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Anyone awake at the Estate Agency Affairs Board?
RealEstateWeb - South Africa
Board appears uninterested in fraud allegations against its member.

JOHANNESBURG - The regulatory board for estate agents appears to be uninterested in serious allegations made against one of its members. Realestateweb's attempts to contact the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) for a response have proven fruitless.

The allegations concern close corporation Capeshare Timeshare and its member Keenan Nagel, both of whom appear on the EAAB's website as valid members.

Capeshare Timeshare "sold" timeshare to several people earlier this year. It accepted their money in its trust account but allegedly failed to deliver the timeshare. This gave rise to a number of very angry customers, proof of which can be found on consumer website Hellopeter.com.
RealEstateWeb

New policy on land grabs, farm tax
Fin24 - South Africa
Cape Town - The costs of government's land reform drive must be reduced through a multi-tier pricing regime that should include options like scrapping the willing-buyer-willing-seller concept, introducing a land tax as well as a new system of valuing land, according to the final draft of government's green paper on land reform.

Fin24.com has seen a copy of the green paper, which blames the willing-buyer-willing-seller concept for the slow pace and increasing cost of land reform. It stresses that the current price of land makes government's aim of redistributing 30% of all agricultural farmland by 2014 an impossible task.

"Given that approximately 7 million hectares has been transferred to date, over 14 million hectares would need to be delivered over three years..."
Fin24.com

For those in the appropriate sectors, trading conditions now highly favourable
Those members of the Rawson Properties head office staff who last week were able to attend a quick review by their Chairman, Bill Rawson, were surprised to hear him make two unexpected statements.

The first was that predicting when the next upturn will take place and how strong it will be is now more difficult than at any stage in his 40 year career in property.

"The fact that the US government is taking the essential step of gradually withdrawing its support from the business sector is likely to slow down the west's economy for a long while yet," says Rawson, "and obviously this will impact on all of us."

Rawson then, however, said that trading conditions in the residential property sector are now good - "whatever other commentators may say".

"Those in high bracket property obviously cannot concur but for those of us well represented in the middle and lower middle price brackets, conditions are now highly favourable - despite nearly 50% of bond applications are still being rejected."

It helps, said Rawson, to be able to see matters in their true perspective and context.
Rawson