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Wednesday November 24 2021 Sowetan
Lockdown inspired many South Africans to spend time and money on home improvements. / 1 2 3 R F
Make your home your castle Forget fancy holidays, South Africans are splashing out on their homes There are few things more satisfying than admiring one’s house when you have done something significant to shape it into your dream home. But home improvements bring many more tangible advantages than good feelings. Buying a home is probably the biggest and one of the most important investments most of us make in our lives; property ownership is regarded as one of the cornerstones of wealth creation, which is one of the reasons the right to property was enshrined in the SA constitution. While some people will trade up in property during their working lives, many others will probably own only one home — a humble dwelling bought when they were young and limited in what they could put down as security and repay in mortgage instalments. However, regardless of whether one is a one-time buyer or someone who puts their
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You don't need to spend a fortune to transform a room into something you've always dreamed of. / 1 2 3 R F property on the market every few years, one of the best and most cost-effective ways of accelerating the value-enhancement process is to make considered and well executed improvements to one’s home. And improvements come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from a simple lick of paint to transform a dilapidated home, to extending the house by adding a new room or garage or even turning a small house into a double storey.
Property ownership is one of the cornerstone of wealth creation
Some astute investors even target rundown properties they can acquire cheaply and enhance the value substantially by spending a little time, effort and money on whipping them into shape. Kalin Mudaly, growth head at FNB Private Bank lending, says there are many factors that influence the price of a property such as the economy, supply and demand, as well as the value of homes in a certain area. “The nature of the reno-
vation, along with these other factors, will determine whether value is added to the property and to what extent. This means when the property is sold, depending on these factors, the owner may be able to only recover a portion of the improvement costs or more than the cost.” Many people have recognised this and during the Covid-19 pandemic there seems to have been a substantial increase in people doing home improvements. This is confirmed by Build It MD Rob Lister, who says that since the end of the strict lockdown in May 2020, South Africans in both urban and rural areas have been putting their hard-earned cash into their homes. Mudaly says that while timing is certainly one of the factors that influence the decision on whether to renovate, sell or do neither, there are many other issues to consider. These include the location of the property, the length of time the owner intends keeping the property, the type of renovation and whether it is cost-effective or constitutes overcapitalisation, the quality of the home improvements, and how the work will be financed.