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Court ruling could have dire consequences for property owners
RealEstateWeb - South Africa
Tenants can use their personal circumstances as a defence against eviction.

PRETORIA - A recent judgement in favour of a group of poor Yeoville tenants, spells trouble for property owners. The ruling bolsters the right of tenants to use their personal circumstances as a defence against eviction.

Laws protecting indigent land occupiers against arbitrary eviction have been around since 1998, but they have seldom been applied in favour of city-property dwellers. In Gauteng they have also seldom been tested outside the Johannesburg inner city area. This could change.

Last week the Supreme Court of Appeal gave the occupiers of Shulana Court in Hendon Road Yeoville, the go ahead to appeal against an eviction order granted to property owner Mark Steele. The South Gauteng High Court granted the eviction order on June 18 2008 and an application to rescind the order was later dismissed.
RealEstateWeb

Local Government Law Workshop
L.E.A.D - South Africa
The workshop will be presented by Professor Jaap De Visser: Associate Professor at the Community Law Centre (UWC). Co-author of Local Government Law of South Africa and other critical texts on local government, convenor of the LLM/Mphil in Local Government & Decentralisation. He is an experienced lecturer, publicist and trainer with 10 years experience in local government law and intergovernmental relations.
The purpose of the Workshop is to update the participants on recent developments in local government law, including the latest case law, impacting on local government.
Click here to download the full advert

FNB Property Market Analytics - the good, the bad and the ugly
FNB - South Africa
Overview
The Good Economic data releases and events were the shining light for property in March. The SARB's renewing of interest rate cutting was the most noticeable economic event, taking mortgage rates to the lowest level since a few decades ago. This rate cut cameon the back of a drop in the February CPI figure, released last week too, to 5.7%. However, arguably a more important indicator was the SARB January Leading Business Cycle Indicator, whose growth rate actually accelerated, suggesting further economic growth improvement in the near term. And then, of course, we saw the release of the SARB Quarterly Bulletin, which showed a return to positive quarterly growth in real household disposable income, all very positive for residential property demand.

The Bad The SARB Quarterly Bulletin also showed us that, despite improving economic indicators, the household sector's finances are still far from healthy. Nominal disposable income growth was too weak to exceed mediocre household credit growth, meaningan increase in the already-high household debt-to-disposable income ratio, as well as the household debt-service ratio (which is a good predictor of default rates on home loans). Patience is required, as reducing the debt ratio is normally a multi-year process, but for as
long as the ratio remains so high the household sector remains at high risk to any unwanted shocks.

The Ugly Political events have turned nasty, and SA's racial past has come back to haunt it in the form of renewed focus on the "hate speech" issue. For residential property, the risk is that emigration selling of property starts to rise again, shortly after having subsided since the 2008 emigration selling surge.
March FNB Property Analytics