647 properties

I looked at 647 properties before we found Stilkrans. It's what I got for setting an almost impossible task: find a vacant plot in the Wilderness area, facing the ocean or mountain, within a relatively small budget.

At first, I thought the right one would simply pop up by passively keeping an eye on property websites. But after many months of nothing, I started to wonder if I shouldn't change my approach.

If the properties wouldn't come to me, perhaps I should go to them.

I stumbled upon a local government tool that shows all erfs on a map. If I zoomed in close enough, I could find all plots without a building. I spent weeks and countless hours zooming in and out, over and over again, until I looked at every single plot in the greater Wilderness area.

I ended up shortlisting 91, and with the help of an incredible agent, Laurel, we phoned as many as we could find contact details for. After dozens of phone calls, I realised this was a dead end as well. We couldn't find a single owner willing to sell.

Months before my mild obsession started, a property with breathtaking views of the mountains crossed our radar. It was out of budget, so we parked the option at the time. It was still lingering in the back of our minds, so with nothing to show for our effort, we decided to revisit the property.

The plot was covered in critically endangered fynbos, which meant we could disturb no more than 300 square metres. It seemed manageable, but something about it still made me nervous.

After weeks of research, conversations and negotiating, the owner accepted our offer. For a brief moment, we thought the search was over.

The morning the offer was accepted, I phoned the municipality to double-check one last thing. What started as a quick call turned into a deal breaker. The servitude road would use up 80% of the area we were allowed to disturb, leaving around 60 square metres for the house. I couldn't see an easy way through it, so we backed out.

I was gutted, but a few weeks later, another property popped up, this time with ocean views and cliffs only seen in travel videos.

It dazzled us so much that we decided to make a special 5-hour trip from Cape Town to Wilderness to view it. With the intention of buying it, we asked the agent to start preparing the contract for us. The evening before we would drive through, the agent called me with some bad news. The owner decided to raise the price by a million rand (~$50,000), pushing it completely out of our budget.

It felt like I was punched in the stomach and I was close to giving up on our vision. We’d spent two years searching for a plot and we had nothing to show for it.

I stopped looking for many months.

Then, one day, a property popped up on my phone again. It looked out over the ocean, had mountains as its backdrop and the most majestic rockface. A rare combination.

It had no access road yet, but climbing up made me appreciate its red-stained cracks, the sound of the ocean and birds chirping in the bushes. It was rugged and wild, but after hundreds of plots, this one clearly had a personality of its own.

It's been 10 months since we bought it, and I've climbed up it more times than I can remember. Every time I grab the same fynbos branch to pull myself up the last stretch, I know we found the right place.