The Covid pandemic forced a rethink about traditional real estate practices like show houses, offices and neighbourhood drives with buyers. Has an invisible virus changed for good the way we market and sell our homes?
The real estate industry must wait another week before the office of their regulating body, Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB), may (or may not) reopen on 1 July.
The Cape Town deeds office has been in the news quite a bit lately due to closures and slow turn-around times. The said deeds office can easily be said to have been a beacon amongst all the deeds offices in the country – before lockdown.
South Africa is facing long and tough road to economic recovery. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s Supplementary Budget maps out how this will be achieved, and it holds a number of positives for the real estate industry say property leaders.
Initial predictions regarding the future of the residential property market as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown have painted a sombre picture: significant drops in house prices, more supply than demand, and people unable to afford their home loans.
The CEO of the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) stated in their latest annual report “Our vision is to be a sound and trusted world-class regulator that is responsive to and surpasses its stakeholder expectations”. Is this true?
The Cape Town Deeds Office is in deep trouble. Since reopening on 12 May, it closed and reopened twice and operated with such a small staff contingent that the number of backlogged deeds piled up to an astronomical 14 000 by middle June.
Never was the adage, the devil is in the detail, more applicable than in real estate contracts during lockdown when fulfilling key contractual conditions has been extremely difficult and even impossible.
Estate agents are entitled to commission if they are forced to trade without a valid Fidelity Fund Certificate (FFC) due to negligence or reluctance to comply ….
Health and safety are major concerns for all property practitioners during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing, face masks and constant sanitizing are not enough.