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Property guides before tribunal on cartel rates
Business Report - South Africa
Johannesburg - The competition tribunal is scheduled to hear allegations of anti-competitive behaviour that have been brought by Charter Properties against the Saturday Star Property Guide and the East Cape Property Guide tomorrow.

Charter Properties, an independent estate agent based in Port Elizabeth, has alleged that the two property guides are in contravention of the Competition Act because they prohibit references to rates of commission in the property adverts they carry.

Charter Properties, which brought the matter to the competition commission early this year, has applied to the tribunal for interim relief.

The Saturday Star Property Guide is a joint venture owned by the Independent Newspaper Group, the Estate, the PA Group and Homefinders Johannesburg. The East Cape Property Guide is owned by Media24 and a number of Eastern Cape estate agents.
Business Report

SA housing backlog grows
Fin24.co.za - South Africa
South Africa's housing backlog has widened due to growing urbanisation and demand despite the building of 1.9 million new homes for the poor since the end of apartheid in 1994, the government said.

Of the total figure, 1.6 million houses worth about R37bn have already been transferred to poor households, according to a review released late on Tuesday by the national treasury.
"Despite these delivery rates, the housing backlog has grown," it said, adding that the number of dwellings classified as "inadequate" - mostly shacks - had grown 20% from 1.5 million in 1996 to 1.8 million in 2001.
Fin24.co.za

Shopping centres mushrooming?
BusinessDay - South Africa
Retail property returns were 33% for the Investment Property Databank (IPD) in 2005, but should investors be worried with so many shopping centres going up everywhere? First National Bank property strategist John Loos is on the line.

LINDSAY WILLIAMS: John, you've observed shopping centres going up "like mushrooms" - does that suggest we can't expect high returns with oversupply becoming a reality?

JOHN LOOS: Ironically it doesn't seem like that. I think the oversupply was being created more in the 1990s than now. That may sound strange, because it would appear that shopping centres are going up like mushrooms - and certainly there has been substantial growth - but what one has to remember is there has been strong growth in retail sales volumes. I calculate the ratio of the additional annual real retail sales per square metre of new shopping space - and this ratio has risen quite dramatically, suggesting that it's justified to have expanded with new space as much as we've had. I don't think a gross oversupply has been created over the last couple of years.
BusinessDay

Conveyancing claims drop dramatically since demise of SIF
Horizonlegal - UK
The first five years of an open market for solicitors' professional indemnity insurance saw a complete change in the claims environment, according to new research.

Brokers Alexander Forbes compared the profile of claims against solicitors made under the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF), which stopped taking new business in 2000, with the profile of claims made since.
Professional indemnity advisers said the open market had been good for solicitors. Barlow Lyde & Gilbert partner Sarah Clover said, "In general terms the profession is paying very modest premiums for the cover that it's getting."

The study found that the percentage of conveyancing claims has dropped dramatically since 2000, from 46% of all claims under the SIF to just 12%on the open market.
Horizonlegal

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