Reserve Bank keeps repo rate unchanged at 6.75%
South Africa - Fin24
The Reserve Bank has kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.75%, in line with the expectations of most economists and analysts. Governor of the SA Reserve bank Lesetja Kganyago announced the benchmark rate call at a media briefing in Pretoria. He said the decision was unanimous.
The repo rate is the interest rate at which the central bank lends money to other banks. Changes in the repo rate affect the prime lending rate, which is the rate banks use as a starting point to calculate interest rates for their clients.
Fin24
Property Insights - New Mortgage Lending
South Africa - FNB
After something of a “mini-recovery” in new mortgage loans granted through 2017 to early-2018, more recently there has been a slowdown, to a negative rate by the 3rd quarter of 2018. The Commercial Mortgage Sector was more of a drag on the overall Mortgage Market than the Residential Sector,although Residential also turned mildly negative in the 3rd quarter.
By Application, new mortgage growth for Construction of Buildings was the weakest. Looking into 2019, the decline as at the 3rd quarter of 2018 suggests that 2019 is likely starting off a low base, the weakness in new mortgage lending late last year reflecting what appears to have been a weaker economic growth year in 2018 compared to 2017. Can we see some new lending growth improvement? Possibly later in the year, given that the base of which growth will comes at the end of 2018 looks to have been very low.
But any year-on-year growth strengthening is expected to be mild, constrained by expectation of only limited real economic growth improvement from an estimated 0.7% in 2018 to 1.4% in 2019, growth that remains weak and not likely to meaningfully increase the demand for space. In addition, 2019 starts with weak business and consumer sentiment, concerns over future policy direction abundant and likely to persist until at least after the 2019 elections, and of course we go into 2019 having just had the 1st interest rate hike in the current cycle late in November last year.
New Mortgage Lending Jan 2019
Professional Designation Examination enrolment
South Africa - EAAB
This serves to notify all eligible PDE candidates (including intern estate agents who have met the necessary internship, logbook and qualification requirements) that they may now register to undertake both oral and written examination (PDE 4 & 5) scheduled to take place on 07 February 2019 by accessing the ”MyEAAB” portal. This exam is taking place across all provinces. Examination venues are available on the EAAB website www.eaab.org.za for candidates to make their selection. The closing date for examination registration is 24 January 2019 and no late enrolments and/or payments will be accepted.
PDE notification
Four Steps To Paperless Law Firm Utopia
UK - Today's Conveyancer
Step 1: Getting into the cloud
Getting into the cloud is only the beginning of the paperless journey but an essential step. After successfully migrating your data from clunky old vulnerable servers to the shiny new cloud, the benefits and possibilities are quite simply endless. Not only is your law firm’s data security enhanced – take Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) military-grade servers as one example of a robust off-site solution – but it also means that you have entered into a world of online solutions where opportunities are opened up through a range of powerful tools and innovative new software, that can enhance your law firm and propel it ahead of the competition and towards continued success through greater efficiency and productivity.
Today's Conveyancer
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