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FNB House Price Index
FNB.co.za - South Africa
Outlook
Domestic interest rates have now declined by 450 basis points in total since the start of rate cutting in December 2008. This should bring some stimulus to a very credit-sensitive market such as the residential property market. However, unlike the 2003 aggressive interest rate cutting which took place in good global and local economic times, the current stimulus from interest rates is to a great extent offset by an economic recession which contains growth in household purchasing power.

As such, the expectation of nothing more than a very mild improvement in residential demand during 2009 continues, and with oversupplies still believed to exist on the market, house price deflation is expected to be with us for most of 2009. However, I believe that the worst year-on-year price deflation will show in the figures around mid-year, and that during the second half of the year we'll begin to see the rate of decline subsiding.

At the most recent SARB interest rate meeting, the Governor did begin to prepare the market for a possible pause in interest rate cutting, so although all future interest rate decisions depend on how future economic events unfold, we should not expect too much in the way of
interest rate cutting from here forward.
House Price Index May 2009

There is hope for the SA property market
RealEstateWeb- South Africa

Full scale revival of the property market would be seen in the next two to three years- Bill Rawson.

South Africa is unlikely to see another residential property boom in the foreseeable future and a full-scale revival in residential property is probably two to three years off.

The turnaround point and the beginning of the upswing have already been reached and several encouraging signs are now already evident.

The first of these is that the US economic indicators are pointing to the "official" recession coming to an end in the third quarter of this year. This means that South Africa, which traditionally lags six months behind the US, could find itself in a far better position by March/April 2010.
RealEstateWeb

'Focus on purchases', urges Conveyancing Alliance
IntroducerToday - UK

Conveyancing Alliance, the online conveyancing distributor, has today (28th May 2009) urged advisers to adapt to the changing nature of the housing market by focusing their business on the purchase market.

Earlier this year Conveyancing Alliance revealed it had seen a considerable increase in the average number of daily purchase instructions it received, up 33% in quarter one this year compared to quarter four 2008..
Introducer Today