Introduction
Billion Group (“The Group”) was founded in 1998 by Dr Sisa Ngebulana, a pioneer in South African property sector.The development of a single double storey home at Kyalami Estate in Johannesburg set the beginning of the vision for greater goals for the group.
The group went on to develop 12 homes in Kyalami Estate
14 homes in Dainfern, 8 homes in Pecanwood Estate, two 20 cluster homes in Hyde Park, two 20 cluster homes in Bryanston and 21 cluster homes in Gonubie East London. This marked a focus in residential developments with exceptional quality build on time and on budget in a space of 7 years. The group in 2001 also invested in mining interest of gold mine dump reclamation in Sterkfontein, Klerksdorp with Fraser Alexander, and later acquired majority interest in SA Carbon that owned 5 anthracite coal mines in KZN and Mpumalanga. These investments were sold in 2003. Following the successful residential developments, in 2004 the group turned into the commercial property space acquiring central business district high rise buildings in Johannesburg and Pretoria, notably Liberty Life 26 storey building (2004) and Bank of Lisbon 14 storey (2005) buildings in Pretoria and Arbour Square 9 storey (2005) building in Braamfontein, upgrading and refurbishing them from a dilapidated state into great spaces that are attractive to tenants, which it managed to retain and attract into and manage for years.
Following on the success of the commercial developments the group entered the retail development space in 2005 with the successful conceptualisation, tenanting and construction of its first regional mall at Mdantsane, East London (Mdantsane City) that opened early 2008.The group moved on to formulate the vision, site acquisition, conceptualisation, design and development of its next super regional mall, Hemingways Mall, in East London in 2006.
The mall opened its doors in 2009, pursuant a lot of competition with major SA developers who competed for the same opportunity with different sites and had attracted different national tenants to each of their sites, yet only one regional mall was warranted for the city.The group won all national tenants in the end, and all terminated commitments with all other proposed mall schemes to the group site. This was a major victory amid vicious race for tenants on different sites.
When the opportunity to build came the major contractors cited all suspect reasons why they would not be interested, despite the contract being so large over a R1 billion rands.The group under the decisive leadership of Dr Ngebulana decided to form its own contractor and build this large mall, and, with resistance from suppliers to support the new construction company, imported shutters, cranes, cement and the like including setting up its own batching plant for the concrete on site.
This was a project done against all odds, delivered on time despite starting from 2.5 months behind the program.The group went on to identify more opportunities in the retail space and adjacent land for mixed use developments and developed Forest Hill City, a 75 000m2 GLA mall in Pretoria west that opened in 2014, Baywest City, a 90 000m2 regional mall in Port Elizabeth that opened in 2015, BT Ngebs City in Mthatha, a 60 000m2 regional mall in Mthatha that opened in 2015.
The group decided to consolidate some of its income generating assets in 2010 and package them for an IPO which was successfully launched and listed in 2011 (Rebosis Fund), it became the first black and largest IPO in the real estate sector of the JSE. The asset management was out-sourced to the group.The group listed the entity with R3.6 billion assets and the group asset management team grew this to R21 billion in a space of 5.5 years, delivering solid results year after year. The group sold the asset and property management businesses, together with Forest Hill City and Baywest City to the listed entity in October 2016.
Despite running the listed business, the group continued to develop many other residential opportunities simultaneously, and acquired other high rise commercial properties on the CBD of Pretoria.The group development activity slowed after 2015, with only Sanral Regional offices at Baywest (2017) in Port Elizabeth, Mayfair Hotel (2017) in Mthatha, Mayfair Casino (2018) in Mthatha, Ekaya Students Residence of 435 beds Pretoria (2021) and Phumelela Students Residence of 450 beds (2022) in Pretoria.
The group has a robust development pipeline of developments across 5 different cities in South Africa with zoning for 55 000 residential apartment units with land parcels adjacent all the large malls that the group developed.
These apartments are within affordable housing levels where the demand is globally and in South Africa.The other two focus areas of the group are rural retail centres and affordable students accommodation.
Our development philosophy forward looking is to develop properties that have a positive social impact to society, affording easier access to housing ownership, students housing and shopping.
We are an Award winning property development and investment company
We are 100% Black owned
Founded more than 26 years ago
New developments
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