Mangaung Housing Market Report - 2020

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.

As part of our series of reports on the eight metros in South Africa, this report on the residential property market in Mangaung, Free State,  provides a detailed analysis of government-sponsored properties, freehold and sectional title homes, new and resale transactions, lending, and first-time homeowners. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, the report includes a high-level analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the property market.

In Mangaung, 71% of residential properties were valued below R600 000 — 35% of these were subsidised by the state. The total value (R87.8 billion)  of Mangaung’s property market was the second lowest amongst the eight metros, in 2019. The resale market (86% of all residential transactions) is more active than the market for new build. While resale transactions increased, new transactions declined in 2019. 64% of all transactions in Mangaung were bonded — there were no new bonded transactions and only 9% of bonded resale transactions in the entry market. This indicates that more needs to be done to get banks to support this market with formal credit.

CAHF’s work in South Africa is supported by: