{"id":473542,"date":"2021-03-05T16:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=473542"},"modified":"2021-03-05T15:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T13:12:27","slug":"theres-been-a-surprising-shift-in-south-africas-property-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/property\/473542\/theres-been-a-surprising-shift-in-south-africas-property-market\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s been a surprising shift in South Africa’s property market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data analytics company Lightstone has published its latest residential property index, detailing how the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown have impacted home sales in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The report shows that national house price inflation was 3.05% as of the end of December 2020. The low, high, and luxury value bands ended the year at about 2.5% while the mid-value segment ended the year at 4.9%.<\/p>\n

The group said that in defiance of expectations, housing prices in the country did not crash during the year.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, the luxury segment that has been trending closer to -0.5% at the end of 2019 is now growing close to 2.5% per annum.<\/p>\n

The mid value segment has also added some speed going from 3.6% to 4.9%, while the high value segment has remained fairly stable at about 2.5%.<\/p>\n

However, Lightstone noted that the low-value segment has decrease from 10.2% to 2.5%.<\/p>\n

“At this point, it is difficult to point to the exact reason for the increase in the luxury segment and the decrease of the low-value segment,” it said.<\/p>\n

“A possible reason could be because the luxury segment is far more dependent on interest rate, which have decreased significantly, while the low-value segment is more dependent on economic growth, which has also decreased significantly.”<\/p>\n

The table provides a long-term view of annual rates of inflation for various geographical areas and property types.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It remains one of the best times in decades to buy property, said Samuel Seeff, chairman of the Seeff Property Group.<\/p>\n

“The key driver of the market is the five-decade low interest rate which currently provides about a 30% saving on borrowing costs. At the same time, the banks are still keen to lend and first-time buyers can find favourable conditions.<\/p>\n

This has seen a flood of first-time buyers heading to the market who are keen to get an offer to purchase signed and accepted as quickly as possible so that they do not lose out.<\/p>\n

However, Seeff cautioned that first-time buyers must do their homework and ensure they inspect the property properly before making an offer.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Government wants big changes for land claims in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data analytics company Lightstone has published its latest residential property index, detailing how the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown have impacted home sales in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":473544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12755],"tags":[26,7421],"class_list":["post-473542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-property","tag-headline","tag-lightstone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473542"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473564,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473542\/revisions\/473564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}