With loadshedding suspended in March, several fuel price cuts, lower inflation and the formation of the GNU key milestones in 2024, coupled with the prospect of further interest rate relief, South Africa’s residential property market has responded positively with increasing activity and interest as a result of a more positive economic and political outlook. We have already seen national house prices gather momentum, rising to +4.9% in September 2024.
Encouragingly, the second two factors have improved noticeably during the second half of the year and look set to continue to improve throughout 2025. Regionally, over the past decade Western Cape house price inflation has outperformed relative to the other major regions and is currently stabilising at higher levels, while HPI in both Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal is rebounding and in fact, all major metro markets are showing signs of recovery.The luxury sector of the market has shown remarkable strength and is benefiting from increasingly positive sentiment, resulting in a shortage of stock in prime locations which is placing pressure on pricing.
Freehold homes outperformed relative to sectional title homes in the wake of the pandemic as people shifted out of cities to smaller towns – where better affordability allowed them to purchase freehold homes. However, according to Lightstone, sectional title house prices are currently rebounding more strongly than freehold prices.Prior to the pandemic, the value of plans passed was higher in Gauteng than in the Western Cape.
Since late-2021 there has been a marked increase in demand for investment properties, rising from 6.25% of applications in 2021 to a peak of 14.9% in Dec’23. The surge in investment demand has primarily been driven by the Western Cape – presumably in part the result of people planning to move or retire to the Western Cape gaining a foothold in the province before actually relocating.