 Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I think I've said good morning to almost every one of you Good morning, Almerie Where more Celeste? Wonderful. Hi Melinda Hello, everyone. We're about to start the session. Good morning, Vilma. Good morning. I Hope you have a cup of coffee with you. Good morning, Carl van den Buur. Good morning, Inna. Good morning, Brahm We have another great session lined up Today, I have my coffee. I hope you have yours. I have a notebook. I Have my cell phone ready because at some point we're gonna ask you to take out your cell phone so that we can play a Menti game. Hello, Lisette. Hello, Peter Philly's Good morning. Good morning. Good morning studio. Good morning to you We saw your camera on this morning. That was kind of cute Okay, I think let's give it one more minute. Maybe in the meantime, can you tell me where in the world you are? Joining us from. Are you in Clark's Dorp? Are you in Blumfontein? Are you in Karkamas, Colesburg? Kuruman, Sutherland. Where are you this morning? Tell me where you're from. I am sitting in Bramfontein. I can see the Witt's University from where I'm sitting in this little private property makeshift studio. Hello, Almal, Blumfontein, Bethlehem. I see you. I See you, Evelyn Kruger from Jarvitz Properties, Blumfontein. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to this very special nexus Zuanin, you are in Kempton Park. Fantastic. And then we also have Harthebias Port, Rastenburg Northwest, Melinda from Freyberg, Haidtoyki Gold here, Blumfontein. And then we also have Johann here from Expello in Johannesburg. Did you hear me say Johannesburg? My goodness. Celeste is joining us from Umslanga. So today we are looking forward to another wonderful day. We started our nexus series yesterday and Let me quickly greet because we must greet. We must say hello first. Thank you for joining us for our first nexus series of the year. I'm Tracy Lee Miller, and I'm the brand and marketing executive here at Private Property. I'm going to be your host for this morning's session. So maybe you know, but maybe you don't, but the word nexus actually means a series of connections linking two or more things. And that's exactly what this nexus event is about. It's a series of digital networking events that cultivates people connection and we share knowledge and we network. Our first event was hosted in November last year and it was really, really very successful and well received by the industry. So we decided let's bring it back as private and make it a little bit bigger and better than before. One way that we've done this is by tailoring the events to specific regions so that the insights that we talk about and talk through and share are really relevant to you and your area and it gives you the best possible chance of achieving success in a very tough market. We have an excellent lineup for you today, but before we get started, allow me to just point out a couple of things on this platform. Hi, Palesa. Hi, Jean. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome. Welcome to everyone. If you look at the platform on your right hand side, on the right hand side of the screen, you'll see chat where everyone is greeting and interacting with each other. If you don't mind or if you can do me a big favor, won't you find like a smiley face or send an emoji here that represents kind of like how you feel at the moment. This is my emoji. It's a green heart because we recently, about a year ago, tomorrow, in fact, we rebranded. Drop either a green heart or a smiley face or something so I can get you using those emojis like young people use emojis. Right next door, you click, if you click participants, then you can see all the delegates that are here. And if you hang your cursor next to their names, you can send them a message directly or you'll be able to do, you can look at their profile or you can send them a message directly, like I said. The last button here at the end is really very cool. So this button helps us to ask questions, whether we want to add our names to it or whether we want to ask the question anonymously. So I'm going to ask a question. The question is, what is your favorite song? I actually wanted to play some real dance music, but unfortunately I couldn't make it work on the system. But I know that, for instance, in the Northern Cape, there's that beautiful music that you have and then dancing means a lot of stuff, so it's done. And if they start and you know this, maybe tell me in the chat what your favorite song is. And another feature of this Q&A button here is if you like the question, you can upload the question by clicking that little triangle at the top of the question. You can see I even uploaded my own question and more of my colleagues and friends. Are you guys also upvoting the question? You can then use the chat to answer that question. So what's your favorite song? My favorite song is Happy Birthday to You. So this platform is incredibly interactive and it's just, it's even more interactive when we get to interact with you. For this session, I want to do something very special because we're not that many in the room. I'm going to ask that one of the questions that we pose here in the Q&A, we're going to bring someone up to answer that question. So someone that is a guest, maybe think of it like in the olden days, if you attended an event, then someone would pass you the mic and you'd have to stand up. So for this one, when we bring you on to the stage, and I know I'm jumping this on studio now, sorry studio, but when we bring the person on stage, they have to switch on their camera, they have to switch on their mic, and they have to just greet us, say a few words, maybe share some of their thoughts with us. And that is something that we haven't done before. It's going to be something brand to try out together. Other than interacting and engaging on the platform, I'd like you to know one or two more things. The first one is when people ask a good question, we're going to give you a prize. The best question gets a prize and the person who engages the most, we will also call you out and give you a prize just to keep that, you know, that interest going. And then finally, we have courtesy of the AISA managed to get this session registered for one and a half non-verifiable CPT points. All you have to do is stick around till the end of the session and then click the link that will take you to the place where you register for the non-verifiable CPT points. That was a mouthful. So let me just hear from you guys in the room. Are you with me? Do I have to repeat anything? Can I quickly just let's get the first speaker ready in the meantime studio? Tell me where there we go. Yay for the CPT points. Yes, honey. We want those points. Good morning, Paul. How are you? Good morning, Tando. Hello, everybody. Greetings, greetings, greetings. Thank you so much for joining us today. So let's get started. Please can we welcome on to the stage the Apsa Regional Manager for Home Loans Central, which includes Free State, North West and Northern Cape. His name is Tando Majola. Hi, Tando. How are you doing? Good morning, Tracy. And thank you so much, Tracy, for having me this morning and also good morning to all the participants from the beautiful city of Is this in Blumfontein? Are you in Blumfontein? Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Wonderful. Wonderful. Welcome, Tando. I'm going to switch off my camera and my microphone. Delegates and friends, please comment in the box, ask questions, interact, drop a drop an emoji if Tando says something that kind of makes you go wow. So let's keep that energy going just because we can't see each other physically. It doesn't mean that we won't be able to feel each other's presence in this room today. So I'm switching off. Good luck to you, Tando. Thanks, Tracy. Once again, good morning to all the participants from the beautiful city of Roses, Blumfontein. My name is Tando Majola and I look after the homeless business in central for free state. I'm also standing in for my colleague, Narasa David, who is looking after Northwest. A warm welcome to everyone this morning. I'm very honored to be part of the session with our industry experts in a huge thank you to our strategic partners, private property for having such awesome event. We're going to start. We're going to go to our first slide for presentation. Let's start 2020. Wow, what a year. And what a journey it has been for all of us. It feels just like yesterday when we celebrated the box winning the World Cup and no one knew what's ahead in 2020. Once again, proving that no one is a crystal ball seeing this future. Overt 19 has been a huge impact, not only for our industry, our provinces, our country, but to the world at large. If we look back to exactly a year ago, we were getting ready to go into lockdown level five, which had a huge impact and a complete shutdown for the property industry. And one for many of us that meant that we were unable to do what we love and do best for almost two months. I'm quite sure a lot of us had to rethink what was important for us. And I'm also sure over the past year, we all have someone or know of someone who has lost a loved one for many in our country. It has impacted the way we love, earn a living and conduct our business. Can we go over to slide three, please? So what did this mean for the property industry? I'd like to call this slide a tale of two halves, two very opposing halves. The lockdown essentially put us in a position where we took two months out of the economic activity and this then resulted in a very devastating impact on the industry. We experienced a decline in property sales. For us as a bank, we saw this being reflected in the decline of application volumes. This was during the first half of 2020, we were experienced a 9% decline compared to 2019. However, the second half of the year of 2020 showed us a different picture, quite the opposite of the first half. It was indeed very remarkable for us to witness the property sales bouncing back in the second half of the year, which I believe all of us were very happy for. During this period as a bank, we saw an application volumes growing by 36%. So from a negative 9% in age one to a positive 36% in age two, really two very opposing views. In addition, from a debt's office perspective, we saw the growth in activity translate into the greater registrations with the second half of the year. The registrations equate to more than double the number of registration in the first half of the year. Another interesting point to share as well, we kept on seeing quality of customers coming through the door last year. We were seeing the quality of the customer holding out as we entered age two and this enabled us to keep our approval rates in line with those of pre-lockdown levels, a remarkable recovery. Hail of two halves, a dramatic downturn in the first half of the year and then even more dramatic increase in the second half of the year. And we move to slide four, what are the customers saying about ownership? So watching all the activity in the market, it was indeed very exciting, but exactly what did this tell us about what our customers were thinking? Obviously, as we all know, our customers during such a difficult time have different views. The ownership sentiment index is also affectionately known as the EPSA HSI, watching the movement and sentiment across different customer types and provinces as well. The EPSA HSI is a proprietary index which tests customers' confidence in the market. It was very pleasing for us to see that at the end of last year, the customer confidence was at its highest, not just for 2020 period, but since the actual inception of the index in 2015. And we can then definitely agree it was remarkable to see those results. There are four main contributors to the confidence increase of 4% in quarter four of 2020, which resulted in the overall confidence ending the year at 80%. Firstly, we look at the demand side. There were few factors to consider, one being the ability, the ability of property to increase in value over time. Secondly, our current low interest rate cycle made debt financing more affordable. And when we look at the supply side, we have seen support that has originated from resilient house prices. The second factor was the renewed motivation by owners to invest in their existing properties. What we've seen from a regional perspective looking at central and looking at specifically free state, there was a sentiment results with 75%, Northern Cape with a 60% which were below national sentiment and of 80% and Northwest were at 90%, which was above the national sentiment, definitely promising there for the Northwest. And we move on to slide six, please. Now we look at the overall sentiment from a regional perspective and looking at this picture, I just want to, we're sharing the, looking at a big metros across the country, looking at K-10, K-10 and Western Cape, and it is most pleasing to see the overall, all of these regions have shown an increase in the overall sentiment. We must acknowledge the notable increase by the Western Cape. In comparison to the prior years, a huge factors to consider would be the semi-creation. This drive, the sentiment could attribute to customers having the need to work from anywhere they want to be virtually. At the heart of these decisions are lifestyle and the ease of comfort of working from home, which meant that people wanted to move to areas which were they were comfortable with. K-10, however, remains the region with a higher sentiment at 81%. And this was evident by the largest increase in applications coming by a K-10 last year. As mentioned, free states with a 75%, Northern Cape with a 60%, below the national sentiment of 80% and Northwest at 90% above the national sentiment of 80%. Just a few points, there was a 78% sentiment of buying over renting. Ultimately the question of why rent if you can afford to buy is a huge factor to consider. The sentiment was 79% towards investing and 86% which was in the free state and 86% was in Northwest. Moving on to our slide 7, we looked at four customer types. The first type is the first time home owner, the home owner, not first time buyer, the renter and the investor. When looking at the home owner sentiment by these four types, we can see that the customer types have seen an improvement in sentiment by the end of the year, thus boosting the overall confidence. The two customer types that really stood out as a very, very interesting with the existing owners, the orange line in the projected screen and the investors in the dark purple. The existing owners always lacked the industry more than most of the time, most likely due to the lower than expected financial benefit of going to the process of selling a property. However, there are the customers who have seen the greatest growth in sentiment from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020 with a 10% increase. Very noteworthy to mention is where the sentiment was in quarter one of 2020 to the change in quarter four of 2020. Once again, this could be driven by the new ways of work, the lifestyle impact lockdown where customers are looking for homes with a study, a bigger garden for the kids, or there isn't the urgent need to be close to work as normal with most South Africans working from home. The low interest rates also provided them the affordability to purchase new property. Looking at the investor, the highest drop in sentiment in the heart of the lockdown and investors chose not to add to their proper portfolios and adopted a wait and see approach. As we all know, cash is king. This was influenced by the economic activity as well as a sharp increase in rental defaults. Obviously, as we know, customers started to feel the pressures of the lockdown and the pandemic as customers finances were impacted by the lockdown. They are ever bonds back and the return to the top of the highest sentiment lightly above the first time home buyers who drove most of the search in activity last year. If there is one thing this slide teaches us that 2020 was the year to get into property. From a central perspective, we saw a definite increase in the first time home buyers and also we've been noting that existing property owners investing quite substantially in their existing properties to make it comfortable for them to work from home. When we move to slide eight, looking at the buying versus the selling sentiment in the market, the sentiment towards the top line in the red returned to 2019 and ended 8% higher with a year on year comparison. This is the main driver behind the increase in the interest in properties. I'm also sure you are experiencing this in the market and experienced this last year as well. We must all ever note the bottom line where the sentiments towards selling are still not recovered to the 2019 levels. Because as decreased by 7% year on year, whilst we note the gradual improvement, we are still at the pre lockdown levels. This means that the gap between wanting to sell and wanting to buy continues to be widened, meaning that there are even more willing buyers than there are willing sellers in the market now. Uncertain times wanting to hold on to their properties rather started a new 20 to 30 years cycle. So we believe that obviously that's why we don't have such a lot of sellers in the market that they want to hold on you to uncertain times. We have seen this impacting the continuation of property prices in the market, especially in the price segments of 750,000 to 1.5 million where most of the activity occurred. It is also placing pressure on stock in this price segment, which may result in the property prices starting to increase. Purchase prices in general has been higher as buyers has been reaching to buy more expensive properties. Given the improvements in affordability resulting from the reduction in interest rates and we anticipate that activity will start to increase in the next price band. From a central perspective, we have found the pressure of most stock in the market and we found that pressure with availability of stock in especially more in Blumfontein looking at how we see multiple listings and also multiple submissions on one property. When we move to my slide nine, so what is the future for? Well, what is the crystal ball of property saying for our industry? Firstly, for sure you're not yet out of the woods when it comes to the pandemic and there's various views on a third and a fourth wave concerns in the country. Looking at interest rates, we have established by now that the low interest rate cycle has been the driver of a positive sentiment and a coincidental increase in home prices. So, let's make it count while it lasts. We believe that almost interest rates have essentially reached the bottom of the cycle will remain at the current levels until quarter four 2021, where they will start gradually rising again. The rise we believe will be so gradual that the interest that the interest rates will not have recovered to pre-lockdown levels by the end of 2023. As we move on to our slide 11, house prices. The recent developments supporting an increase in the number of willing buyers has placed an upward pressure on prices, although it remains to be seen by how much they will support an increase. Purchase prices have generally been higher as buyers have been reaching to buy more expensive properties, given the improvements in affordability and resulting from the reduction in the interest rates. As we move on to slide 12, looking at the market growth by our provinces and the predictions going forward with the red bars at the bottom of reflecting market growth in 2020. You can see that across the board, regions performed lower than in 2019, demonstrating that despite the amazing recovery in age two, in most instances they were not sufficient to recover year on year fully to 2019 levels. Once again, drawing you to the tail of two halves, looking at age one last year and looking at age two. The top row shows the predictions for 2021, which we calculated at the end of last year. We can see that expectations are most positive across the regions for growth in 2021, with a particular if I noted in central at almost 6% at 5.9% growth expected for 2021. However, in many cases we saw the coming of 2020. With our application in December up 47% versus 2019, we think that a market may grow even more than what we have predicted. After two full months of performance in 2021, our application volumes continue to be resilient, up 21%. If we compare February 2020 versus February 2021, before the pandemic, there is still a level of uncertainty in forecasting models for the year ahead. We will still also know the deeds of the disclosure arising from some regions and the uncertainty of a third wave, all crystal balls are little murky now. We've been experiencing disclosures in Bloemfontein's digital office over the last few weeks and I believe it might not be the end of it as we are in challenging times. The one thing that holds true, however, in somewhat having throughout the heart of the pandemic last year is the South African's aspirations of owning your own home. It remains a core aspiration and it is where your roots are placed. And I think we can definitely, as industry players, be very proud and happy for the role we are playing in assisting these South Africans aspiring to own a home and making their dreams come true. Ladies and gentlemen, all of you continue to make dreams of South Africans come true. So, thank you to you all for assisting us in partnering with us on the journey we aspire to house the nation and shape the in full way. We are Apsa homelands. I thank you so much, allowing me for the platform and wish you all of the best for 2021. Thank you Tando, thank you so much. Please stay on the stage with me. I see there's a couple of questions that came through on the chat, not on the Q&A tab, but because it's not too many, I think we can handle it here. Tando, thank you for the insights. It's incredible. There's a question here from Johann Janse van Reensburg. He's asking, are there home loan bond applications for recent graduates from university who started working even though they have no credit profile? That's one of the questions. And then there's a long question. I think maybe do you want to touch on that one, Tando? Yes, thank you, Tracy. Tracy, we have a product which we offer to young professionals, which is one of the best offerings in the market. Looking at graduates earning up to 35,000, looking at their age, younger than 35 years. So definitely looking at the qualifications up to NKF8. So definitely we have solutions for those young graduates who are entering their first properties into the market. And obviously we're also looking at offering loan to value up to 105%. So definitely, Johann, there is a product which we can look at. Awesome. Maybe if someone, thank you so much, Tando. Maybe we can get someone to reach out to Johann and maybe just expose him to that product. Mike Spencer, who was a table guest of mine in the session before we actually started. Mike is asking, or saying, in the free state region, there has been little development for the past 10 years with high purchase numbers in the less expensive property market. Do you think that there will be a shortage of rental property properties when the economy up turns? And then he goes on to say, we are finding that many student accommodation units are being led to non-student tenants, which indicates that there could be a shortage in that market. But with many investors selling to owner occupiers, the number of units to rent is being restricted. When the market changes, there's likely to be a severe shortage in the rental market and a strong upward surge in rentals. You know what, Mike? We are actually, our next speaker is your head smuts and Jan Davel from PayProp. And they're going to share some really interesting insights around the rental market. Tando, if you want to just tackle the first part of that question or respond to Mike, I'll mute Mike. Thanks, Tracy. Yes, as mentioned earlier, we've seen that obviously stock in, especially in the Bloom Fountain, where we had quite a large number of rentals, especially for students becoming under pressure. But we're also quite aware that there's quite a number of a few developments lined up, obviously going through the processes for approvals, which might create a bit of stock in the market, and we can then see the movement in the market. So definitely, it is actually a point of concern, looking at the stock levels, but I'm quite sure that with developments coming up and developers looking for opportunities, we can definitely... And I think Mike also dropped a question in the Q&A section there saying there is a shortage of low end stock but few sites zoned and serviced. What is EPSA doing about the provision of new bulk building sites? I think your earlier question, Mike, also asking about a product, I think, let me quickly look at it. We responded to Mike, and perhaps Mike, if Tando, if you just want to respond to this question of what is EPSA doing about the provision of new bulk building sites. My suggestion is that you guys take this offline and immediately connect after the session so that you can discuss this, because it sounds like a very specific question that Mike is asking. Thanks, Tracy. I will keep in touch with Mike and also we're working very closely with our commercial property finance team, who is looking after the commercial property financing, financing of obviously in terms of our infrastructure investment. Okay, Tando, I think we're going to leave it there for now. You can get into the limo and leave the stage. Thank you so much. Guys, let's say thank you to Tando for taking us through that presentation. I'm sure there were some interesting insights there specifically in your market, in your area. Again, I just want to say thank you to EPSA, our partners, in bringing this nexus through to you and creating this platform for engagement. I can already start seeing the tables turning. Alright, let's move on to a little bit of fun. I'm going to ask you to take out your cellular phones and go to a website called www.menti.com. www.menti.com, M E N T I dot com. And then if you will be so kind as to enter a code, this is the code. Thank you studio studio just drop that code into the chat. The code is 4562813745628137. Yes, Paul Kruger, the clerk van Logenberg, we are going to make these presentations available again afterwards because of course a person can be a little bit distracted when you're attending such events. But also if you can give us a week or two, we just want to complete this sort of the nexus, which will end this week on Thursday. And then we'll put the content together and send it out to you so that you can again go through it at your own leisure and then make contact with the relevant people. I think I have a couple of people on the mentee platform. Celeste, Celeste, your head, Volma, Jean, Marianne, Paul, please put in your real name and not a strange pseudonym because it will come up on the screen and it'll be very embarrassing if we have to, if we have to call you out. I hope you have a nice cup of coffee ready there. Johan Jansa, you're in. Peter, you're in. Hanli, you're in. Carl, you're in. Palesa, I see you. I think let's get started, studio. You can catch us. If you're not in yet, you can catch us along the way. We're going to do this a second time. What is your job title or your role within the company? Are you a principal agent, state agent, other CEO, executive, franchise owner, owner? Okay. Fantastic. We can see then the majority of the people in the room are principal agents, managing brokers and a state agents and intern agents. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for letting us know. One CEO in the room. Hello. What type of real estate transactions do you specialize in? Sales and rentals? Sales only or rentals only? Boom. Look at those responses coming in so quickly. Sometimes you answer so quickly and the wrong answer and you can't go back. I've experienced that before in the past. So, okay. Sales and rentals both and then sales. Okay. Fantastic. Let's go to the next question. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Do you multitask when attending virtual meetings? Can you guess who asked that question? That was obviously me. Zero, sorry. The first option is yes, I'm guilty. Let's see how many people are very honest in the room. Yes, I'm guilty. Would have been my response as well. The second option is my mind tends to wonder as it does. The third option is no, I'm 100% focused. I think that's Ben and Trish and then sometimes. But yeah, the majority of you saying, you know what, I'm a little bit guilty. Sometimes multitask when attending these virtual events and meetings. Let's go to the next question. We're almost at the end. In your opinion, is this a buyer or sellers market? In your opinion, is this a buyer or sellers market? You had to think about that one for a little bit. Yes, a lot of people saying initially buyers and a few saying sellers market. Is there someone in the audience that wants to come up and tell us why they say buyers market or let me say why do you say sellers market when so many are saying buyers market. If you are willing to come up and give us your thought on why you think it's a sellers market, please just drop your name into the chat and Ben and Studio will get in touch with you. If you have one more question, please studio. Yeah, a lot more people saying that it's a buyer's market versus a sellers market, perhaps the person one of the four that says it's a sellers market. Are you keen to tell us why. And then here we go in one word and I'm going to ask you to please keep it, keep it, keep it clean. Give me one word how you would describe 2021 so far. So exciting comes up promising interesting cautious. I crap awesome chaotic opportunities coming through eventful coming through. Can I remind everyone that we're only in March, I feel like it's already June July. So yeah fresh exciting eventful active chaotic. And, and a little bit crap as well for some. All right, thank you productive I like products are obviously more more people saying exciting and promising which is why in the word cloud that comes up. If you could change one thing in the South African real estate industry right now what would it be this is the last question in this series. And then we're going to take a short five seven minute break before we bring up the CEO of pay prop. He'll be followed by the pay prop head of data and analytics your head smarts. They're going to take us through the 2020 rental marketing review and what the future holds. So let's have a look at what you said the what your responses were to this final question in the mentee first mentee series. If you could change one thing in the South African real estate industry right now what would it be faster registration period, you'll change the regulator, you'll try to unlock more stock. The EAB management. Education of buyers and sellers something as private property were also incredibly keen on getting rid of time wasters. Okay, we hear you for rental agencies and homeowners to have more options to protect their properties or portfolios. For example, an eviction management service, which expel offers in the industry. Another thing you would change is teach estate agents and agencies to work together and not against one another. Yeah, that collaboration became and partnership became such an important thing during during lockdown especially. And then we've got EAB processes as well that one of the things that you would change if you could with 12 responses in total. Okay, let's move on. Thank you so the price of NQF for and logbook training as well as the EAB. Thank you so much for for your thoughts. I'm looking at the chat here to see if there's anything that I've missed. Hillary Evans you're saying trouble with clearance certificates. So do I have someone willing to tell me why they think it's a sellers market versus buyers market. Ben, can you keep an eye on the on the chat for me and then let's see if we can bring bring you on after the break. We're taking a break now. Let's be back here in about five minutes when we will bring on your head smut and Jan Darval from PayProp who'll share some really interesting insights with us around the rental market. Thank you so much again for joining us for this Nexus in partnership with Apsa and with the participation of PayProp and partnership of PayProp as well. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you, Celeste. Okay, so back to our national rental growth and inflation graph. As you can see inflation is the in blue and rental growth is in red. So the past two years and especially over the last year you can see that rental growth really really took a knock and this is mostly due to lockdown. Yeah, in 2019 rental growth, sorry, trended in 2019 rental growth trended between three and four percent for most of the time. And then here in March came lockdown. Rental growth was under severe pressure and in November we even saw negative rental growth. So what that means is this is a year on year number. So from November 2019 to November 2020, the average rent that we saw in PayProp actually got cheaper by 10 Rand, but still it was a first. So why is rental growth under such immense immense pressure at the moment. And I think the affordability reason goes without saying we know of many people who lost their jobs or lost their income whether it was fully or partially. When lockdown was announced, and that obviously put severe pressure on someone's finances. So that played a role and also because of finances, many people might not be looking to move to a larger and a more expensive property. So on the demand side, these downward pressure on rental prices and then also on the supply side. There's a bit of an oversupply of property and that's for two reasons. We saw many EB&B properties being moved from the short term rental market to the long term rental market because they were standing empty when no one could travel. And then secondly, due to the low interest rates, many investors were buying, probably are still buying, buy to lead properties and that again floods the market with rental properties. That oversupply also puts downward pressure on the rental growth and we don't see these two factors changing anytime soon. So we expect the rental market to remain under pressure for at least this year. Now if we look at the same data and we look at it quarterly, so again we're measuring year on year. We can see at the end of last year, rental growth from 2019's last quarter to 2020's last quarter was only 0.2%. If you look at the trend line in blue, you can see that as I mentioned earlier, rental growth was trending between 3% and 4% for most of 2019. That went into 2020 and then of course at the end of Q1 lockdown was announced and then you can see the effect that had on the rental growth. So now let's compare the three provinces to the national rental growth. Starting with the Free State, you can see that the Free State outperforms the national rental growth by far. That was the case in 2019. Free State saw rental growth rates of 8.4% in the beginning of 2019. Again at the end of 2019, that unfortunately due to lockdown also trended downward and ended the year at 1.6%. Looking at Northwest, not such a rosy picture. Even though the province had great rental growth in 2019, the last two quarters of 2020 actually showed negative rental growth. Now it's worth mentioning that in our system, north or west is a bit of an anomaly. A few of our big clients do a lot of student housing and that affects stuff like the average price, the average age, on the type of tenant that a credit check is done on because it's usually done on parents of students. So it all looks a bit out of whack. But yeah, two negative growth quarters at the end of 2020 for the Northwest. Northern Cape is quite up and down, also linked to mining quite a lot. You can see that it really recovered well from 2019 into 2020. And then of course, lockdown had a negative effect on the rental growth. The province ending the year with negative 3% growth almost. So to put it into perspective, you can see three states has adherence of 6,500 grand at the end of the year. Moving on to the Northwest, the cheapest province, 5,200 grand. But like I said, that's mostly due to student housing, which is a lot cheaper. And then the Northern Cape, one of the more expensive provinces in the country. Five out of the nine provinces had negative rental growth at the end of 2020, which is actually quite unheard of, but we don't expect this to change anytime soon. Moving on to arrears. So when we look at arrears, we look at two different metrics. The percentage tenants in arrears. In other words, how many tenants have outstanding balances. And then we also look at the size of this arrears. And that we express relative to rent. So if we look at the first one, the percentage tenants in arrears. You can see that pre lockdown, we were at 19.4% nationally. In other words, one out of every five tenants had some level of arrears. That of course, after the announcement of hard lockdown jumped up to one out of every four tenants. It's good to see that this metric has improved throughout the year, but it's still not at the pre lockdown level. The same can be said for the average arrears percentage. So just to clarify what this 78% means is that in the first quarter, a tenant who had rental arrears owed 78% of one month's rent. That of course, due to lockdown jumped up a bit. It peaked here in quarter three, where the other one peaked in quarter two. And also good to see that this recovered in the fourth quarter as well. Now if we compare the provinces once again, you'll see that the three states over last year mirrored this trend. Peaked in quarter two at 28.9% are almost one in three tenants in the free state. Were in arrears. And again, that recovered to 25%. That's against the lower than at the beginning of the year before lockdown, where 23% of tenants were in arrears. Looking at the average size of arrears, again above the national average at the starting point peaked in the fourth quarter and then ended slightly below the natural average of 95%. Looking at Northwest as one of the highest percentage of tenants in arrears, along with the free state, started at 26% above the national average of 19. Peaked in the second quarter and then slowly recovering and ended the year at 25%. Looking at the average earlier size again, started at a level above the national average of 91% peaked at 107% of the mansorings and then also recovered in the last quarter to 101%. Last province, the Northern Cape, exactly the same trend. It peaked in the second quarter and then actually in the third quarter, it was below the national average and again recovered further to the third quarter. So it also ended the year above the national average, but it is not too far from where it started before lockdown. Looking at the average arrears percentage, started very much in line. It didn't increase too much. This is one of two provinces that actually peaked in the second quarter, but the increase in the average arrears size was really almost negligible if you compare it to some of the other provinces and ended quite below the national average at 86% of one mansorings. So that's at least some good news for the Northern Cape. Why do we see these patterns? So as you can imagine, when lockdown hit, many tenants were quite uncertain about the future cash flow, whether they're able to go to work, when will they be able to go to work, how much savings do they have. So many of them stopped paying their rent in full. That's why it peaked in the second quarter. And then after the economy opened from the 1st of June, tenants started paying their rent in full again and where they could even pay off their arrears because now they were more certainty around the cash flow. The reason why the average arrears only peaked in the third quarter is because this metric is a little more sticky. So tenants who had low levels of arrears and who were able to clear the debt or their debt did so and that pushed up the average. So like I said, the remaining arrears are quite sticky. If you think about it, the only way for this average arrears size to actually decrease is for someone to firstly pay their rent in full and then on top of that, pay extra on that. And in the current economic climate, that is quite difficult to do for many tenants. Looking at credit metrics, I'm not going to go on about this for too long. I just want to highlight one or two things. So we look at quite a few metrics when we do this. This data is from credit checks that's pulled through the pay crop system. So it doesn't necessarily track current tenants. It looks at the type of person or the credit profile of someone who is applying for a rental property. So just keep that in mind. So at the start of last year, one of the big ones is major delinquency. So how many tenants have a major delinquency against their name? So that could be either you're in default or you have a notice against your name or you were three months or more in arrears within the last 12 months. Here's a bit of a list. And you can see started at 18% and then as we can expect, that went up a bit in the second quarter. And as with arrears, this improved towards the end of the year. The other one that I want to highlight is the debt-to-income ratio. We all know that the repo rate was lowered quite substantially throughout the year last year. And you can see the effect of that on the debt-to-income ratio. It started the year at 47.9%, which is actually a little bit higher than its normal level. And then that declined down to 40% of the end of the year, which is really good to see. Of course, if people spend less of their net income on debt, they have more disposable income. So that also increased to just over 30% at the end of the year. And then quite surprisingly, looking at overall credit part, and that's something you can read in a credit score, you can see that this actually increased or improved during the year. Only by three points, but it is still an improvement and it's not something that I was expecting. So now, if we compare the three provinces against national, and I'm not again not going to go on about this for too long, I just want to give you an indication of where the provinces measure against their national average. So if starting from the bottom, credit score slightly lower, debt, rent, affordability, disposable income, all in line. And then more tenants have major lingonesses in the free state. The income growth was negative and there's also a lower net income in the free state than what we saw nationally. Moving on to the Northwest. And remember, so these credit checks are often done on a parent and not necessarily on the tenant who's a student in the paper called where we do a lot of student housing through the system. Income at 33,000, not too bad, but again below the national average. Income growth was negative. Quite substantial, major delinquencies is substantially lower than the national average at 14%. Debt is in line. The rent-to-income ratio, because of the very low rents in the Northwest, you'll remember it's the cheapest province. People spent less of the income on rent, have more disposable income and also have better credit scores. This can also be attributed to the fact that it is mostly or usually older people on these credit checks are performed and they often have better credit records. Lastly, moving on to the Northern Cape. At the end of the year, there was some good income growth. Income levels are below the national average. Almost one in three tenants in the Northern Cape has a major delinquency against their name, and that just highlights how important it is to beat tenants properly if you are looking for good tenants. Debt ratio looks a bit better than national, more disposable income as a percentage, but unfortunately this credit score is 12 points lower than the national average. That is probably due to this high number of tenants with major delinquencies in the province. So why did credit metrics improve? And if I say credit metrics improve, I mean why did the credit score overall not drop substantially because we know that most tenants have financial difficulty. And there are a few reasons. These are mostly educated cases, but we know from, I mean we all heard it in the news that lower income consumers in general were hit harder when lockdown came. So for job losses, et cetera, and it's possible that these lower income tenants who've lost their income moved out of their rental market in the short term. So it could also be that tenants are actually looking at their finances in a different way. And that's why I think it's important to consider that there are fewer credit checks on these tenants as well. Or hopefully, everyone had a bit of a rethink about their finances. So it could also be that tenants are actually looking at their finances in a different way. Spending more responsibly, servicing the debt. Lower interest rates, as I mentioned, had an effect on the debt-to-income ratio. You can see that there's a smaller percentage of income being spent on debt. And like I also mentioned, we were expecting credit metrics to worsen. And we were also expecting good tenants to leave their rental market because they might be purchasing their own properties, but it doesn't matter. That's the case. So that is at least some good news. Then for the last section, sneak peek of the server results. So every year. Well, this was the second year, but we look at utility part. And then we have a few categories. So I'll touch on the most interesting results from these. So 95% of the participants, they were going to purchase their own properties. But it doesn't look like that's the case. They work in the property industry. 69% were either a business owner or a rental agent. And then 64% of respondents had rental books of having 30 properties or fewer. Looking at technology, this one should come as no surprise. 55% of respondents said that the use of technology increased during COVID in their business. People were forced to work from home and just make a new plan. So that is not surprising at all. Looking at virtual meetings and 3D tours. I was quite surprised by this one. And I say 70% of respondents said they are here to stay. And 69% of respondents said it's more productive to increase automation than to increase the workforce. This is a great example of working smarter and not harder. Looking at a few portfolio stats, and these will highlight the effects of COVID on the rental market. 70% of respondents said that their rental increases they put through during 2020 were lower than usual. 93% of people said that they made some other payment arrangement with a tenant. That should show you just how many tenants actually lost a part of their income. 55% said that they have more vacant properties now than the year before. And 64% said that they have lowered their commission in order to keep a landlord on their books. Now, this is a bit of a problematic number because commission is your main income driver when you have a rental business. And once you've lowered that commission percentage, it's quite difficult to push that back up. So just something to keep in mind. Looking at challenges for the year 2020, 51% of participants said that the biggest challenge is finding the tenants and that the biggest stressor for the year that we are currently in, 68% said that they are worried about the ongoing effect of COVID for 2020. And I'll end on a bit of good news. How optimistic were our participants about the future of the rental market? Only 5% said negative, 17% said neutral. And a whopping 78% said that they were actually optimistic about the future of the rental market. Had a look at the previous year's results and then only 62% of respondents said that they are optimistic about the rental market. So perhaps we're all thinking about life a bit differently after COVID and we are perhaps all a bit more optimistic about the future. That's it from me. If you want more information on rent areas and credit metrics, you can download the latest annual rental index. I'll drop that link for you in the chat as well. I will now hand over to Jan, to tell you a bit about what you can expect in the near future. Thank you, Yoet. Can I open the camera of this for echo purposes? There we go. Thank you very much. Well, good morning, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. I'm always delighted to chat to Central South Africa being a lighted born and bred in the Northern Cape. I'm more specifically a tattoo. I always love chatting to you guys and I probably should have done it in Afrikaans, but at least you will pick up on my accent that I am from your area. Well, from a paperup side, from paperup side, it's our privilege and our pleasure to participate in this awesome event. I want to thank Amasi, Tracy Lee, Cole Ben and the rest of the awesome team at Private Property for affording us this opportunity. Now, today I'm not going to share a PowerPoint presentation and beautiful pictures because I think I would have had to title that Death by PowerPoint, as I am going to talk to you about the future, looking into the future and more specifically looking at legislation and regulation that has an impact. I'm going to place an emphasis on the rental industry, property rental industry, and I'm going to just remind you of where we are at present. Now, as you all know, the Property Practitioners Act was promulgated or published on 3 October 2019 already. And that being the case, you may be wondering why we as estate agents are still working in accordance with the Estate Agency Affairs Act of 1976. And I think we all agree that this 45-year-old piece of legislation is overdue for replacement. The Estate Agency Affairs Act dates back to an era before the internet, before digital marketing, before social media, and very importantly, also before automated and integrated pi-man platforms such as PIPRO. So the old act simply does not cater for today's realities and the question is, what is the future old? So considering the Property Practitioners Act, it's important that we remember that any new act in itself only sets out broad principles of new law. It doesn't deal with the implementation thereof. And that is where the regulations to an act come in, setting out the implementation and the application of the act. Now, although the Property Practitioners Act was published in October 2019, its regulations have not yet been finalized or published, and we're still awaiting that. And only once these regulations are published in the government cassette will the act actually be implemented and then we will all have to work in accordance with this new act. And when is that likely to be? Well, we don't know, but what we do know is that the draft regulations to the Property Practitioners Act were published for public comment already in March last year, and due to the COVID-19 and lockdown regulations, the opportunity for us as real estate professionals to submit comments was extended to 20 November last year, and since then, there hasn't been much. So what can we expect from these regulations? Now, it is important that you must understand I'm not trying to give you legal advice. I simply want to point you in the right direction. I'm going to show you two different sections of the act, and then I'm going to deal with one of the regulations, and I'm not going to read it verbatim. It's going to take me forever. We can all read all this public information. It is published on the web. The act as such and the regulations, and I'm just going to refer you to the relevant aspects, and I think that there is some good news for you in the act and the regulations, especially for the smaller operators. We all know we work in a highly fragmented segment. People choose to do their own thing quite often, and I think it's important that everybody takes cognizance of the new legislation that will be operative in the near future. I'm going to share my screen. She will indulge me for one second, and I'm going to start with the trust account stipulations. Now, everybody, most of you are probably well familiar with section 32 of the State Agency Affairs Act that deals with trust money. The equivalent of those stipulations is to be found in section 54 of the Property Practitioners Act, the act as such, and it is materially the same as section 32. Maybe a little more detail, but it starts off saying that every property practitioner must open and keep one or more separate trust accounts. It must immediately, after opening the trust account, appoint an auditor, and then you must let the authority know, and the authority is the new name for the State Agency Affairs Board, who will be, and it carries on, and then in subsection 2, it says also there that you can invest in separate savings or other interest-bearing accounts, the money that is not needed immediately, but typically the section 32 of the ALT Act, and then it goes on and tell you what you must do and must do and must do, and as you probably know, the Act is published in multiple languages, so we scroll down, and you will see that there are many subsections that deal with what you must and what the courts rights are and what the authority or the AIB can do, et cetera. So I'm not going to dwell on the details of that. I think it's important to remember that section 54 deals with trust monies quite comprehensively. If we then jump to something new, something that you should be on the lookout for and potentially want to discuss with your legal advisor and for your auditor, that is section 23 of the new Act, and this is where I said, the Act just sets a framework, it doesn't deal with the details, but when we read section 23, only the heading, it talks of exemptions in respect of accounting records and trust accounts. Now, really that tells us that there's an intention by the legislature to exempt certain property practitioners from keeping accounting records and trust accounts, which is very new and very important for us to understand. Now, reading section 23.1, it says, a property practitioner whose turnover is below 2.5 million grand must cause his, her, or its accounting records to be subjected to an independent review by a registered accountant subject to the provisions of section 54, that deals with trust monies. Now, this is new in that we're not talking of an audit by an auditor, but we're talking of an independent review by a registered accountant. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is a significant difference to our current situation, and it could lead to lots of cost savings in that you don't have to pay for an audit. But let's read further and look at section 23, subsection 2. The minister may, by notice in the Gazette, determine the circumstances under which certain property practitioners may be exempted from keeping trust accounts. So you may be exempted from keeping trust accounts under certain circumstances if the minister has published such a notice. And then subparagraph B, so the minister may, by notice in the Gazette, also determine a different dispensation for the review of accounting records for those property practitioners. Now, this such shows the intention of the legislator, but as I said, it doesn't deal with the implementation or the application. Now, one has to have a look at the draft regulations and it's not final regulations yet, but it has been open for public comment. The periods are closed and we're pretty comfortable that the draft regulations will pretty much be the final regulations. Now, let's have a look at what that says and the relevant regulations is regulation four, which is on page nine of the property practitioners regulations that was published early 2020. And it says the heading says, all exemption from trust accounts. And then it refers you back to section 23 of the act that I've just pointed to. And it says that a property practitioner is exempted from keeping a trust account if that property practitioner has never received any trust monies other than as permitted in regulation 4.4, which we will get to and no longer receives any trust monies other than as permitted in regulation 4.4 and that property practitioner submits and then do certain other things. I'm not going to dwell into the fine print, but these are all very reasonable and achievable things that you must do if you want to apply for exemption. It makes common sense. Should you read it? So let's move on to regulation 4.2 that states as follows. Where a property practitioner and you know that's the new name for state agents is exempted in terms of these regulations subject to certain provisions. Such property practitioner will not be required to again have such account reviewed or audited. In other words, it's closed. Your historical trust account is history. Subjects section 4.3 states where a property practitioner is exempted in terms of regulation 4.1 and as complied with other regulations, such property practitioner will be exempted from having to have its business and other accounts audited and will only be required to have such accounts independently reviewed by a registered accountant. It's a much simpler, much cheaper crisis and I think that's good news to many of our property practitioners in the country. Now 4.4 is the very important one. If you are a rental agent, if you handle a lot of trust accounts, trust funds on behalf of consumers, you must take cognizance of this and like I've said, I strongly advise that you take legal advice and also have a conversation with your auditor. Expect this to come into play in the near future. Now it says that the property practitioner will further be exempted, so subject to all of the above and subject to being otherwise compliant in terms of all these regulations. Such property practitioner will be exempted if he has mandated one or more other property practitioners that specialize in collecting and distributing trust payments. And such property practitioners will be referred to as the payment processing agents. That's typically a by-crop. To process such trust payments on your behalf in respect of all trust funds received by that property practitioner. What is important here is that your payment processing agent must also be a property practitioner by definition with a valid FFC, etc. that specialize in collecting and distributing trust payments. Looking at the next section, so you can be exempted if each payment processing agent, like by-crop mandated by you, operates a trust environment that complies with the Act and associated regulations. Now that trust environment refers to an entire environment of different agencies, trust accounts that is affordable as a collective, and that must be reconciled, balanced to the sense and audited with a report going to the EIAB. We'll pick up on that again further down below. So you can be exempted in the third place if each payment processing agent mandated by you within its trust environment as separately auditable client accounts. Both in respect of each property practitioner to whom it provides such services and in respect of each client of each such property practitioner. Now that simply refers to the segregation of funds. So your payment processor, like by-crop, has to have a separately auditable account for each estate agency that uses the platform and then it goes further. Within your account, that sits in our environment, there also has to be separately auditable accounts for each landlord and each tenant. Looking at sub-regulation 4.4.4, 34 is on the road. The trust environment, our trust environment and each of your client accounts operated by us are audited annually in compliance with the Act and all regulations and audit reports in respect of must be submitted to the authority or the EIAB that assists you with your audit. And then further, you as the property practitioner at concern should not then hold any trust monies whatsoever outside of the manner provided for in these acts. So considering all this, I'm delighted to say that even in the absence of these regulations, before it was drafted, before it was on the cards, the group has already complied with all these provisions and we have been providing all our clients with assistance in terms of the audits. We refer to it as an agreed upon procedure between our auditors and yours. So looking into the future, once these regulations are in play, we think it's important that you, your auditor, eventually your attorney, cognizance of these regulations you may want to apply. It's very reasonable. And then going forward, it could lead to massive cost saving opportunities. Lots of avoiding many time delays and inquiries as paper up as an authorized or in the credited payment process provider can assist you through all these procedures. And it's maybe just for the sake of completeness. I'll scroll down a little more. There is an annexure in the regulations and it's an affidavit that you need to complete and once you are compliant you can be hopefully soon be exempted from those onerous and expensive audit reports. And on that note, I thank you for your time. I thank Tracy Lee and I hand back to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Yan and your head for a very insightful presentation. Yan, you did quite a bit of work answering questions while your head was talking. So thank you for that. I am going to... I see there's a couple of really interesting conversations that happened in the chat and I'd love to be able to go through them but I am a little bit pressed for time, Yan. So I'm going to say thank you to you and have a wonderful day. We'll see each other this afternoon at the afternoon nexus. Thank you. Studio, let's get my colleague. Your head, can you tell me in the chat if you found that information useful? I know a lot of a lot of us yesterday really, really appreciated Yan sharing that presentation with us. Okay, so right now I'm going to take you on to the final person, the final person that's joining you on the stage today. His name is Carl Vandenberg and he is our partner as in private properties business development executive. Carl, you're joining us today to give us a glimpse into what the future holds for private property and what partnership really could look like in terms of industry in the future. Over to you Carl. Thank you so much Tracy and to our extended part property family for joining us today it's an absolute privilege for us to be able to do something like this and we would prefer to be in a physical world and having a coffee with you and just really bonding and connecting and sharing our experiences but the digital world will have to do for some time soon to come so we're really proud to be able to bring nexus to throughout the country as Tracy said I think we're doing 8 this week and we've tried to regionalize it as much as possible so thank you again for joining us and I hope you're getting information I surely am so also a big thank you to EPSA as well as to PayPal for sharing their knowledge and information let's get straight into it a little bit about private property in more case of where are we going we know the back story of private property we're 22 years old but really it's a case of what is the new private property and where are we going as a business with our partners so we are choosing to become a trusted partner in the property industry and it's really about being in the center of the ecosystem and an example is exactly what we're doing today we're bringing in our partners as well as our clients to come in and share information and share knowledge for the greater good of everybody in the industry so very much this is our role in the ecosystem a little bit that I want to talk around is there's really two sort of areas of our main focus and the one is the consumer so what we would call as far as a consumer is a buyer somebody that's looking to rent a property you know it's the 57 million people that we have in our country that are either in property wanting to know about property or at some other stage be entering into property and on the other side we have our clients, our property practitioners the banks, attorneys and everybody else and it really is a bit of a juggling act that we've got to pay a lot of the time to make sure that we are listening to both sides of things and getting that balance right and it sounds a little bit easier than it really is as an example so if we listen a little bit too strongly to what let's say real estate is wanting out of a property portal we run the risk of absolutely alienating the 57 million people and what do people do is they vote with their feet and then we all lose and it's the same if we listen far too much what a consumer wants we then alienate our client base so it really is an absolute balancing act and one that we've been doing very very well the next thing is really it's how do we become that trusted partner that's really the essence of it the real three steps that we do around everything is one is to be completely customer obsessed understanding exactly what your bank links are and looking for solutions around that and it's both yourselves and again as the consumers we know this right so let's talk about consumers for a little bit we know that consumers have an absolute search for knowledge which is why we have almost 550,000 people on our facebook page watching our daily podcasts because they are wanting information so we understand that that's a sort of a pain point that they have and we need to come up with a solution which we have we also need to understand exactly what it is that your concerns are what your pain points are so once you compete your customer obsessed and you've got all of your internal processes geared for that we then have the ability to solve real problems for everybody and we're wanting to solve these real problems through using digital technology and really just speeding up the pace in which we use technology and organization as well as in the greater business of real estate and then only once you've got those two things there can you start creating real value propositions we start looking at real value propositions as an example something that came out of yesterday morning's meeting at Nexus was somebody was wanting a solution around you know before a buyer can put an offer into a property there should be a pre-approval now that's exactly our vision is we're wanting to be able to give that power to yourself so that when somebody sends you a lead to go listen I want to have a look at that property you know that they're being pre-approved by ABSA you know that they're looking for a three-bedroom place in Blumfontein they have 2.5 children and a dog and a cat and that's real real power and that's what we're wanting to be able to stop doing for yourselves just a little bit around where private property is we've got ambitions to get to the 5 million unique views unique users per month within our 5-year strategy we way ahead of that number at the moment right now we're averaging 3.2 million unique people that come onto our portal and look at your properties every single month just a bit of context that's more than a million people more than what we were averaging the same time in 2020 and it's more than 2 million people more than what we were doing in 2019 in this time so there has been rapid growth around what it is that we are providing in terms of value to real estate and a lot of that has been driven around some of our doing things quite differently so let's just unpack where we are in our 5-year strategy 2019 was really around preparation so we had a new CEO came in he brought in a brand new executive team I think on the older sex co-member I've been around for about 18 months so 2019 was really creating this view around where do we want to be 2020 was our foundation year that's where we did exciting things like our rebrand we started engaging with our consumers quite differently and 2021 is really our watershed year and it's our year of innovation and technology and I unpack a little bit of what we're going to be doing in the incoming slides 2022 is about repositioning ourselves 23 is around optimization and then it's all about scale we can give so many more products so much more value to everybody in the ecosystem I don't know if anybody noticed but a year ago we were quite different we were red, blue and white now we look really really different with our new bean and it's a lot more than just a brand refresh it's a lot more than just changing colors to us it's hard is that we operate hard is that we engage with our consumers hard is that we give services and products to ourselves as real estate so it's a fundamental shift from what we were to what we are now and where it is that we're going a little bit around technology so we talk around you know what are the digital trends in FinTech what are the digital trends in PropTech first you understand that there's sort of two schools of thought one is sort of evolution of technology and the other one is around revolution of technology so an evolution would be something like Moore's Law which speaks around how quickly computers can process information is really essentially what it is so if you have a look at your old Nokia 2110 and you look at your iPhone 12 that you have now that is a massive shift in terms of technology and ability but then you consider that that was 25 years ago that we had those Nokia 2110s so if you look at just in the short area it looks like a complete revolution and things have just gotten out of hand in reality it's actually quite slow progress and Moore's Law was done in the 1970s so that's really evolution what we wanted to focus on is the revolution of technology by way of an example what's a revolution of technology well 12 months ago I was sitting in our private property offices in a Schlanger Rocks KZN with 180 degrees C views now I'm talking to you from my home office waiting for the dogs to bark I know I've got hardy dogs outside and probably one of my kids are going to come in and do a meeting at any time that's an absolute revolution a year ago we didn't know what RIMO was we had no idea what zoom and teams was that's an absolute revolution and it's fundamentally not only changed our lives it has changed how consumers shop for property we know this consumers are wanting to get a lot more understanding around the property they're wanting to see virtual reality they're wanting to see all about the property first before they make a call another example is Facebook we occasionally put some of your properties onto our Facebook page on average we get 15,000 hits every time we just put a simple average on our Facebook page we did a virtual show day the day on our Facebook page we had 500,000 people view that property that is a revolution of how consumers engage with property and private property as well as yourselves need to make sure that we geared up for that just in terms of some of the upcoming stuff that you'll be seeing in private property as we've spent the last 12 months looking at how it is that consumers engage with us as well as ourselves as our clients engage in the next couple months you will start seeing a very very different private property we'll be launching a brand new consumer portal and app so a consumer again is the buyers and renters out there that will give them a lot better way to navigate and find your properties and understand the area around their property and for us to get a lot more information about that person is that we can pass it on to yourselves when the lead comes through we'll also be going live with a new client portal so it's a new app and a new website there you'll be able to get area statistics you'll be able to get information on your leads you'll be able to get a whole range of information much of luck what we're sharing now but in time at a click of a button which will be incredibly powerful yourselves so actually what happens will go live with the basic of things that will look like just a bit of a change and then every two to four weeks will bring on new products new services and a funding end up with a very very different way of engaging between ourselves so we're incredibly excited about that if we just look at the human side of things you know I worry that we talk about digital disruption so a lot around digital disruption I suppose has gotten a bit of a negative connotation so people think disruption means that it's a complete you know cutting out the middle man making you know doing things like linking buyers and sellers and cutting out the real estate agent that's absolutely not what we see as disruption but we see as disruption is a different way of doing things what are your problems that you have in your world and your way of work and how can we give you digital solutions so that makes your life way more efficient that is what we wanted to do around digital disruption there is a human being at the end of all of this a human buyer a human seller and a human agent a human attorney and we need to digitize this with always keeping the human being behind it in the center of everything that we do so again we'll be sharing a lot more information as we get closer to the road of our new technology there's a fair amount of change management that wants to happen but I suppose I just want to thank everybody for the continued support we've seen rapid growth I think Celeste is going to come on now and share some regional specific stuff around how it is that we're fairing and some of the insights in your area so again thanks a lot for joining us today and your continued support we really do look forward to going on this journey around revolutionizing our industry together thank you so much the famous quote of the year 2020 can you all hear me morning everyone welcome to Nexus for the Northern Cape Northwest in the Free State thank you Carl for that perfect segue for me to share the exciting performance review for the regions over the past year I'm going to Carl did mention that what we've tried to do with Nexus is take a regional approach as far as possible what I'm going to just as a disclaimer is when we look at the review or we look at the results this is for the entire region if you are wanting a closer look to your specific area of specialization so where you are operating or your area of a specialized area of operation please reach out to us I will put my email address in the chat box a bit later and we would be happy to connect with you and unpack your specific area so when I just bear that in mind when I'm going through the data as we go along what I'd like to do is I'd like to start off with the Northern Cape what we've seen in the Northern Cape is some really good results really positive results year on year the results have were a bit iffy during 2020 during the lockdown period that's understandable but when we have a look at the results for quarter one quarter four sorry for 2020 the results for quarter one of 2021 we are seeing some really encouraging results from a sales listing perspective so yes there has been a decline in the number of listings that are being loaded onto the portal that is across the board we're seeing that nationally so there was a drop there of 3% however we have seen an increase of 22% in terms of views and 13% in terms of leads for sales in the Northern Cape which I do have to say is encouraging we we would obviously so that's for quarter one quarter two when we take a look at rentals for the rental listing performance for the Northern Cape we are seeing a different picture so yes there has been growth year on year in terms of leads and views however we have seen a decline in terms of leads and views in the first quarter 2021 against the the fourth quarter of 2020 I think Yuhet has highlighted this in her presentation we all know what has happened over the COVID period and with various factors that have influenced this in saying that when I look at the national perspective from a listing perspective points of view for rentals it is not as I would have expected we have seen yes we have seen a decline in the number of listings a decline of 24% however views have dropped by 3% and listings by 7% I mean and leads by 7% so we all know what those factors are that could have influenced that if we can move on to the next slide please what we have also done is we have included for you today a top 50 searched properties from a sales perspective in the Northern Cape if we have a look at the top four five areas I think those speak for themselves and again as I mentioned earlier on in my presentation we would love to reach out and connect with you so that we can unpack a bit further those specific areas and how they are performing and what we can do to potentially improve performance in those areas moving on to the median prices the median listing prices now remember this is your listing price it's not the price that you fetch or the price that you achieve in terms of your sales or rentals it is what you have listed the property at okay so we can see for sales that in the Northern Cape the median listing price for sales is tracking above the national average what we have noted compared to January February 2021 against January February 2020 there has in fact been an increase in the median listing price the opposite is true for rentals even though the rental median price is still tracking above the national average we have noted an 11% decline in the median rental listing price bringing it closer to the national average so that is the Northern Cape and how the Northern Cape has been tracking let's take a look at the free state okay so next slide please so for the free state also some positive results in that region year on year with regards to views and leads we are continuing yes the difference is not as great as we would like in the region but we are working to close that gap again really good results year on year for when we compare the quarter one of 2021 against quarter four of 2020 we have again seen a decline in the listing count for the sales listings minus one percent so it's a nominal figure when compared to the national results views have increased by 22% for the period and leads by 20% which is a really encouraging sign when looking at rentals yes so we know again the rental space has seen a decline however when we take a look at quarter one against quarter two quarter one of 2021 against quarter four of 2020 we are seeing some positive results early on there has been an increase which is interesting when compared to the national data we see an increase in listing counts by one percent and a further increase of 19% in terms of leads and 19% in views and 28% in leads for the period which is some really encouraging results considering if we take period January-February 2021 and compare that to January-February 2020 not so great but we certainly are tracking a lot better when looking at quarter four 2020 and quarter one for 2021 taking a look at the top suburbs that are searched for the free state some interesting results there or perhaps not so interesting for the professionals in the room we are taking a look at the sales results again as I mentioned in the beginning please reach out to us we would love to get in touch with you so that we can unpack your area of operation and look a little bit deeper and drill down a little bit deeper to those areas and how they are tracking okay so when we take a look at the median listing price for the region a below average not below average sorry below the national median on both rentals and sales however what we have noted when taking January-February 2021 against January-February 2020 there has been an increase in 6% similar to or in fact exactly the same as the northern Cape an increase of 6% in terms of the median listing price for sales and an increase of 2% for rentals which is interesting when compared to the northern Cape which has had a decline of 11% in rental listing prices so some interesting results for the free states moving on to the northwest also some really positive results we are really making gains all of those things that we are implementing the innovation the marketing all of those things that we are putting in place in our teams that are working feverishly in the background are definitely starting to pay dividends when we look at our results positive results year on year for sales performance when we take a look again just one thing to compare quarter one for 2021 against quarter four we have seen yes we have seen a decline which is in keeping with the national sort of stats we have seen a decline in listings from a sales performance perspective however again in keeping with national stats we have seen an increase of 22% in terms of views and 23% in terms of leads for sales listing performance very encouraging for the northwest going now on to rentals rentals steadily we have seen some positive results year on year slots closing of the gap between 2019 and 2020 in terms of views and leads again if we have a look at our results for quarter one of 2021 against quarter two of quarter four of 2020 sorry some positive results in keeping with national performance we have seen a decline in rental listings actually it's not in keeping with national average a bigger pardon national stats we have seen a decline in rental listings for the northwest however we have seen an increase in views of 19% and an increase in leads of 11% some encouraging results there taking a look at the top 50 searched suburbs again hearties right at the top some interesting results there again if you are wanting us to get in touch with you please reach out we would love to meet with you and go through your area of operation and unpack that data a little bit more readily something interesting across all three regions is the move for immigration so people looking to looking in areas where they get to choose where to do life in business so in the new way of work we all know how that is many of us I mean as Cole mentioned earlier actually just holding on I'm hoping my doggies don't start chatting to the wild laugh but people looking in terms of comforts or because they are choosing where to do their business and lifestyle moving on then to the median listing price for the northwest similar to the free states the sales and rental median listing prices are operating below the national median prices and quite steady for both I have to say just holding on a second interesting though for January 2021 against January February 2020 we've noticed the arts increase of 4% in the median listing price for the northwest province and for the rentals we've noted a negative or a drop of 20% in the median listing price for the same period some interesting but not so surprising results there so that's our synopsis or in terms of the performance for the three regions I'd love to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your continued support on behalf of myself and my team as well as the greater private property team. Again I am going to plug in my email address in the chat box please feel free to reach out to either myself or your specific relationship manager if you are wanting any deep dives into your specific area of operation. Thank you and stay safe thanks thank you so much Celeste thank you does anyone have any questions for Celeste we've got about 14 or so minutes left there was a question or a request rather from Lizette Simon she's asking if we'll be able to get the stats emailed to them and she's got her email address down there for us to be able to do so Celeste we'll definitely be able to share some stats with you Shantel Erasmus has had to leave unfortunately and then thank you Carl from Tando Johan Janser van Reinsberg thanking Carl and also welcoming Celeste on to the stage Babawa Wolf saying I love real estate we love it with you honey thank you so much for coming in that quest alright I think this brings us to the end of a really productive session although we've run a little bit over I still feel like there was a lot of value thank you Celeste you're welcome to leave the stage now I don't see any major questions that we're not going to be able to handle in the chat box itself but before I go I just wanted to say that conclude line up a huge thank you to our partners Apsa and also to pay your head and yarn for sharing their knowledge with us thank you Tando private property appreciates every single one of you in attendance today the property professionals that are here and we trust that you've gained valuable insights that'll help you tackle this market and achieve the success that you want to achieve for your business your own brand in spectacular fashion and don't forget to get your one and a half non verifiable CBD points from Aisa the link will push let's put it in the chat again thank you let's put that link in the chat so you can click on it and get your points one and a half points while the session is over we've got about 12 minutes or so where we'll leave the platform open and grab a cup of coffee and maybe go and say hi to your fellow colleagues thank you to the many of you many of you have actually dropped us hearts and dropped us comments and kept the energy going really really appreciated and with that in mind I'd like to afford to or give two prizes away today one for the person who's been super super engaging that's Johann Janse van Reensburg and then one of the best questions we heard today came from Mike Spencer I'm not sure if Mike is still in the room let me see I'm just scrolling down I think Mike is definitely still in the room and Johann you are definitely still in the room someone from my team will reach out to you either Trish or Ben just to get your details and get that prize out to you so thank you once again the last thing I'm going to ask that you do if you haven't already subscribed to our private property weekly industry newsletter please do we're also going to put that link in the chat for you if you're joining us this afternoon for the afternoon Nexus please note that we also have another Nexus tomorrow and the day after we will be tackling the Cape Town area and the Johannesburg areas you know even if you're based in the central part of this country and you want to understand what's happening in these regions you're more than welcome to attend but thank you so so much and have a wonderful afternoon bye for me