What an African billionaire wants from their Joburg super home

In April last year I did a sponsored interview with Rory O’Hagan, former private banker who switched to selling super homes for estate agency Chas Everitt. He showed me around his prized project, a R100m plus palace on Johannesburg’s Houghton Ridge called Gatsby. I made a mental note to revisit the project, and hopefully discover what kind of a person would make such a massive personal investment in South Africa’s commercial capital at such uncertain time. This week I duly caught up with Gatsby’s creator Steve Pellerade whose company of the same name is the go-to place when South Africa’s super rich are looking for new homes. He didn’t drop any names – in this business discretion is absolute – but did share enough to give us a useful insight into the lifestyle of an African billionaire, that point one percent of the one percent… We kicking off by exploring the back story to the mansion he named after the central character in F Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel…