Chairperson’s Welcome
Dear Members, Stakeholders, Practitioners, and Industry Affiliates,
Vuyiswa Ramokgopa
This August we celebrate Women’s Month, and recent data shows that women are increasingly taking their places in the property industry. Before we look at the good news in more detail, a quick overview of the status of the industry at the moment.
While the repo rate remained steady for the first time in eleven cycles in July, and there are whispers that it could increase again in September on the back of steep increases in petrol and diesel.
The high-rate effect is seen in the property market where, according to the August BetterBond Property Brief, there has been a 34% decline in Deeds Office registrations in Q3 of 2023.
According to the DebtBusters’ Q2 2023 Debt Index, personal loans have become a lifeline for many more South Africans, and debt-to-income ratios are at all-time highs, especially for top-income earners. The Index shows that there was increased demand from South Africans for debt management, with debt counselling inquiries up by 43% and online debt management up by a staggering 99% compared to the same period last year. Added to this, and despite numerous reports of new plans, Eskom has yet to find a solution to the loadshedding which continues unabated.
That said, there are specs of light as well: “July 2023 marked the first time since November 2021 that the Reserve Bank did not raise its benchmark repo rate, which was good news for aspirant homebuyers and existing homeowners. There was even better news with a further sharp decline in the Producer Price Index (PPI), which feeds into the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and acts as a leading indicator of future consumer inflation. The Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee seems to have underestimated the extent and speed at which the PPI dropped off its peak of 18% in July2022, to only 4.8% in June 2023, which will almost certainly continue to send the CPI lower in coming months”.
Writing in the Property Brief, economist Dr Roelof Botha also shares that in July, there was more good news from one of the key indicators in the Altron-FinTech Household Resilience Index (AFHRI).
Although its reading for Q1 2023 predictably took a slight dip as a result of financial pressures faced by South African households, it also contains some exceptionally good news on the continued resilience of several key indicators.
