller.
It must mean building smarter.

Because if bedrooms are where families begin, then the future of Cape Town’s urban core depends on whether we’re still building them.

ResiLogic Takeaway:
The data is clear — in every market, families and stability follow space.
In the next decade, the most valuable urban real estate won’t just be walkable or “lifestyle-branded.”
It’ll be livable — the kind of place people never have to leave.

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