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SA Home Loans launched to the public back in 1999 as SA’s first non-bank mortgage lender. It was co-founded by Simon Stockley, who pioneered the securitisation industry in the country. Stockley has not been involved with the company for a long time, but when SA Home Loans was started some 25 years ago, the SA interest rate stood at a scary 23.5%.
“It is a business founded here in Durban back in 1999 by a group of ex-bankers, a group of ex-bankers who’d left the old NBS bank stable.” “We occupy a unique position as a result. So when you’re the only dedicated specialist – home loans are what we do, unlike our competitors – we obviously have a number of different products and different focus areas.
“Thekwini One really was what I call the first issuance of scale to the market, which was a public issuance well supported by the capital market investors – that’s your pension funds, your collective investment schemes – and I think that funding model really was the underpin to our success, the support of those investors, the ability to raise that funding into a lending product which already does require quite a lot of funding if you’re going to be successful and compete with the banks.
“Yes, we are still headquartered in Durban, so here in the north of Durban is our head office. It’s where a lot of our activity happens. We do have branches all around the country, as I said, but I think as a headquarter in Durban, in KZN, it really has served as well. So we’ve got a fairly unique position of being a head office in the financial service sector based in Durban.”
“So listing I wouldn’t think is on the near-term horizon for us. I think our current structures serve as well.” “So you need interest rates and confidence to be on your side. I think our property market over the last couple of years has not benefitted from that.” You mentioned that residential property transactions dropping by 25% in 2023. Which part of the market felt the most pain?
“A nine-month lag clearly has allowed consumers time to catch up to what happened in interest rates to look to start to rehabilitate. Clearly, arrears are high across the industry – and that’s across home loans, across all consumer credit classes. We’ve seen, I think, all the banks now have come out with interims or updates to mention distressed borrowers in the retail segment … A perspective you’ll see across the banks as they come out with results is elevated arrears, elevated default levels.
Talking about confidence, I noticed almost an optimistic tone to your sentiments in that latest press release for 2024 and 2025 on residential property and the home loans front. Do you want to share some insights on that because we tend to get bogged down in South Africa? Yes, the elections are coming up in May, but there are 12 months in the year.