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Tenants and sectional title properties
IolProperty - South Africa
Some tenants find themselves in a quandary when a trustee of a sectional titles block serves them with a "notice of violations of body corporate rules", and might even expect them to vacate. These are tenants who perform diligently on the contractual terms of their leases and enjoy cordial relationships with their landlords, but may encounter problems with an overzealous trustee or chairperson of the body corporate.

Take, for example, 'illegal' parking of vehicles on the common property and the resultant fines: the tenant's visitor parks a vehicle in a bay designated for a specific owner. In terms of the conduct rules, such a violation carries with it a fine and the body corporate's right to wheel clamp to immobilise the vehicle.

Good landlord-tenant relationships aside, landlords are not residents of the building and do not attend meetings, not even the annual general meetings where matters such as amending rules and adjusting levies are decided.
IolProperty

Many fortunate housing pockets bucking the national declining trend in house prices
Rawson - South Africa
The widespread media coverage given to the latest banks’ home loan division comments on the downward trend in South African house prices has led to some of the general public questioning the bullish growth claims that certain estate agents have been making for most of this year regarding prices in their areas.

This was said recently by Mike van Alphen, National Manager of the Rawson Property Group’s bond origination division, Rawson Finance. However, he said, no agents with whom he has dealt in the last two months have in his opinion in any way fudged their figures and on investigation almost all the bullish reports have turned out to be based on sound data.

ABSA Home Loans’ highly respected Chief Economist, Jacques du Toit, reported early this month that nominal year-on-year house price growth in April this year had declined to 5,7% and that since October 2014, when it touched 10%, it had been dropping steadily. As a result, say ABSA, the average price of a medium sized home in South Africa today is now R1,205,000, while small homes have an average price of R851,000 and larger homes R1,828,000.
Rawson

Conveyancers need to get social
Mortgage Introducer - UK
Conveyancers must stop resisting consumer demands for greater transparency, mobile access and social interaction online, Doug Crawford has claimed.

Speaking at his firm's annual conference today myhomemove's chief executive identified three key trends in the market which he said conveyancers must respond to: restless transparency, the multiscreen world, and the new friends and family. He suggested that consumers now display "restless impatience" with the average person checking their phone every six and a half minutes.

He said: "Customers want greater transparency – and for us that means enabling them to check the progress of their case from offer to completion, reassuring themselves that their expectations will be met.
Mortgage Introducer

Residential Building statistics
Absa - South Africa
Subdued residential building activity in the first quarter of 2015

The first quarter of 2015 saw continued subdued levels of building activity in the South African market for new housing, as reflected by the number of building plans approved and the number of buildings completed. Compared with a year ago, the volume of building activity contracted in both the planning and construction phases in the first three months of the year. These trends are based on data published by Statistics South Africa in respect of building activity related to private sector-financed housing (see explanatory notes).

The number of new housing units for which building plans were approved was down by 11% year-on-year (y/y), or 1 546 units, to 12 455 units in the period January to March 2015 from the corresponding period a year ago. This was mainly the result of a sharp contraction of 36,1% y/y in plans approved in respect of houses smaller than 80m², whereas the volume of plans approved in the segment of flats and townhouses increased by 15,5% y/y in the first quarter of the year.
Building stats Marh 2015

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