immoafrica blog

Good security installations increasingly necessary to sell a home It will come as no surprise to those who track the rise and fall of residential property in South Africa – and the factors which influence these – that for many buyers today, a home security system will be among the most important factors influencing their [...](more...)

Repeat buyers gain ground as home prices increase The extent of the improvement in the residential property market over the past two years is clearly indicated in the latest statistics from BetterBond, SA’s leading mortgage originator, which show that home loan approval rate has risen from 61% in March 2011 to 69% in March this [...](more...)

Check that buyers have sold their existing properties One of the lessons that has to be repeated over and over again at the Rawson Property Group’s training sessions, says Bill Rawson, Chairman of the group, is the simple one that agents must check up on statements from buyers detailing the sale of their existing properties. [...](more...)

How to make the best of a CMA The Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) has been around for a long time and by now, most home sellers know that they should ask their agent for one before deciding on an asking price for their property. But many still don’t really know how much information should actually [...](more...)

Is your area flashing “buy” or “stop” signals? Before you commit to buying a home, you really need to know what’s been happening to property prices in your preferred area over the past few years so that you can gauge the likelihood of making a good return on your investment – or not . “And,” [...](more...)

Check the title deed before the deal is done. Home buyers should carefully inspect the title deed of any property they want to buy before they sign an offer to purchase. Otherwise, says Neville McIntyre, chairman of Aida, South Africa’s best-known estate agency group, they might be in for an unpleasant surprise. “Title deeds often [...](more...)

Many bargain buys still “out there” for the shrewd investor. The South African residential property market can certainly still offer investment buyers bargains at anything from 20 to 50% below their former market value. This was said recently by Bill Rawson, Chairman of the Rawson Property Group, who is still investing steadily in this field. [...](more...)

Knowledge Factory has moved its Property Clock back by one minute to 23 minutes to the hour. The Clock measures high-level national trends in the residential real-estate market. It retreated by 5 minutes in 2011 and by 2 minutes in 2012. Insight* Analyst, Dieter Deppisch, comments: “The decision to move our Property Clock back by [...](more...)

Here is Sothebys International Realty’s property predictions for 2013! Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby’s International Realty in SA, says he expects a “much more buoyant” residential property market in 2013. “The recession is over, not only economically but also psychologically, and consumers are now much more confident about moving on with their lives and advancing [...](more...)

Here are Realnet’s property predictions for 2013! Jan Davel, MD of the RealNet estate agency group,says household finances are likely to remain under severe pressure in 2013, which will limit the ability of prospective buyers to qualify for bonds and become homeowners. On the one hand, he says, the increased consumer appetite for credit in [...](more...)

Holiday Town Residential Markets Due to the non-essential nature of a holiday home, holiday home buying has taken more of a back seat to primary residential buying during the tough financial times of recent years. Now, in 2012, after a very significant real price decline in the FNB Holiday Towns Index, some return to price [...](more...)

Mortgage Bonds: Today’s Conditions Mike van Alphen, the National Manager for the Rawson Property Group’s bond origination division, Rawson Finance, has drawn attention to a statement by the Rawson Property Group’s Chairman, Bill Rawson, in his first ever blog post, which will be published shortly. “Bill Rawson had pointed out, at what I believe is exactly [...](more...)

Knowledge Factory has moved its Property Clock back by one minute to 22 minutes to the hour. The Clock measures high-level national trends in the residential real-estate market. It retreated by 5 minutes in 2011 and moved forward by one minute in March 2012. Insight* Analyst, Dieter Deppisch, comments: “Statistics SA’s release of the 2011 [...](more...)

Beware of buying too much home Given the strict provisions of the National Credit Act, it is virtually impossible these days for prospective homeowners to buy at the outside margin of their affordability. However, with prices still well off their boom-day highs and interest rates at the lowest level in almost 40 years, there are [...](more...)

Repeated advice from senior staff at the Rawson Property Group to the effect that aspirant home buyers should revise/downgrade their ambitions regarding the home they would like to buy, rather than remain tenants and abandon all ambitions to become home owners, has been given additional credence by a recent FNB Property Barometer which shows that [...](more...)

Real Estate, you have 3 choices. Well, four actually. In fact, five would probably be more accurate. In the property market you can either Buy, Sell, Buy-to-Let, Rent or Stay where you are. While these options have always been available, new research by insight analysts, Knowledge Factory, indicates that one’s choice needs more discernment now [...](more...)

Summer is here! The widely held view that spring and summer are the best times to sell a home is, in fact, true, says Tony Clarke, Managing Director of the Rawson Property Group – and most estate agents do experience an upturn in sales from October onwards. “What makes so many South African homes more [...](more...)

Good schools raise neighbourhood house prices. Figures from property analysts, Lightstone, have shown that suburbs in all the major cities in South Africa which have established good schools (both state funded and private), producing satisfactory academic results, are rated very highly by potential homebuyers, says Tony Clarke, Managing Director of the Rawson Property Group. Those [...](more...)

Shared home ownership. In recent years when home loans have been so difficult to come by, potential buyers have often been urged to pool their resources with friends or family members so that they can qualify for a bond and get on the property ladder as soon as possible. However, says Berry Everitt, MD of [...](more...)

Buyers hot for townhouses in Pretoria’s *new east* Supplies of town houses for sale in Pretoria suburbs such as Faerie Glen, Garsfontein and Wapadrand are their lowest level in five years, partly because of the increase in demand since the recent interest rate cut. And Nelis Bezuidenhout of the RealNet Wapadglen franchise, who specialises in [...](more...)