The Bulawayo case

The better argument is about basis. Development returns are determined more by the price of entry than by the price of exit, because entry is the one variable a developer fully controls. Bulawayo currently offers a land basis, relative to achievable end value, that materially changes what a scheme can survive. That is the case, and it is a stronger one than affordability.

Below we set it out, and then set out the reasons it might not work.

The basis argument

Consider a residential development scheme. Land at 4 per cent of gross development value, against a conventional expectation of 10 to 15 per cent, does not merely improve the profit line. It changes the shape of the risk.

At a 4 per cent land basis, a scheme can absorb a substantial fall in achieved sale prices, or a substantial construction overrun, and remain viable. At a 15 per cent basis, the same movements eliminate the margin. The developer with the low basis can afford to be patient, to phase, to reprice a later tranche, or to hold and let. The developer with the high basis has to sell into whatever market exists on the day the building completes.

Our own experience is illustrative rather than exhaustive: a 1.2-hectare freehold site with planning consent in one of Bulawayo’s most established low-density precincts, three kilometres from the city centre, at a land cost representing approximately 4 per cent of gross development value. That basis is not available in Harare’s northern suburbs at any comparable specification.

Average property prices in Bulawayo run 15 to 20 per cent below Harare across the board, with suburbs such as Hillside averaging in the region of US$85,000 against a Harare average approaching US$240,000 and Borrowdale averages near US$860,000. The differential in prime development land is wider than the differential in completed housing, which is precisely the arbitrage.

Four supports under the demand side

A low basis is only useful if there is demand at the other end. Four developments now support it.

One: a genuinely new industrial policy. Government has designated and gazetted five Special Economic Zones within Bulawayo, at Umvumila, Belmont, Kelvin, Donnington and Westondale, carrying targeted tax relief, customs duty exemption and streamlined regulation. Separately, Cabinet has approved a framework for Integrated Provincial Special Economic Zones, under which the Bulawayo Metropolitan zone targets agro-processing, tourism, renewable energy and diamond processing. A study to inform the resuscitation of the city’s industrial base and the operationalisation of the zones is being commissioned, alongside plans for a Bulawayo Industrial Park.

Most consequentially, there are plans to designate Bulawayo as a Special Economic Zone for steel, complementing production at Manhize and linking upstream raw material processing to downstream fabrication and manufacturing in the city. Bulawayo’s historic industrial base was built on exactly this kind of value chain. This is the most credible industrial proposition the city has been offered in thirty years.

We should be careful here. Designation is not investment, and Zimbabwe has a long record of announcements that did not convert. But the SEZs are gazetted rather than proposed, and gazetting is a meaningfully higher bar.

Two: the office decentralisation is a residential opportunity. Thirty per cent of businesses formerly in Bulawayo’s CBD relocated to suburban areas, principally Suburbs and Khumalo, between 2020 and 2025. CBD office vacancy stands at 40 per cent. Suburban rents run at US$10.00 per square metre against US$6.00 in town.

The result is that a well-located low-density house in Bulawayo has two markets rather than one: residential occupation, and conversion to professional office use. Alternative use supports value, and it shortens the tail on any exit.

Three: diaspora capital, without the Harare premium. Zimbabwe’s residential market is cash-driven, underwritten substantially by diaspora remittances of US$1.9 billion in the first nine months of 2024. Bulawayo has a disproportionately large diaspora relative to its resident population, concentrated in the United Kingdom and South Africa. For a buyer converting sterling or rand, the Bulawayo price point converts a deposit into an asset rather than a fraction of one.

Four: the region, not just the city. Bulawayo sits at the head of southern Zimbabwe’s mining and industrial corridor and on the road and rail routes to Beitbridge and South Africa. The National Railways of Zimbabwe is headquartered here. Matabeleland South is where Zimbabwe’s mining off-take demand is concentrated, and the mining sector represents the most creditworthy set of corporate counterparties in the country, requiring approximately 2,000 megawatts of power. For a firm operating across both property and energy, that proximity is not incidental.

The renewable energy dimension

Bulawayo’s solar resource is among the country’s better ones, national irradiation averages 20 megajoules per square metre across roughly 3,000 sunshine hours annually, and the southern and south-western provinces sit at the favourable end of that distribution.

Combined with the industrial and mining off-take profile of Matabeleland, and with net metering now permitted up to 5 megawatts per business, the region supports distributed commercial generation at a scale that would not be viable elsewhere. Precedent exists locally: the 1 megawatt plant at Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo was funded through the prescribed asset framework.

Where the case fails

Four honest objections, none of which we can dismiss.

Water. This is the serious one. Bulawayo’s water security has been constrained for decades, dependent on a small number of supply dams in a drought-prone catchment, with a reticulation network that loses a great deal of what enters it. The Gwayi–Shangani pipeline has been under construction, in various forms, for a very long time. Any development thesis for Bulawayo has to assume that schemes provide their own water security, boreholes, storage, harvesting, and cost it accordingly. We do. Anyone who does not is underwriting a risk they have not priced.

Market depth. Bulawayo’s absolute market is smaller than Harare’s. Fewer transactions means thinner comparable evidence, wider bid-offer spreads, and a slower exit if you need one. A scheme that would sell in three months in Borrowdale may take six here. That is a genuine cost, and it is why phasing matters more, not less.

Institutional under-coverage. Very little formal research covers Bulawayo specifically. Most published Zimbabwean property data is Harare data with a Bulawayo footnote. Investors who require third-party validation of every assumption will struggle, and should be honest with themselves about whether they are equipped for a market where they must form their own view.

Execution risk on the policy. The SEZ framework is the strongest support under the demand case, and it is also the least proven element of it. Designation, gazetting and a commissioned study are three steps on a long path. If the steel value chain does not materialise, the industrial demand thesis weakens considerably, though the residential and decentralisation arguments stand independently of it.

The conclusion

Bulawayo is not a market for capital that requires liquidity, depth or third-party validation. It is a market for patient capital that can underwrite its own view, provide its own infrastructure, and hold through a slower cycle.

For that capital, the basis on offer is the most attractive in Zimbabwe, and basis, not sentiment, is what determines whether a development survives being wrong.

*This article is provided for general information and does not constitute investment advice or a valuation opinion. Intela Land & Property is headquartered in Bulawayo and holds development interests in the city; readers should weigh this article accordingly.*

Sources: Knight Frank, *The Zimbabwe Market Update, H2 2024*; Property.co.zw, *Zimbabwe Property Market Outlook 2026*, January 2026; The Herald and Bulawayo24 reporting on Bulawayo Special Economic Zone designation and the provincial SEZ framework, 2026; Office of the Minister of State for Bulawayo Provincial Affairs; Intela, *IPP Market Intelligence Report*, March 2026.

The argument usually made for Bulawayo is that property there is cheap. It is an accurate observation and a weak investment case. Cheap assets are cheap for reasons, and a discount is not a thesis.

The better argument is about basis. Development returns are determined more by the price of entry than by the price of exit, because entry is the one variable a developer fully controls. Bulawayo currently offers a land basis, relative to achievable end value, that materially changes what a scheme can survive. That is the case, and it is a stronger one than affordability.

Below we set it out, and then set out the reasons it might not work.

The basis argument

Consider a residential development scheme. Land at 4 per cent of gross development value, against a conventional expectation of 10 to 15 per cent, does not merely improve the profit line. It changes the shape of the risk.

At a 4 per cent land basis, a scheme can absorb a substantial fall in achieved sale prices, or a substantial construction overrun, and remain viable. At a 15 per cent basis, the same movements eliminate the margin. The developer with the low basis can afford to be patient, to phase, to reprice a later tranche, or to hold and let. The developer with the high basis has to sell into whatever market exists on the day the building completes.

Our own experience is illustrative rather than exhaustive: a 1.2-hectare freehold site with planning consent in one of Bulawayo’s most established low-density precincts, three kilometres from the city centre, at a land cost representing approximately 4 per cent of gross development value. That basis is not available in Harare’s northern suburbs at any comparable specification.

Average property prices in Bulawayo run 15 to 20 per cent below Harare across the board, with suburbs such as Hillside averaging in the region of US$85,000 against a Harare average approaching US$240,000 and Borrowdale averages near US$860,000. The differential in prime development land is wider than the differential in completed housing, which is precisely the arbitrage.

Four supports under the demand side

A low basis is only useful if there is demand at the other end. Four developments now support it.

One: a genuinely new industrial policy. Government has designated and gazetted five Special Economic Zones within Bulawayo, at Umvumila, Belmont, Kelvin, Donnington and Westondale, carrying targeted tax relief, customs duty exemption and streamlined regulation. Separately, Cabinet has approved a framework for Integrated Provincial Special Economic Zones, under which the Bulawayo Metropolitan zone targets agro-processing, tourism, renewable energy and diamond processing. A study to inform the resuscitation of the city’s industrial base and the operationalisation of the zones is being commissioned, alongside plans for a Bulawayo Industrial Park.

Most consequentially, there are plans to designate Bulawayo as a Special Economic Zone for steel, complementing production at Manhize and linking upstream raw material processing to downstream fabrication and manufacturing in the city. Bulawayo’s historic industrial base was built on exactly this kind of value chain. This is the most credible industrial proposition the city has been offered in thirty years.

We should be careful here. Designation is not investment, and Zimbabwe has a long record of announcements that did not convert. But the SEZs are gazetted rather than proposed, and gazetting is a meaningfully higher bar.

Two: the office decentralisation is a residential opportunity. Thirty per cent of businesses formerly in Bulawayo’s CBD relocated to suburban areas, principally Suburbs and Khumalo, between 2020 and 2025. CBD office vacancy stands at 40 per cent. Suburban rents run at US$10.00 per square metre against US$6.00 in town.

The result is that a well-located low-density house in Bulawayo has two markets rather than one: residential occupation, and conversion to professional office use. Alternative use supports value, and it shortens the tail on any exit.

Three: diaspora capital, without the Harare premium. Zimbabwe’s residential market is cash-driven, underwritten substantially by diaspora remittances of US$1.9 billion in the first nine months of 2024. Bulawayo has a disproportionately large diaspora relative to its resident population, concentrated in the United Kingdom and South Africa. For a buyer converting sterling or rand, the Bulawayo price point converts a deposit into an asset rather than a fraction of one.

Four: the region, not just the city. Bulawayo sits at the head of southern Zimbabwe’s mining and industrial corridor and on the road and rail routes to Beitbridge and South Africa. The National Railways of Zimbabwe is headquartered here. Matabeleland South is where Zimbabwe’s mining off-take demand is concentrated, and the mining sector represents the most creditworthy set of corporate counterparties in the country, requiring approximately 2,000 megawatts of power. For a firm operating across both property and energy, that proximity is not incidental.

The renewable energy dimension

Bulawayo’s solar resource is among the country’s better ones, national irradiation averages 20 megajoules per square metre across roughly 3,000 sunshine hours annually, and the southern and south-western provinces sit at the favourable end of that distribution.

Combined with the industrial and mining off-take profile of Matabeleland, and with net metering now permitted up to 5 megawatts per business, the region supports distributed commercial generation at a scale that would not be viable elsewhere. Precedent exists locally: the 1 megawatt plant at Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo was funded through the prescribed asset framework.

Where the case fails

Four honest objections, none of which we can dismiss.

Water. This is the serious one. Bulawayo’s water security has been constrained for decades, dependent on a small number of supply dams in a drought-prone catchment, with a reticulation network that loses a great deal of what enters it. The Gwayi–Shangani pipeline has been under construction, in various forms, for a very long time. Any development thesis for Bulawayo has to assume that schemes provide their own water security, boreholes, storage, harvesting, and cost it accordingly. We do. Anyone who does not is underwriting a risk they have not priced.

Market depth. Bulawayo’s absolute market is smaller than Harare’s. Fewer transactions means thinner comparable evidence, wider bid-offer spreads, and a slower exit if you need one. A scheme that would sell in three months in Borrowdale may take six here. That is a genuine cost, and it is why phasing matters more, not less.

Institutional under-coverage. Very little formal research covers Bulawayo specifically. Most published Zimbabwean property data is Harare data with a Bulawayo footnote. Investors who require third-party validation of every assumption will struggle, and should be honest with themselves about whether they are equipped for a market where they must form their own view.

Execution risk on the policy. The SEZ framework is the strongest support under the demand case, and it is also the least proven element of it. Designation, gazetting and a commissioned study are three steps on a long path. If the steel value chain does not materialise, the industrial demand thesis weakens considerably, though the residential and decentralisation arguments stand independently of it.

The conclusion

Bulawayo is not a market for capital that requires liquidity, depth or third-party validation. It is a market for patient capital that can underwrite its own view, provide its own infrastructure, and hold through a slower cycle.

For that capital, the basis on offer is the most attractive in Zimbabwe, and basis, not sentiment, is what determines whether a development survives being wrong.

*This article is provided for general information and does not constitute investment advice or a valuation opinion. Intela Land & Property is headquartered in Bulawayo and holds development interests in the city; readers should weigh this article accordingly.*

Sources: Knight Frank, *The Zimbabwe Market Update, H2 2024*; Property.co.zw, *Zimbabwe Property Market Outlook 2026*, January 2026; The Herald and Bulawayo24 reporting on Bulawayo Special Economic Zone designation and the provincial SEZ framework, 2026; Office of the Minister of State for Bulawayo Provincial Affairs; Intela, *IPP Market Intelligence Report*, March 2026.