Slow Down in House Prices Expected
Mar 7th, 2007 | 2 Comments »Property News: Property Prices
SA Property experts are noticing a substancial drop in the growth of property prices. House price growth peaked at 35% year on year in 2005, but this figure has since dropped to about 7% recently.
Interest Rates have been a key ingredient in the slow down on of the local property market. New buyers are being scared off by high property prices and increasing affordability problems when applying for New Home Loans.
According to Standard Bank economist Elna Moolman, a slowdown in consumer spending would eventually give the Reserve Bank reason to limit further interest rate hikes this year.
Moolman added that waning investor appetite for buy-to-let residential properties, combined with constrained demand and finances from owner occupants, meant that a slowdown in the market was inevitable.
Speaking to told The Mercury newspaper Maxprop MD Gordon Battersby said: “The market has definitely tightened across the board. We are still getting first-time buyers, but not as many as we had six months ago.”
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April 10th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Well this is kind of a given isn’t it? Surely with the way property prices have increased over the last couple of years and people’s salaries pretty much staying the same with your average standard of living not going up much and people still spending way too much money on things like FANCY cars that this is inevitable… Just my opinion.
May 28th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Does this mean we could see a drop in residential property prices? The current prices together with the increased cost of living has put most prperties outside the reach of the average south – african