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Latest developments on the Legal Practice Bill
Law Society of South Africa
31 January 2013: The Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development will hold public hearings on the Legal Practice Bill on 19-20 February 2013. Stakeholders and interested people who have already made written submissions and those who wish to make supplementary submissions are invited to do so. Stakeholders and people who have not made written submissions are invited to do so by Tuesday, 12 February 2013.

Submissions and enquiries must be directed to: Mr V Ramaano, Justice & Constitutional Development Portfolio Committee, 3rd Floor, 90 Plein Street, Cape Town 8000, e-mailed to vramaano@parliament.gov.za or faxed to 086 565 9219. Copies of the Bill may be obtained from Mr. V. Ramaano on tel: (021) 403-3820 or 083 709 8427.
Legal Practice Bill

Joburg's illegal building chaos leads to rapid urban decay
Iol - South Africa
In an about-turn, the City of Joburg admitted it has lost control of its ability to stop the many town-planning infringements taking place throughout the municipality.

City member of the mayoral committee responsible for development planning and urban infrastructure, Ros Greeff, admitted at the weekend that procedures were slow and were not working and were leading to the rapid decay of many areas across the city.

Addressing a public meeting in Cyrildene on Thursday, called by angry residents to voice their concern at the burgeoning number of building transgressions in the area, Greeff said property owners are completely disregarding orders, including court orders, issued by the council to stop illegal construction.
Iol.co.za

Property Barometer - January 2013 House Price Index
FNB - South Africa
CONCLUSION
Important to emphasise, though, is that after some good improvement earlier in 2012, conditions in the residential property market are still relatively “comfortable”, but recently the improvement just appears to have slowed temporarily. Negative growth in the FNB Index may be little “overdone” due to high base effects and some transaction volume shift in favour of the lower end.

Looking ahead into 2013, it is expected that low positive nominal house price growth will be restored in the near term, with signs of some improvement in the world economy once more, along with the possibility that the domestic economy will benefit from reduced industrial action and production disruptions since late-2012.

As such, we still remain of the view that 2013 will see slow but positive nominal house price growth in the region of 2.5% average for the year.
FNB House Price Index Jan 2013

Property Barometer - Holiday Town House Price Performance
FNB - South Africa
While primary residence-driven metros are still the “flavour”, holiday town housing markets may have reached some price stability in 2012.
So, it remains a long way from the days of 2004 to 2006, when holiday town house price growth was estimated to have outstripped major city price growth. But that’s the nature of these markets. They should be expected to be more cyclical than the cities due to the non-essential nature of holiday home demand. In addition, many of their economies can be more cyclical too, due to corporates often centralizing activities to larger centres in tougher economic times, as well as due to the cyclicality of tourism/getaway demand that often sustains such smaller town economies.

But nevertheless, while still lagging the cities, holiday town markets seem slightly happier places to be as some semblance of price stability appears to have been reached.
Property Barometer Holiday Home Market

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