Here’s how your annual rental increase is calculated
In these tight financial times, nobody wants their rent increased, but landlords and agents have to adjust their rentals in relation to market factors. Having some insight into the contributing factors in a rental calculation will help you to understand what influenced your rental increase this year.
As a rule of thumb, rents are usually increased by 8% to 10% annually, but Pieter Janse van Rensburg, franchisee for Just Property in George, says a number of different factors are taken into account when calculating a rental, and shifts in all of these will be passed on to the tenant.
“It’s also worth bearing in mind that many of the costs of property ownership – including interest rates, insurance and municipal rates – do not remain static, so landlords have to recalculate annually to ensure that their operating costs remain viable,” says Janse van Rensburg.
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Social Housing Programme adjusted to include more low-income earners
Human Settlements Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, together with the Provincial Members of the Executive Council (MinMec) of Human Settlements have approved adjustments to the Social Housing Programme.
This comes after the launch of one of the country’s biggest social housing projects, the Westgate Social Housing Project in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, by President Jacob Zuma, in April.
The MinMec-approved adjustments include the shift in income bands which raises the lower qualifying household income limit for the primary market from R3 500 to R5 500 per month and the upper qualifying household income limit from R7 500 to R15 000 per month.
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South Africa’s 10 most expensive suburbs revealed
The economic pressures and junk status notwithstanding, properties in the Cape are still fetching excellent prices according to Samuel Seeff, chairman of the Seeff Property Group, who says they have concluded a number of recent high-value transactions on the Atlantic Seaboard. These include R54 million for three sales ranging to R27 million in Camps Bay, a single sale of R82 million in Fresnaye, a record sale of R32 million in Hout Bay and R34 million in Higgovale in the City Bowl. A study done by Seeff, based on data from Lightstone and Propstats for the period 2011/2 to 2016/7 also reveals that Cape Town is now home to nine of the ten richest suburbs in the country, up from seven two years ago, says Seeff.
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Reshaping the future of real estate for African cities - API summit 24-25 Aug
Researchers predict that in 2030, Lagos, Cairo and Kinshasa will each have to cater for over 20 million people, while Luanda, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg will have crossed the 10 million mark. By 2035, close to 30 million people could live in Lagos alone, turning Nigeria’s commercial hub into the largest megacity on the continent.
While Africa’s cities are growing rapidly in population, they are developing informally as current urban planning has proven to be ineffective, and private development is often deterred by opaque or inappropriate regulations.
When it comes to investments in infrastructure, industrial and commercial structures, and affordable formal housing, African cities have, until now, failed to keep pace with the concentration of people. In Dar es Salaam, 28% of residents live at least three to a room; in Abidjan, that number rises to 50%; and in Lagos, Nigeria, two out of three people dwell in slums.
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Listed residential funds could reignite SA’s affordable housing sector
Standard Bank believes that South Africa has an opportunity to reinvigorate its affordable residential build sector through the establishment of listed residential funds.
Listed funds attract capital based on their ability to deliver returns through rental income. Developers of residential real estate targeting the R3 500 to R7 500 per month rental market, that partner with listed residential funds, will attract bank funding back into South Africa’s stalled affordable residential sector.
This has the potential to kick-start the country’s residential build, meeting a critical backlog in affordable housing stock.
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Can seller delay the property sale and what about our bond?
A Property24 reader asks:
A Property24 reader says they signed an offer to purchase, but the seller now wants to wait for his bond to cancel to avoid penalties. Is this legal? We have purchased a property, the offer to purchase was signed at the end of May. We have now been informed by the transferring attorneys that the seller wants to wait the 90 days for his notification period to cancel his bond to be up, before the transfer process takes place.
Is this legal? What happens to our bond that was approved on the 27th May?
Jaco Rademeyer, from Jaco Rademeyer Estates, responds:
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