Reflections on the property market

By Stephen de Stadler Chief Executive Officer, Fine & Country South Africa

A retrospective of the residential property market over the past few years should in my humble opinion be prefaced with the disclaimer that ‘this has not been a normal year’. But, when the last few years have all been abnormal in one way or another, does this not mean that abnormality is in fact the new normal?

Is the world as a whole in such a turbulent stage of human capital development that traditional macro-economic policies are not really able to manage economies as they did in the past? How far are we in South Africa from using blockchain technology to facilitate the purchase and sale of residential property? How are we going to deal with that purchaser who wishes to acquire a home using bitcoin?

These questions are outside my particular area of knowledge at this time, but it does make me wonder to what extent we can reliably predict what the future holds.

South Africa has experienced significant levels of turbulence over the past five years. We have had to deal with corruption at a government level such as never experienced before. We had a period where we were unsure as to whether the ruling party would be able to put its house in order and elect a new President, one who would make it his primary objective to ensure that state capture and corruption came to an end.

Then we were hit with the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic.

All of the above events have had a real and negative effect on the economy. An economy is only able to grow when it is effectively balanced; when the income generated is sufficient to meet the expenditure requirements.

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