From our CEO: How we keep our clients ahead of the game

During the second quarter of this year, the real estate industry was effectively shut down for two months and struggled to function in the third because of the erratic opening and closing of the Deeds offices around the country.

And as a result, most other big real estate groups around the country saw an 80% to 90% drop in the number of sales compared to the same period of last year, as they have noted themselves.

But here's the good news. Our group did not suffer the same fate. Thanks to the efforts of our incredible Chas Everitt International team, our sales were only 26% down on the same period of last year.

In other words, we did 75% of our normal second-quarter volume - and some offices actually experienced record numbers of sales in June.

What is more, our sales revenues for the second quarter were only 30% down on the same period of 2019 - and thus very far above our worst-case forecasts when we all went into the Covid19 hard lockdown at the end of March.

This is a fantastic achievement and I am beyond proud of every Chas Everitt sales agent, administrator, manager and the supportive members of their families who persevered and pushed through and made this possible.

I am also proud of the industry-leading technologies that we already had in place which enabled our people to switch almost seamlessly to working from home full-time, and to concluding home sales and purchases online.

We have spent years developing and refining our remote-working systems and encouraging and training people to use them, and they have certainly proved their worth now - not only for us but for every seller, buyer, investor, landlord and tenant we were able to help in April, May and June when others could not.

I have written before about the huge role that real estate plays in SA's economy and its job creation potential and I won't repeat that now, but at Chas Everitt it is always on our minds that every home bought, sold or let also represents real individual hopes, dreams, and livelihoods - and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to keep so many of these alive in the past few months.

We are also confident that there will continue to be strong home sales activity in the remaining months of this year, thanks primarily to the interest rate cuts that have made home loans more affordable and opened the door to thousands more first-time buyers.

There have now been five rate cuts since the start of the year, and these have taken the prime rate (and home-loan base rate) from 10% in January down to 7%. The effect of this is to reduce monthly bond repayments by R190 per R100 000 outstanding - which translates to a reduction of R1900 a month on an R1m bond.

There is also no transfer duty payable on existing homes costing less than R1m, or on newly-built apartments and townhouses and the demand for such homes is soaring, with 58% of transfers nationally now taking place in the under-R800 000 price category and a further 27% in the R800 000 to R1,5m bracket.  

This rise in demand will in due course have a knock-on effect across the whole market and help to underpin home values, which is a bright light in the midst of this Covid-19 "storm" we are all going through.

For now, though, we believe the absolute priority is for everyone to keep protecting themselves and their loved ones by sticking carefully to all the protocols around mask-wearing and sanitizing that are recommended by SA's health experts. Please just do it, no matter how uncomfortable or silly you may feel. We want every one of you to stay safe and well...