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FNB House Price Index
FNB - South Africa
OUTLOOK AND FORECAST - CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM IN 2010
December was the second month of year-on-year increase in house prices after almost a year of decline. The trend bodes well for a better 2010, after the market hit "rock bottom" in the first half of 2009 and thereafter began to show improvement. The economy has started to emerge from recession, which should provide some mild additional support to residential property demand, and the full positive impact of last year's 5 percentage points' worth of interest rate cuts probably still needs to feed through into the market at least for the first half of 2010. As such, it is realistic to expect a significantly better residential property price performance for 2010 as a whole.

Therefore, an average price inflation rate of 8% is forecast for 2010 as a whole. This expectation is a significant improvement on 2009, but remains a moderate one compared with the boom years. The reasoning behind this "cautious optimism" is that there are still some key constraining factors on the market.
FNB - House Price Index

It's still bad, but get some tips
Property24.com - South Africa
Evidently the South African property market is even more troubled than anyone realised.

Last week property economist John Lottering of Rode and Associates warned that there had been an alarming increase in flat vacancies in Pretoria and Durban.

Worryingly, in Johannesburg, tenants are only paying R192 a month extra for a one-bedroomed flat in Johannesburg's arty areas of Westdene, Melville or Auckland Park compared with prices in the city centre.

At the same time, Erwin Rode another property economist who owns Rode and Associates, warns that those people who are selling their houses should not expect to see prices rise ahead of next year's FIFA World Cup.

He says that some estate agents are creating hype and optimistic expectations from the major international event.
Property24.com

SA estate agents take more than 3 months to sell a home
RealEstateWeb - South Africa
But "property sales activity" is up dramatically

RE/MAX offices in all nine provinces participated in a national survey investigating national property sales activity and the current state of the South African real estate market and report the following:

Dramatic increase
92% characterized the increase in property sales activity as dramatic compared to the previous six months. 76% of RE/MAX offices recorded an increase of up to 25% in sales activity, 18% an increase of 26 - 50%, and 6% an increase of 51% and higher.

Most active price brackets
Polled on the most active property price brackets, 34% said sales activity for properties in the R750 000 - R999 999 category was where most movement was recorded. This was followed by properties in the price range of R500 000 - R749 000 at 23%. Homes valued below R500 000 constituted 13% of most active sales, and the same percentage was recorded in the bracket for homes valued between R1 million - R1,5 million.
RealEstateWeb

Thousands of historic land files to be shredded
Irish Times - Ireland
HUNDREDS OF thousands of documents, some dating from the late 19th century, are to be destroyed as part of the Property Registration Authority's move towards e- conveyancing.

In early 2007 the authority - formerly the Registrar of Deeds and Titles - announced that land certificates were to be abolished by December 31st, 2009, and replaced by an electronic system. Land certificates were introduced in 1892 when the Land Registry was established.

The function of land certificates was to certify the ownership of a particular folio of land. The certificates record all relevant details concerning the ownership of registered land which are also recorded on the land register.
Irish Times

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