LAND prices in the William Nicol Drive node in Bryanston and Fourways are escalating as the frenzied search for office and retail sites continues.

According to Pace Property Group founder and spokesman Heini Loehrer, the demand for commercial office sites, particularly in the retail arena, has been overwhelming this year with a virtual explosion of available land prices witnessed.

Pace MD David Green says he agrees, and that delays in the council's ability to speed up the rezoning process are largely responsible for the shortage of zoned commercial, industrial and residential land in the greater Johannesburg area.

Green says that at the moment rezoning takes between one and two years to finalise. To make matters worse, residential developers are also competing with commercial developers for the same land.

Loehrer says interest in commercially zoned vacant land has escalated during the past year. "In fact, it is not uncommon for sellers to achieve their asking price, often receiving more than two offers, only to reject them in favour of higher offers received in the face of competitive bidding," he says.

"Because of this and other market movements, we foresee a shortage of well-located, zoned sites."

"In just three years, prices have effectively doubled and developers will pay inflated prices in order to secure prime sites," Loehrer says.

Green says that, apart from delays in rezoning applications because of backlogs , land previously zoned for commercial use has been rezoned for residential development. "A lot of this land is in Rivonia, Bryanston, Fourways and Sunninghill. Competition from residential developers has reduced the stock levels of commercial (sites)."

Green says that at the moment residential developments are often more financially viable than commercial developments.

The process of rezoning land for residential use also takes less time : "It (rezoning for residential use) can be completed in eight months."

According to Pace, Fourways is considered the fastest-growing property node in the country. Green says Fourways has the largest availability of land, while Bryanston is already almost fully developed.

But property economist Francois Viruly says there are fairly high office vacancy rates in other commercial nodes, and there is a danger of "cannibalising" one node to create another. There are fairly high office vacancy rates in decentralised nodes like Sandton and Midrand.

Viruly says office-users increasingly want to be in areas where there are also retail facilities and where an appropriate mix of home, work and play exists. He says suburbs such as Bryanston and Fourways offer this attractive retail-office mix.

"I can see that nodes that have higher vacancy rates in Johannesburg are those which do not offer any attractive retailing in close proximity," Viruly says.

He says retail centres are starting to anchor office nodes. "I truly believe we need to pay greater attention to reinventing existing nodes rather than walking away from such nodes and building new ones."

Viruly believes the next growth wave will be in the Midrand area.

"It will start with residential developments followed by retailing. The next wave of development will be along the N1 towards Pretoria."

Pat Flanagan, principal of developers Flanagan & Gerard, says demand for residential units in areas like Fourways has increased and this has narrowed the gap between the value of land for retail or office use and residential use.

Flanagan says Fourways is a good node, but he also sounds a caution. The land to the west of Fourways Mall on Cedar Road has been sold, and will allow 30000m² for commercial usage. A lthough there is demand for commercial space, he says, there is a possibility of an oversupply if that commercial development goes ahead.

He says there are also quite a lot of developments being looked at along William Nicol Drive.

Flanagan says the Fourways area already has a huge supply of retail space and can sustain only so much commercial/retail space .

He says there is huge pressure on the road system in Fourways, particularly on William Nicol Drive.

He says if you "superimpose" the roads system issue over the fact that a lot of developments are being looked at along William Nicol, there is a need for a degree of restraint.

Meanwhile, the City of Johannesburg says that generally all rezoning applications, both residential and commercial, that are not objected to by the public and are not opposed by the council due to non-compliance with policy requirements take an average of eight months for completion irrespective of the type of zoning.

City of Johannesburg spokesman Nthatisi Modingoane says those applications that are within defined nodes of development take even quicker.

Modingoane says if there is a specific example of an application that took between 12 to 24 months to finalise while there were no objections and no opposition from the council, they would investigate it if it was presented to them.