Daan Steenkamp Snippets Pretoria

News

Hard law

Conveyancing/property law

Property

Trends

  • The FNB House Price Index remained steady in July at 5.2% YOY in July and is projected to slow to 4% by the end of this year. This means that house price growth, on average, countrywide, is rising slightly faster than inflation.
  • The above statistics reflect a shift in buyer sentiment towards sectional title properties where the equity values marginally outpace those of freestanding homes. The Myproperty blurb says that the bank foresees a sustained upward trend in sectional title property values “underpinned by easing inflation, lower borrowing costs and modest real wage gains”.
  • The FNB statistics show that national rental inflation sits at 4.1% YOY.

News

  • The by-now-usual complaint, by the Cape Town residents that they are being priced out of the market has been reiterated.
  • Whilst on this topic: a BusinessTech report said that comparable office space in Cape Town costs twice as much as in Johannesburg. This has led to a shift by developers to develop in that city resulting in Cape Town booming. The reason is attributable to good governance!
  • Kanton, the developer of the new university campus in Pretoria East, has raised about half of the estimated R3.2bn that this development will cost. Interestingly this development is said to be the largest project undertaken by the Afrikaans community without government support since the Voortrekker Monument was built in 1949.
  • I confess to being somewhat sceptical; News24 posted an article saying that high-end properties are now preferably sold by way of auction. The reason why this trend has emerged is that there is a shortage of high-end quality stock.
  • The National Housing Finance Corporation has run out of funds “owing to strong demand”. This has led to, reportedly, the government having not paid subsidies for first-time homeowners in four months! The reason for this is an exponential increase in applications from homeowners in the rural areas following on a change in the rule allowing the grant of subsidies for properties that cannot be mortgaged. With most of our government institutions being broke, what will surely follow is that banks will be unwilling to give mortgages to first-time homeowners – wait for it.
  • Newsday reported that 90% of land reform projects in this country have failed. The problem appears to be that an operational farm requires business plans, capital investment and active management, which grant recipients are generally not able to provide. The difficulty with these is that such projects destroy successful commercial farms which dismantles one of our greatest economic assets in the rural areas. Compare this to BEE, which has been much criticised in terms of results, of late.
  • Newsday reported that Juju has encouraged black people living in townships to take land owned by white people. Frankly, one is surprised as he has been particularly quiet of late – think five years gaol time!
  • Early in July the Minister of Trade, industry and Competition published new building regulations for public comment. The major departure from existing legislation is in the enjoining municipalities to refuse an approval to build if the building “is to be erected in such a manner that it will contravene any provisions of that act or a regulation made in terms thereof”. Ex CDH.

Lighten up: AI

Contributed by:
Daan Steenkamp
daan@delberg.co.za
012 3615001
www.delberg.co.za

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