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R5bn of small loans for housing
Property24.com - South Africa
Consumers are now obtaining more than R5-billion a year of the housing finance they need, not from mortgage lenders but through the micro-lending industry, in small loans of R10 000 or less at a time.

The latest figures from the Micro Finance Regulatory Council show that while school fees and other education costs still top the list of reasons for taking out small loans, housing comes a close second.

In the three months to end May the banks, which are the favoured source of micro-loans, made 2,3-billion worth of loans - including R685-million worth for education, R630-million worth for housing and R250-million worth for small business funding.
Property24.com

Mlambo-Ngcuka makes U-turn on Zimbabwe comments
Business Day - South Africa
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka yesterday backed off her assertion that SA could learn from Zimbabwe's land reform process.

SA should avoid the problems that had occurred north of the Limpopo, she said. Mlambo-Ngcuka has been under fire over the past week for saying that Zimbabwe's land reform process, which saw white-owned farms grabbed without compensation, was a process from which SA could learn.
Business Day

The home-loan advantage
Sunday Times - South Africa
Buying property is a large-scale investment, yet many people don't look at their home loan as an integral part of their financial plan.

Banks and mortgage providers offer several kinds of home-loan options, from starter bonds designed to help first-timers enter the property market, to highly flexible options that let you access extra funds, defer repayments and fund renovations.

But before rushing to apply for one of these products, there are important things to consider.
Sunday Times

'Blind man could see residential property boom is near its end'
Business Day - South Africa
The South African residential property market is likely to underperform other investment classes over the coming five years, and prospective investors should rather put their money into commercial assets, property economist Erwin Rode said yesterday.

The upper-end of the residential market in particular had exceeded previous boom-time price spikes in real terms, and in some areas it was already cheaper to build than to buy an existing property.

Rode described this phenomenon as a "natural brake" on the market. "Prices must slow down, and we are in fact already seeing this happen," he said.
Business Day

Plans for national address register shelved
Financial Times - London
The government's intention to establish a single, comprehensive national address register, announced in May, has been shelved because the parties involved could not agree a way forward, undermining the country's e-government strategy and raising a barrier to delivering efficient public and private sector services.

Inaccurate addresses disrupt deliveries, emergency response times and the collection of council tax. In the past, problems such as duplicate, missing or erroneous addresses have been seen as modest or isolated and often resolved with local knowledge. But with computer technology, even tiny discrepancies in an address can lead to problems.
Financial Times