 San Manani de Milan, good evening and welcome to episode 331 of the private property podcast. If you join us for the first time, welcome to the only daily property podcast in South Africa. We're simply glad to have you join us this evening. Welcome to the family. You're going to feel all the love, especially if you're watching us from our Facebook page and all our regular viewers, whether you're watching us on Facebook and Instagram or on YouTube. Welcome back. You know how we do it. Every single weekday, you and I have an appointment at 7 p.m. We are always in conversation with the property expert who helps us navigate our property journey and make better property decisions. And of course, as you know, we always love seeing the love that you show us across our social media platforms. It is the 1st of September. It's spring. And I know that we always have the debate about when spring day is nowadays in South Africa. Many people say, no, it's not the 1st. It's on the 22nd or 23rd. It's spring day, you know, says if it's like us, we're just going to have to concede that today's spring day. And of course, with it being the 1st of the month, there are also people who've moved into their new homes. So if you've moved into a new rental, let us know down here below how was moving. I know how stressful moving can be sometimes. And I always say, I typically don't like moving admin as much. I like to delay a move as much as possible. And to the landlords who are watching us, how was getting your tenant this today rather, because it wouldn't have happened in the evening. How is handover? You know, oftentimes handover can also be very stressful there for the landlord, whether you're doing it yourself or your agent did it for you. Do share with us down here below. Well, you know that, of course, you can catch other great shows across private properties, social media platforms, to make sure that you do so. And they come to your screens every single weekday at 8 p.m. And as it is a Wednesday this evening, you can catch Essie Carson on the First Time Home Buyers show, where she's always in conversation with people who've walked that first time home buying journey and have gone on to grow their property portfolios from strength to strength. And if it's Tuesdays and Thursdays, Winning Farmer Homebuyer, who brings you the farming podcast, tackling all things agriculture. So do make sure you tune into that show. If you want to have a bit of sense of what you can if you are already in agriculture, or if you want to go into agriculture. And every Mondays and Fridays, you can catch Chad and the Home Shoppers show. It always takes us through incredible properties that you can find on www.privateproperty.co.za. Those are great programs that you can find every single weekday at 8 p.m. across private properties, social media pages. And of course, we love hearing from you. I'm already seeing some of the love on our Facebook page. And we're seeing the people in there watching, Selahni Pelesing. I actually had a nap today, got some relaxed time with my baby. Evarentia, Parichia, I see you. Also, Siglechirinda is watching us this evening. Shanalfari is also watching, as well as Parana, Siddiqui. They are watching Keep The Love Coming, Nonin Kota. Also watching, Uko Solchumela is also watching this evening. Do keep the love coming on. I see more and more of you this evening on the show. And as I was saying, if you've moved today, how was the move? And if you're landlord and received your tenant, how did that go for you? Well, this evening I'm joined by a man I speak to every quarter. And every time we wrap up our conversation, I always say I'll see you next quarter. And as many of you who watch this regularly, you know exactly who I'm in conversation with. Speaking to Umu Zizem, who's the head of advancing analytics at Apsar Home Loans. I'm looking at the insights from the Apsar Home Loans, the Apsar Home Owners Index for quarter two. Muzir, good evening and thank you so much for joining us. Good evening Zamaq. Good evening, all of our viewers. So I think Muzir, it's a great place to start. You and I chat every quarter about the Apsar Home Owner Sentiment Index. For those of us who are probably shooting in for the first time, what is the Home Owner Sentiment Index? You know, what does it measure? I know you and I geek out a bit when we talk about it before we get to that part. Let's make sure everybody's on the bus so they can geek out with us as well. So the Home Owner Sentiment Index is a proprietary index that is run by Apsar, where we try to get a better understanding of the thoughts and feedings of regular South Africans around the property market. And what makes this index stand out is that we talk to the individuals who make the buying, selling, renting, renovating decisions. We don't interview industry partners or potential intermediaries. So this tells us exactly what the person is going to be ultimately making the decision is thinking or feeling. We measure a sentiment, which is confidence about the property market in South Africa in general. And then we slice it in five different ways, where we try to get a little bit more insight around what some of those drivers of sentiment might be. We want to understand from respondents how they're feeling about the present timing, as it when we measure it around buying property, selling property, investing in property, buying versus renting, and renovating and making alterations to property. Yeah, and we're going to get into some of the indices and what we saw in quarter two. But before we even start discussing quarter two, let's look at the highlights from Q1. Because I think it's always great to obviously do the comparison. When we last spoke, we were sharing some of the surprises and some of the things that were not as surprising coming off Q1. Perhaps just share some highlights of what came out of the Q1 report. Yeah, so what came out of the Q1 report is we were basically seeing yet another peak of a very long trend, where pretty much all of our indicators or all the indices that we measure were up against Q4 of 2020. So more people were confident in the property market, more people considered it a good time to buy property, to sell property, to invest in property, and to buy rather than to rent. And what we found in Q1 is the only thing that didn't increase was sentiment towards renovating property. And that didn't decrease it actually stayed the same. It was exactly the same as what we saw in Q4. That's kind of where we had left it in Q1. And it was, like I said, pretty much a similar story of going from strength to strength ever since Q1 of last year. And before we get into what the Q2 sentiment, the overall sentiment is, and of course, the overall breakdown of the different indices. Of course, viewers at home know that we have been running the 1 million followers competition on our social media pages, particularly on Facebook. We've reached that over 1 million mark follower, but we still have two more goals that we want to take off. And that's of course 10,000 comments in 10,000 shares. So you still start a chance of walking away with 500 grand cash every single day. And of course, the big catch is if you know that you've entered, if you've known that you've shared the pinned post on our Facebook page, or you've commented on it, or you've given us, you know, a rating on our Facebook page, you have to be watching the show live because halfway through the show, we are going to reveal who the potential lucky winner is. And the only way you can get your hands on the money is if you drop us, it takes down here below. Today, the money bag is sitting at 4,000 grand. I don't think we've ever had a roll over since this competition has started that has reached 4,000 grand. So I really hope that if you know that you've entered, you are watching because we're going to reveal rather who the winner is. So do make sure that you keep watching, keep dropping us, text down here below. The money bag is sitting at 4,000 grand. So we're going to see who that 4,000 grand is going to go to. I still see some of the love that we're getting on Facebook. Is watching as well as, of course, so many. If you would say my donor, I see you, who's also watching cinema shots on one of the top fan gang members, the same good evening fan. So do you keep the love coming right here on the private property podcast with myself? This evening, I'm in conversation with Moses and was the head of advanced analytics at Apsa Home Loans. We're looking at insights from the Apsa Home Loans Home Owners Sentiment Index, the quarter two results. And was taking us through a really great breakdown of what we saw in quarter one, especially to those who may have missed that episode. So when we then look at quarter two, before we look at the individual investors will do that after the break. I think what was the overall sentiment for Q2 and of the sentiment for quarter two? So Zama, before I get into into answering your question, I'm going to request some indulgence to kind of paint a little bit of a background. The results of Q2 were collected towards the end of June slash beginning of July. And some of the respondents that were interviewed were interviewed into the unfortunate acts of violence and destruction to property that we saw at the beginning of June. And the results of this edition of the HSI definitely reflects the thoughts and attitudes that respondents had at this time. And the overall sentiment for Q2 is down 4% versus Q1 ending at 77%. The respondents who were concerned or not not confident about the South African property market, they did cite concerns around economic and political stability and high levels of crime and unemployment. And then there were a couple who were also concerned about land expropriation without compensation, all of these making property and uncertain investment. And kind of when the data was collected versus the reasoning that was given by respondents, we can clearly see that the unfortunate events that we witnessed played quite a big role in the results. And I mean 77% is not a bad sentiment score. Just to give the comparison, we were sitting at 76% in Q3 of last year, and we were actually down at 73% in Q1 of last year just before we went into lockdown. So we're down 4%, but all is not lost. And I like that when you present the figure and the decrease by that 4%, you also paint the picture of when the sentiment was relatively low. And of course, we also would know why it would have gone low. I mean, when you look at last year and different people's sentiment around home ownership, so much uncertainty, the hard lockdown certainly created a lot of pressure for home owners, quite a significant amount of pressure for home owners, whether for your primary residence, or of course, if you even have some rental units. So understanding why or what drives the overall sentiment going up and down is quite important. I think a lot of home owners were starting to feel, and certainly still continue to feel slightly under pressure because of the unfortunate looting that we saw. And also just understanding that the way in which their properties are, or even commercial properties, I think the destruction that we saw was like nothing that many of us have ever seen, if we must be honest. And this is actually something that we're going to be talking about on Friday, where we're going to be looking at then the rebuild, because we also know that the extent of the damage that we saw during that period was such that it's not like renovating your home, it's going to require millions and millions of friends from different stakeholders coming onto the party. And so on Friday, you can look forward to that conversation, where we will be looking at rebuilding, at least being to the COO of Kandua, and that's something that you can look forward to at home. But I want us to take a quick break before we then look at the different indices and how they fade going up, going down, as Musa Zem shares more insights from APSA's home owner sentiment index for quarter two. And this quick break, we're going to see who the potential winner of that 4,000 rounds that's already in the money bag. And I really hope we're going to give this away. It's the first of spring, it's the first of September, it's spring day, I think it would be great to get some money in spring. I wish I could just take it. I would do quite a bit with 4,000 rounds, but it's not mine for the taking. So let's see who this evening's potential lucky winner is. I was a bit of a perv. And this evening's potential winner is Uri Filiwet Precious Malibana. That's Uri Filiwet Precious Malibana. You stand a chance of walking away with 4,000 rounds. Unfortunately, we don't have these breaks long enough. You saw Muzi wanted to just sneak in a conversation with me. It was always fun when we could take a nice long two minute break, and I could have another interview within the interview with my guests at home, but these ones are too short, so we can't quite do that. Meaning you catch all of the fun. So all the little, you know, the interview within the interviews I would typically have with the guests at home, you catch all of that. But to our winner, potential winner, Uri Filiwet Precious Malibana, I do hope you're watching. Drop us a message down here below. We want to hear from you. You stand a chance of walking away with that 4,000 rounds that is in the money bag this evening. And I already see all the love that Uri Filiwet is getting on our Facebook page, console, and see her. And now congratulating you, you have to give us a text, drop us a text in order to claim this prize. And of course, going back to my conversation with the Muzi, because you catch all of it. We couldn't even have an interview within an interview. And that is the Muzi Zim, with the head of advanced analytics from Apsa Home Learns. This evening, we're looking at insights from Apsa's home earner's sentiment index for quarter two. You know that I absolutely love chatting to Muzi, you know, every quarter always joke about, you know, how data is so important, but we also just don't want data for the sake of data. You know, this kind of data does help us speak better inside. And I think, let's start there before we look at the, you know, different individual indices. For those who are still not particularly familiar with the index and even just data in general when it comes to, you know, property, why is it so important for us to be able to, first of all, it is so important for Apsa to be tracking this kind of data. And then for us as consumers to, you know, go through it and have a better understanding of the data that, you know, you and your team, of course, not only collect but present to us in a very accessible way. Sorry. Sorry, Zama, I missed the last bit. Well, apologies. I think it may have been my signal there. So I was asking that for the viewers at home are probably not as clued up about the importance of, you know, data and being able to make data-driven decisions. But why is it important for the Apsa Home Loans team firstly to even track this index? I mean, and we talk about it every quarter and updating, you know, the viewers at home. So why is it important to track this data? And what kind of insights does it then give to a consumer who's watching the show when they obviously listen in on our conversation or go to their Apsa website to read the full report themselves? Awesome. Thanks for that, Zama. Apologies about that. So the reason why we're interested in tracking this index is it gives us a very nice leading indicator, forward-looking view of what we can expect in the market. And it's been very interesting for us to look at the insight that this index has been able to give us, especially when we hit quite a bit of rocky journey or quite a bit of uncertainty towards the beginning of last year. And we realize at that point in time that the findings that we get out of the index have been able to give us quite a nice holistic picture or help us to color in between the lines as it were. And the one big thing that we like to debate around when we're looking at at the numbers from the homeowner sentiment index is it helps us really think about supply and demand dynamics and how those actually drive property prices up and down or potentially result in a lot of demand and potential shortages for properties that people might be wanting to buy. So how I think our viewers can leverage the data from this is they can use this as another data point. It's not nearly enough to be considering it in isolation or as the only data point in their decision to buy, sell, make investments in property. But I do believe that it's a very valuable data point alongside other data points as they make those decisions. And I think that's such an important thing to note that this index alone wouldn't be sufficient, but it's certainly part of your weapons or your awesome as you're collecting your data and making your decisions. And sometimes you may already have a property perhaps looking to expand and you also just want to get a sense of what other people on the same boat as you feel and where they are and what some of their potential pressure points are. And I see the team has just let me know that Refilo Precious Manibane has raised her hand. She has claimed that 4,000 rounds that is in the money bag. So congratulations to Precious Manibane. The money is coming your way. Absolutely, absolutely love it for you. So look forward to that 4,000 rounds in cash that is coming through to you. Now, when we then look at the different indices, I think let's perhaps start with some of the surprises when you're saying that yes, 4%, the overall sentiment went down 4%. And in many ways, it also was surprising because of the time frame when people were interviewed. But when you then look at the different indices, were there any that surprised you whether in them going up or down or even remaining the same? I think in terms of surprises, not really. I think most of what we ultimately saw didn't come as a surprise. But I guess it was a bit different or veered a little bit off the path that we had gotten accustomed to over the past couple of quarters. So in the past couple of quarters, the results were telling one story that more and more people are more confident about the property market. More and more people are considering it a good time to buy property and to make property investments. And fewer people were considering it a good time to, well, fewer people were considering it a good time to sell property. Some of the things that we saw in this edition of the survey was that uncertainty in general around the economy had started returning as a drive-off negative sentiment around buying property. So we saw this just after we went into hard lockdown. And what we saw at the beginning of hard lockdown last year is there were many respondents who cited COVID-19 as a specific concern around buying property. And what we then saw in the quarters after that is fewer and fewer people started citing COVID-19 specifically. But then they were starting to cite uncertainty in general. And we've kind of seen that reversing. The other thing that we've seen is we've seen the segment of respondents who hold property as investments. So I'll call these property investors. They actually veered off the path a little bit and they differed from other respondent segments in that they actually had a reduction in sentiment towards selling property. So they basically behaving like typical property investors where they're saying, no, do not sell your property where we actually saw slightly more of the other respondent segments saying maybe it might be a good time to be thinking about about selling property. They definitely said, you know, fewer of them actually said sell your property, basically saying hold your property regardless of, you know, the actual kind of happening at the beginning of July. And then something else that was also quite peculiar or interesting with this responded segment is that they actually started talking about generating passive income as one of the drivers or very important driver for holding investment properties. This is typically the group that was quite long term in their thinking. They generally said it's a good time to invest in property because property will increase in value or prices will ultimately increase. But it was quite interesting now to actually see that their number one driver for a change was property can actually give you some nice passive income. And they said this off the back of the no interest rate cycle. So that kind of does reinforce what we've seen in the past quarters that, you know, people who hold property as investments more and more they're more potentially tapping into debt. But I thought it was quite interesting that they were they were basically saying it's a good time now, kind of like the benefit is now. Yes, Muzi, do apologize for that. You may continue. I had lost you, but our viewers at home are still with you there. You're showing the bits about the property investors and how they of course believed in still holding their properties. And you know, you're making the point about them wanting to generate passive income. So that's where I lost you. But viewers at home were still very much with you. Awesome. Yeah, no, that's that's pretty much what I found interesting, some of that. This is generally the segment. So I do see that we're probably having a connection issue on my side. I do apologize for that. I'm this evening in conversation with Muzi Zem, who's the head of advanced analytics at Absa, who learns and as we are solving it, I see that we're just missing each other. So I'm going to ask my colleague on a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to get that last bit from Muzi Zem. Welcome back to episode two, three hundred and thirty one, rather, of the private property podcast. We are experiencing some technical issues. I was even joking to Muzi that we're now getting our interview within an interview. You know, it almost seems like the connectivity gods are like, no, we're going to give it to them nonetheless. But we're going to have this interview, we're going to wrap it up. So Muzi was sharing there a bit about, you know, the current and will call them property investors and how they were excited, you know, the need to have a passive income. Yes, I found that to be quite interesting, Zemma, given that this is traditionally the group of respondents that generally spoke about the longer term benefits. So property will increase in price. Ultimately, you will ultimately get a good price when you sell your property or the economy will turn around. I found it to be quite interesting that one of the big drivers that they gave this time around was property can generate a good passive income for you. So it was basically a bit of a mindset shift, as it were, from you will get the benefit to the time for getting a benefit is potentially now. And as we wrap up before the connectivity gods take away all our connection, I think Muzi, any, and I always leave you with this one, and I know it would have shall away from it, but any predictions for Q3, especially as we're slowly sort of rebuilding, slowly, you know, getting a sense of what is happening, even with, you know, dealing with the looting and with some people feeling slightly more job secure because of, you know, the vaccine rollout and how rapidly that's kind of going. And so not feeling as though we'll find ourselves in a situation where we'll go into a hard lockdown again, like in previous periods when we simply just weren't certain. So any predictions for Q3? Yeah, predictions are always very interesting. I like talking a little bit, maybe around some of the things that I'm quite interested in looking at. The one, you know, is around, I really hope and believe that we won't see another repeat of the unfortunate acts that we saw at the beginning of July. So I don't think that that will take away from respondents' confidence in the property market. So that will kind of give us a bit of runway to see an increase. Something else that I found to be maybe standing out, something that I'm really keeping my eye on, is the group of respondents who are currently renters. They basically said it's a great time to invest, but not a good time to buy. And their reasoning was actually different from all the other respondent groups. They basically cited affordability constraints. So either they can't they can't afford the upfront costs, or they've lost a part of their income. So I'll be interested in seeing how that potentially turns around because I think if we can get our non-property owners again into a stable financial position, they are the ones who are potentially going to be driving quite a bit of growth and activity in the industry. And lastly around our sentiment towards selling property, one of the reasons that was given, also for the first time featured quite high up, was that respondents were saying it's a good time to sell if you're looking to upgrade your property. Now we've actually already started seeing quite a bit of upgrading activity when we look at our own specific data, but it was quite interesting to see that respondents are starting to come out and talk about selling property when you're looking to upgrade. And all of this sort of coincides with the latest stats that were received released by the National Credit Regulator to say, approval rates have generally been higher, which now talks to the people who have been applying for debt are generally more financially savvy, more financially astute, not necessarily taking chances. So that's given me quite a bit of hope, and kind of taking all of those things together, I think we'll probably see another quarter of positivity around the property market. And we are going to leave it there with almost as soon as the hell for advancing and it takes an absurd home loans this evening, because it's been such a pleasure to have a chat with you, I know we're going to see you next quarter, thank you very much for joining us on the show. And that is how we're going to wrap up this evening's conversation on the property podcast with myself. Huge congratulations to Refule Precious Manibania, who walks away with that 4,000 rounds that was in the money bag. And I see all the love that you're showing her on Facebook, absolutely love that they keep it coming. We know this is a great family to be a part of, especially when you even start winning, so all the best to feel it there. Well, I'll be wrapping it up this evening. And of course, we can keep the conversation going on our Facebook page. It is a Wednesday, so you can catch the first time home buyers show with AC Carson at 8pm. Until then, hope you're staying home and staying safe.