In conversation with Pieter Feenstra
FEENSTRA GROUP
His first major independent property development was a 35,000m² office complex in Pretoria called Menlyn Corporate Park.
Menlyn Corporate Park in Pretoria
this intensive work, the business became “more operational and less interesting” for Pieter, the innate entrepreneur. With TFMC stabilised and successfully sold in 2012 to JSE-listed industrial group, Bidvest, he exited, ready for his next act. An entrepreneurial leap Leaving the security of a massive operation was a calculated risk. Pieter’s motivation was rooted in the creative and intellectual challenge of property development itself. “For me, the attractiveness of it is always the creative part of it. The challenges of being able to look over the horizon. You’ve got to foresee what’s going to happen in the next five years or so: what’s the demand going to be for what use, where?”
of its entire property portfolio to an external party. “We created a company called TFMC,” Pieter explains. The Telkom property portfolio was staggering: over 3,000 properties nationwide, including offices, towers, exchanges and residential properties – a portfolio “certainly bigger than the biggest listed funds have got in South Africa,” he tells Asset . Running this behemoth required a staff of 2,000 and was a masterclass in large- scale facilities management and property development. “It was also a big operation to improve the efficiency. We greatly reduced the operating costs, improved the service levels massively,” he states. “We saved them hundreds of millions of rand per annum.” After five years of
This long-term vision, coupled with the high-risk, high-reward nature of property development, fits his personality. “It’s a fast- paced business. Yes, it’s a high-risk business, and I think it sort of fits my personality. And many years later, it has paid off.” His first major independent property development was a 35,000m² office complex in Pretoria called Menlyn Corporate Park (also the headquarters for the Feenstra Group), fully tenanted despite being built shortly after the 2007/8 global financial crisis. In South Africa, the crisis triggered a recession in the second half of 2009, leading to job losses and economic slowdown. The housing market experienced a downturn, with house prices falling by around 3.2% between 2008 and 2009 in nominal terms.
The engineering foundation and seeing the blueprint Pieter’s story starts over three decades ago as a consulting structural engineer. This foundation, far from being a detour, provided the crucial lens through which he would later view the property world. “We are obviously involved with buildings and developers,” he recalls, “so that gives one a sort of feeling of the property industry.” That feeling soon turned into a monumental opportunity. In the early 2000s, he was approached to handle a massive transaction for Telkom. At the time, the telecommunications giant wanted to outsource the management
October 2025 | Issue 141 | Asset Magazine 133
132 Asset Magazine | Issue 141 | October 2025
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