Buffalo City Metro Housing Market Report - 2021
As part of our series of reports on the eight metros in South Africa, this report on the residential property market in Buffalo City, provides a detailed analysis of government-sponsored properties, freehold and sectional title homes, new and resale transactions, lending, and first-time homeowners–based on analysis of deeds data as of 30 June 2021. Across the eight metros, as of June 2021, Buffalo City had the smallest residential property market, in terms of number of properties (131 235) and total value (R89.2bn). Approximately one third of these properties are valued between R300 000 – R600 000.
As in previous years, the resale market was far more active in 2020 in BCM than the new build market. Compared to 2019, the total number of new transactions marginally increased in the first year of the pandemic, largely due to the contribution of government housing programmes, while the number of resale transactions dropped. Furthermore, despite record low interest rates in 2020, 1 196 households became homeowners for the first time, a slight decrease from 2019.
With support from the Cities Support Programme of National Treasury, the Citymark project undertakes analysis of South Africa’s residential property markets, with a particular focus on the lower end of the market. Utilising title deeds data obtained from Lightstone Pty Ltd, the analysis separates the market into five segments, allowing the careful examination of the differentiated performance of the entry level (under R300 000), affordable (R300 000 – R600 000), conventional (R600 000 – R900 000), high-end (R900 000 – R1.2m) and luxury (over R1.2m) markets.
CAHF’s work in South Africa is supported by:
