Living preferences and working behaviours triggered by Covid-19 have upended the property landscape.
Our homes are no longer just living spaces, they have become working, social, and educating places. With the ability to work from home, suddenly things like commuting time or geographical location are not such critical issues anymore and people have been making different decisions about how, and where, they want to live.
Commercial property has borne the brunt of altered patterns. And while residential property has not escaped entirely unscathed, these changes have, to some degree, favoured the residential property market.
Now more than ever before, there is more focus on the home. And South African homebuyers have continued to capitalise on the favourable buying environment. The three percentage points interest rate cuts in 2020 and the decision in May to leave the repo rate unchanged at 3.5%, has culminated in an active residential market.
Safe as houses?
National house price inflation has bounced back; the Pam Golding Residential Property Index showed house price growth of 5.1% for June 2021. It is quite the rebound from the low of 2.4% in March 2019, and the first time it has breached 5% since 2016.
“There is definitely a sense that house price growth is on the move, and it is on the move at or near inflation, which previously was not the case. That indicates real house price growth as opposed to just nominal house price growth,” Dr Andrew Golding, chief executive of the Pam Golding Property group (PGP), tells finweek.
Meanwhile growth in house prices in the lower price band (below R1m) continued to accelerate by 7.47% in May 2021, says PGP.
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