Message from our CEO

Do not be discouraged. The real estate market in SA is fine and getting better, and the right time to buy is now.

This has been my main message to property buyers and investors for most of this year, and it is one I hope they carry with them into 2019. And no, I'm not an ostrich with my head in the sand. SA undoubtedly has many problems to deal with (what country doesn't, these days?), including low growth, high unemployment, crime, corruption and uncertainty about land expropriation and nationalisation.

But we mustn't forget that a lot of the negative material we are hearing and seeing now has to do with the fact that we have an election coming up next year, and with the pushback from various directions as the State is steadily "recaptured". That is, most of it is just "noise".

It is a fact, on the other hand, that President Ramaphosa and his team are more than halfway to reaching his five-year $100bn investment goal for SA - in just six months. And foreign governments, big local corporations and international investors would not be committing that kind of money to an economy or a country they thought was on the verge of collapse. 

They would also not be purchasing luxury real estate in such a country - and yet we have seen a significant increase this year in the number of wealthy and ultra-wealthy people buying homes all over South Africa this year. Our Luxury Portfolio team in Hyde Park have sold more than R300m worth of high-end homes, for example, while our sales in Camps Bay have topped R70m. And our new team at Val de Vie, the country's top estate, achieved sales worth over R320m in just 11 months!

What is more, the confidence of these investors seems to be rubbing off. We see so many positive steps now being taken to create jobs, repair infrastructure, improve services and make education relevant. Everywhere you look, there are new small businesses springing up as entrepreneurs see and grasp new opportunities. And figures just released by our preferred originator BetterBond show that ordinary people in SA have poured more than R50bn worth of cash - their own money - into buying property just in the past six months.

There's definitely no doom and gloom in that, and in fact, all the signs are that if you want to catch the next real estate wave you should be buying soon...