Lifestyle

How much it costs to live in the safest town in South Africa

Malcolm Libera

 ·26 Aug 2026

Firlands, near Gordon’s Bay in Cape Town, is one of the safest suburbs in South Africa, according to the StreetSignal Safety Index.

Due to the nature of the suburb, coupled with Cape Town’s property prices, it will cost you an estimated R52,426 a month to live in an average property priced at R4.9 million. However, there are cheaper options. 

According to StreetSignal Safety Index, Firlands ranks in the 100th percentile, with a safety score of 89 out of 100, making it the safest suburb in the index.

Its safety ranking is based on an analysis of crime data, population, property values, and other factors designed to provide a more detailed picture of residential risk.

StreetSignal’s data showed that Firlands has a notably low level of reported crime. Its policing precinct, Gordon’s Bay, records 1,356 reported crimes per year, which is described as a “Very low Absolute crime volume”.

This compares with a city-wide median of 4,280 annual reported crimes per suburb. The difference becomes more apparent when the precinct figures are compared with the latest South African Police Service crime statistics. 

Between January and March 2026, the Western Cape recorded 68,345 community-reported serious crimes, accounting for 19.1% of the national total of 358,360.

Over the same three-month period, Cape Town Central recorded 2,824 serious crimes, while Delft recorded 1,576.

In comparison, the entire Gordon’s Bay precinct, which covers Firlands and several surrounding areas, records 1,356 crimes over a full year.

However, StreetSignal stressed that raw police statistics cannot simply be applied directly to individual suburbs because SAPS publishes crime figures at the precinct level rather than the suburb level.

To address this, the index used a five-step process. Crime recorded in each precinct is allocated to individual suburbs using “population-weighted dasymetric allocation”, with factors such as property valuations and vehicle ownership also considered.

The index also removed crimes detected through police action, including drug-related offences, driving under the influence and illegal firearm possession.

StreetSignal said that these categories reflect police patrol deployment and enforcement effort, not residential victimisation.

The cost of an average property

Crime is then weighted according to severity using the Crime Harm Index. This considers the minimum prison sentence associated with an offence.

Murder, for example, carries 5,475 harm-days, compared with just two for shoplifting. Consequently, “one murder contributes the same harm to the index as 2,738 shoplifting incidents”.

The system also uses empirical Bayes smoothing to reduce distortions in small suburbs, where a single incident can have an outsized impact on per-capita crime figures.

Finally, the index combined crime harm per person with total crime harm using a geometric mean. This means a suburb must perform well on both measures to receive a high overall safety score.

Living in one of Cape Town’s safest areas, however, comes at a substantial cost.

The median property value in Firlands is around R4.9 million. Property values have recorded a 7.0% annual compound growth rate since 2022, while the longer-term growth rate between 2018 and 2025 was 12.1% per year.

The median figure is influenced by the large number of high-value farms and lifestyle properties in the area.

Apartments and sectional-title units can cost between about R800,000 and R1.4 million, while houses and smallholdings generally range from R4.9 million to R6 million.

Larger luxury estates and farms can cost between R6.5 million and more than R15 million.

For someone buying a R4.9 million property with no deposit, a 20-year home loan at an interest rate of 10.5% would cost approximately R48,921 a month.

Based on Cape Town’s 2026/27 tariffs, effective from 1 July 2026, a R4.9 million residential property would have an estimated municipal bill of about R5,801.58 per month, assuming 600 kWh of electricity and 15 kilolitres each of water and sanitation usage.

This includes approximately R2,292.65 in property rates, R2,566.80 for electricity, including fixed charges and usage, R359.38 for water, R327.75 for sanitation and R255 for refuse removal.

Monthly Municipal Cost Breakdown

Images of Gordon’s Bay and Firlands