Your Property and the pandemic

Property Tree is a thriving estate agency and property development company based in Hartbeespoort. We met up with managing director Henk de Ridder to discuss the current state of our local property market.

Sales wise Property Tree had two of their best months in recent history, selling R40 Million in properties for June and July, which is quite high. Covid made it a bit difficult, but it gave people time to think if they wanted to enter the property market, and those are the ones buying now.

Many people opted to move to Hartbeespoort and work from home. Hartbeespoort is no longer secondary home purchases only, but people want to settle in Hartbeespoort and purchase their primary homes here.

For three months things got a bit difficult during covid 19, but what happened afterwards made up for it.

Huge interest rate cuts came is a particularly good thing now for property, it is a direct link from government and the reserve bank to benefit every South African to assist with affordability. The Government finally came to the party.

 The same people that would have been able to afford a 2 Million home is now able to buy a 3 Million home. So, you are seeing a lot of high value homes being sold. Governments commitment to keep it stable for the next few years will be of upmost importance.

There is a lot of buy-in from the reserve bank.  The only way there can be more money in the loop is when the reserve bank takes over some of the bonds of the current banks. This makes the lending criteria much easier.

The best time to buy would have been ten years ago.

Property experts will say the exact same thing 10 years from now, and ten years from then. The best time to buy is when you can afford it with immediate effect.

 Right now, Is the perfect time for upgrading to a larger property or to the area that you always wanted to be in. Just after the 2008 recession would have been a great time to buy if you wanted to make a profit on your property now.

If you are selling it depends on your motives. If your upgrading it is a good time because of the low interest rates. If you are downgrading it is also good because more people will be interested in buying your larger property.

Fortunately, property did not lose value because of the global pandemic. Property prices has been stable since 2009. The reason is that house prices increased 6 to 7 times between 2000 to 2007.   causing a major crash in the market. Banks were lending more than what the properties was worth.

 If you buy a property now, by the end of next year there will be an increase. One of their agents sold 8 homes in this month and not one of them had a lower offer than the asking price. There will be some ridiculous offers out there but there is value in all off them. You must look at your own situation and ask yourself, are you upgrading or downgrading?

People always re-evaluate what is important to them when they face difficult times. They might think they want more family time and want to be closer to schools, work and even work from home.

People working in large Cities dream of moving to a smaller town to follow the simpler, more family orientated lifestyle. Hartbeespoort are one of the best towns to manifest this dream in. It is close to all major routes and cities. As more people are moving to Hartbeespoort, the property market will benefit.

It is much more difficult to implement social distancing and other growing rules around the current pandemic in a large city like Pretoria or Johannesburg. It is much safer and easier in smaller towns like Hartbeespoort.  You are closer to everything and your traveling times are cut in half.

The experts are likely to advise us to make some serious introspective decisions and take our new lifestyle into consideration when buying a property. If you are not thinking of buying or selling property, it might be time to do so. There is no better time than the present.