The Residential Resale Market in Delft, Western Cape

 Both before and after the advent of democracy in South Africa, the South African government built low income housing on a massive scale. There is now substantial low income housing stock across the country. Most recent data from CAHF’s Citymark estimates 1,6 million of the 6 million residential properties on the deeds registry were subsidised by government. This stock is often referred to as ‘RDP’ or ‘BNG’ housing (after the Reconstruction and Development Programme and the Breaking New Ground housing policy document respectively).

Early post-apartheid policies envisaged RDP housing as an asset for communities and low income households. Indeed, the new housing vision as set out in the 2004 policy, Breaking New Ground policy confirms the Department of Human Settlements’ commitment to ‘ensuring property can be accessed by all as an asset for wealth creation and empowerment’. These policies envisioned a ‘secondary market’, one which caters to the needs of those previously excluded from formal property markets. However, the operation of this secondary housing market has been constrained. There is clearly a need to improve the functioning of the market to enable the empowerment and mobility envisaged by South African policy makers.

This research aims to better understand the functioning of low income housing markets, especially in relation to transactions concerning state-subsidised housing. The study uses Delft, in Cape Town, as case. Delft was chosen because of the wide range of low income housing typologies in the suburb.

This report is based on primary research conducted in Delft in early 2016. It included 229 interviews with residents and property actors in Delft. In addition, existing data on Delft, drawing from the Census 2011, the CAHF CityMark platform, and Lightstone Properties data, form part of this report.

This report was prepared with support from the National Housing Finance Corporation