 There we go. Good afternoon. A very, very good afternoon from me, Tracy Lee Miller. I'm the Brand and Marketing Executive for Private Property and I'm going to be your virtual host for this afternoon's session. Welcome to our first regional in Pumalanga and Limpopo Nexus. I'd like to see some of you saying good afternoon. There's a chat box on your right. Let me see who said good afternoon this afternoon. Jan, thank you. Hi, Narissa. Hi, Marina. Hello, Studio. Hello, Hanley. And let me know where you are listening or tuning in from. Afternoon, Floris de Coq. I see you. Afternoon, Marion. Welcome, welcome to Nexus by Private Property. We are indeed very, very thrilled to have you. Alison. Hi, Alison. Welcome to Nexus. Alison Moudau. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for deciding to spend your valuable time with us today. Anna Susana Dreyer. Welcome and good afternoon. Hello, Inna. Hello, Catherine. Hello, RealNet Polokwane. I think she's giving a shout out to the RealNet Polokwane team. Let's see who else is in the room. Someone's listening from Pretoria. Oh, Narissa and David, you're tuning in from Pretoria. Chris Bueter. Hello, hello, hello. You're tuning in from Grobler's Daal. And hello, Claudio Olivier. Nice to see you. And thank you so much for making time to join us here today at the Nexus. The specific Nexus is brought to you by Apsa. And it has a focus on Pumalanga and Limpopo. So thank you so much. Good through the redling haze. You are joining us from Kruger's Dorp. And we're really very happy that you are able to join us. So let me get cracking. It's a minute after one. I'm going to try and stick to time today. The word Nexus is a series of connections that link to all more things. And that's exactly what the Nexus events are all about. It's a series of digital connections that or networking events which cultivate human connection through knowledge sharing and networking. We hosted our first Nexus last year in November and quite a number of industry partners really gave us fantastic feedback. And we decided to bring it back bigger and better than before. One way that we're doing this better this year is to tailor the events to the specific regions so that the insights are hyperlocal to you and your area, giving you the best possible chance of achieving success in a tough market. We have an excellent lineup for you today. But before we get started, let me first start by pointing out a few things. This is a very interactive session. So there's a chat box here on the right hand side of your screen. With this chat box, I'm going to ask each of you to please drop in an emoji that symbolizes how you feel today. I'm going to be super predictable. That's my emoji. My emoji is a green heart and I'm followed very closely by Carl van den Berg, my colleague with his green heart as well. Hello, Magda van den Berg from Bella Bella, wonderful part of the world that is. Hello, Tando, good afternoon. It's wonderful of you to join us again. There we go. We've got a yellow heart there from Veronica. Floris de Coq, you are old school. You're using the old school emoji. I love the little hearts in the eyes. And I thank you, Chris, for that one as well as your head. Awesome. Floris, well done on using the actual emoji from the chat. Now, if you look right next to the chat button, there's a participant's button. And now base, I love it. I love it. It's a crazy Tuesday. Isn't it? Hello, George. I see you. I see the smiley face. Hanley from Basi Buerta Properties in Nalspreet. Welcome, welcome to this nexus in partnership with Apsa and with PayProp and with a focus specifically on Pumalanga and Lumpopu. You are in the spotlight today. So on the button next to chat, you can have a look at all the participants that are here today in alphabetical order. And if there's anyone that you want to reach out to, you can literally just hang your cursor over their name, send them a message, or look at their profile. The third button I want to draw your attention to is the Q&A button, of course. And that Q&A button is a button that gives us an opportunity to ask questions either anonymously or not anonymously. You can put your name in. So I'm going to ask a question. The question I'm asking is, can you guess what I'm drinking right now? Can you guess what I'm drinking? And I'm going to ask the question as Tracy. And then in the chat box, yes. Your head, no girl, we're not doing a G&T today. It's too early. Hanley Kruger, you think it's tea, Khada, you think it's coffee, you're 100% right, we can't have it. It is indeed a cup of coffee that I got from Seattle Coffee, what is it called? Seattle Coffee Company. So I think we kind of have an understanding of how this main stage works. So without further ado, I'm going to bring our first speaker onto the stage. And it brings me an incredibly great sense of pride to bring Narissa David, who is the Home Loans Regional Manager for Pretoria, how do you say North Pretoria? And I think she's also representing for us today. Narissa, how do we say? Good afternoon. Awesome. Where are you joining us from before I give the mic over to you? Where are you situated right now? I'm actually at the office at Hatfield at our Hillcrest Office Park in Pretoria this afternoon joining you. I didn't want to have any report issues. Okay, excellent. So Narissa, you're going to take us through some of the insights from a regional property market perspective, as well as some interesting home loan application statistics. So over to you. Thanks, Tracy Lee. It is indeed a pleasure for us to be here today and really to be representing Epsa Home Loans, so I hail from the northern region. And we represent the greater Pretoria area in Pomellanga, Lampoco, and the northwest region. I'm really excited to be joining our strategic partners, private property, and hosting you guys here today. I'm sure we're all getting used to this virtual channel of communication over the last year. So let's hope we don't have any hiccups today. We can move on to our first slide. Thank you so much. So I think for all of us, when 2020 started, personally, I relocated from Quesadena and I was really looking forward to getting to know my industry partners and then COVID hit. And I think we all, for the first time in our lives, actually experienced that none of us had to go through previously. And we had to adjust to a new normal. We had to rethink in terms of how we actually embrace the industry. And for most of us, we went into level five lockdown, which meant a complete shutdown for the property market industry. When we went into lockdown, we as apps also, I think sales was not deemed as a necessary service. But the property industry, and I think a lot of US state agents continued to operate, which meant that it also showed a positive sign that there would be recovery for the property industry. I think most of us have also lost loved ones during this time. And I also want to pass on my condolences to any one of you that have lost loved ones due to this pandemic. And I think it's also made us stronger and more resilient. Those are some of the things that we can take out of COVID-19. We can move over to the next slide. This is a slide that we'd like to actually call the tale of two harms. So if you look at what we experienced in the first in age one of 2020, we saw a decrease in application volumes. And I think this was largely due to the shutdowns of the D's office. And there were two months in the year where we lost complete productivity. And this had a huge impact on us as an industry. But as we started to move into age two, we started to see a positive uptake in application volumes. For us as EPSA, we saw unprecedented volumes, the highest volumes that we've actually seen in the last 10 years. And we started to see the property industry started to recover. And this showed the resilience of the property market. From a D's office perspective, I'd like to mention from an Anupumalanga and an Nelsprey D's office, we really experienced very little turnaround time delays from a registration perspective. And this was one of the D's offices that was quite resilient during the pandemic, as well as the Palakwane D's office. We also started to see that the quality of the customers entering the market began to improve. So we saw a good quality of customer market. 52% of the customers that actually came in actually were your first-time home buyers. And we started to see the age of the applicants as well, especially from a first-time home buyer perspective, started to drop from 30 age between to 33 and 35. Thank you. Can move on to the next slide. So what were customers actually saying when it came to the home about home ownership? So we started to see a very positive uptake from a home sentiment index. And really what it tells us is that customers, we saw our highest home sentiment index since 2015 and it was at 80%. We have not seen this uptake since 2015. And I think what it really was telling us that the sentiment towards buying property was positive and that is a good indication for us in the property industry. The four main contributions towards the confidence increase of 4% was a result of customers really seeing the demand increase. So there was a huge demand for first-time home buyer purchases. So that positively improved the index. And secondly, the low interest rates, the favorable interest rates also had a positive impact on the home sentiment index. We're going to further deep dive now per region. And if we can please go on to the next slide. Okay, so from a home sentiment index perspective, we looked at the four bigger industries or the three bigger regions. And here what we saw was Kauteng was at 88% and our coastal regions, Western Cape and KZN were at 77%. We also want to acknowledge that the Western Cape was seen one of the biggest growth of 10% in terms of the index. And Kauteng still holds the highest sentiment when it came to the property index really because I think Kauteng holds the higher volumes when it came to application volumes. If we look at from a Mpumalanga and a Lumpopo perspective, Mpumalanga had a home sentiment index of 83% and Lumpopo 80%. I think from a buying perspective Mpumalanga had a whopping 93% positive increase in terms of buying property and Lumpopo was around 77%. I think also what we need to make note of here is from an overall property market perspective, we found that customers were looking at renovating their properties as well as well as looking to migrate into more coastal areas as well and that hence you could see the increase in the Western Cape property home sentiment index as well. We can move over to the next slide please. Okay so what does this slide tell us? So what we looked at was four types of customer segments. We looked at your first-time home buyer, the home owner which is the non-first-time home buyer, the renter and the investor. When looking at the home owner sentiment by these four customer types we could see that all customer types have seen an improvement in sentiment by the end of the year thus boosting overall confidence. The two customer types that stood out very interestingly were the existing home owners and the investor. The existing home owners always lagged in comparison to the others. However with the pandemic we found that the existing home owner found it fit either to buy a bigger property or to renovate the existing property. From an investor perspective what we did see was that the investor pulled back in the first half of the year and I think they were really trying to see what the economy was going to do from a renter perspective. We started to see the investor segment starting to pick up towards the latter part of the year and we started to see that investors started to focus in in your coastal regions such as KZN and Western Cape. At this point I'd also like to mention that we have the buy-to-let value proposition that allows you to use from an investor perspective future rental income. So we can look at future rental income for investors that are purchasing property for investment purposes and I just want you to mention that we are also the only bank in the industry that actually has this value proposition for the investors. Thank you we can move over to the next slide. Okay so here what we have seen is that the sentiments was buying property returned to 2019 level by mid-year last year and ended 8% higher year-on-year comparison. This was the main driver for the increase in interest in properties. I'm also sure that you're experiencing this in the market as well because the volumes have definitely increased quite significantly. We must forever note that the bottom line with the sentiment towards selling still recovered to 2019 level still has not recovered sorry to 2019 levels. This has decreased by 7% year-on-year whilst we do not see a gradual improvement improvement we still are determining what it will be at pre-lockdown levels. This means that the gap between wanting to sell versus wanting to buy continues to widen. We have seen the impact on the property value so on this I'd like to mention especially from an employment longer and a Lampopa perspective that the value of properties we actually find that they hold in the 1 1 million to the 1.5 million value band and properties that are higher in 3 million and above we tend to see that we don't necessarily hold a value and I think this is largely due to the fact that this is the the segment or the property value segment that we've seen hit the highest when it came so the higher value band properties have been hit the hardest when it came to buying and selling of properties. Okay thank you so what does the future hold for us so interest rates from an interest rate perspective we know that we will continue to see the interest rates relatively low the property market is one of the main stimulants towards economic growth and economic stimulation so I think we will continue to see the rates and they will gradually increase in time and I think it all depends on the recovery of the economy we don't anticipate that the interest rates increasing anytime soon but maybe towards the latter part of 2023 so house prices what do we anticipate in terms of house prices so we've seen that the demand for properties have definitely increased will this have an impact on selling prices to a certain degree it might but we're also waiting to see how this actually impacts the increase of property prices but the demand for properties definitely outweighs the supply of properties and we do anticipate that it should have an impact on the house prices purchase prices okay so purchase prices should gradually increase as well and I think in time we'll also begin to see what happens in this aspect okay we can go to the next slide thank you I think we've touched on this previously what this slide also talks around is what we touched on the second slide is really the tale of two I'm not two cities two quarters I think most I'm not sure many of you have read the book in terms of tale of two cities but this is really the tale of two quarters and it demonstrates that despite the amazing recovery in age two in most instances this was not sufficient to recover year on year fully to 2019 levels once again drawing to you the tale of the two halves okay the top row shows you where we are from a northern region this is where you would see the Malanga and North West regions falling into we anticipate a 4.8 percent growth in terms of the property sector so hopefully that will still have a positive impact overall on the business what I'd also like to mention on this that this even moving into 2021 we had a couple of concerns from a volume perspective and from a stock level perspectives but what we have seen is that the volumes continue to remain high the challenges that we had from a Pretoria Deeds office because I think some of the bonds still register in the Pretoria Deeds office we found that that has definitely improved in February January for us was really a bad month but from an mpuma langa and a Lumpo Polakwane Deeds office perspective it still remains one of our strongest registration Deeds office and I think this is largely due to the fact that being a smaller Deeds office they were able to manage they work for us a lot more effectively during the pandemic okay so I think also on this and the slide I'd like to mention that the one thing that holds true for all of us is that buying a property is still something and remains at the heart of most South Africans South Africans aspirations of owning your own property remains a core aspiration it is where your roots are placed it is where you teach your kids to ride their bike for the first time and it's ultimately your safe haven it gives you pride and it helps you to build a legacy for future generations and for the future of your families and I think this is something that South Africans hold very dear to their hearts and we as EPSA are so proud to be part of this homeowner journey with you and your customers that approach you and clients to purchase a property thank you okay and as EPSA we want to thank you that as we aspire to house the nation in a meaningful way we are glad to be partnering partnering with private property and you our state agents and we look forward to the journey that 2021 holds so from my side I just want to thank you and over to you Tracy. Thank you sir and Nerissa thank you for sharing those insights with us I'm gonna ask if you want to ask Nerissa a question we still have a little bit of time if not I think we can go straight into the mentee portion of this event Nerissa please keep your eye on the chat box if there's a question that maybe comes into the mind of one of the delegates they're gonna pop it into that box here and if we have time we'll then invite you back onto the stage to to address the question but for now I want to thank you and wish you a wonderful afternoon please don't go anywhere stay with us we'll be here still for another hour or so yeah I think one more thing I wanted to share with you is that we we like to reward engagement because engagement is about creating energy in the room so engagement we're gonna look at here we're looking at the chat questions we're looking at you know who's if you're staying longer and you're still engaging with the content and we want to reward that and another one we want to reward is the best question of today so listen to the session you've got two more opportunities and then ask a question and if that question gets up voted or if that question is a question that really makes us all think and learn then we will definitely reward you for that question and the final thing I'd like to mention is that we are going to be able to give one and a half non-verifiable CPD points courtesy of AISA and to get these points you need to stick around till the end of the session and then click on the link to register that you had attended and then we will be able to get those points to you all right so this part of the program is part of the program where we get to interact with you we don't like these events where we're just talking at people so this part of the program we are going to try to get to know you a little bit better so what I'm going to ask you to do is take take out your cellular phone take out your phone and then enter your name to sign up and there's a code that you have to enter in as well the name of the number the number you enter is four five six two eight one three seven I'll repeat that four five six two eight one three seven please enter your name and then I'll be able to see your name coming into the Mentimeter as you log on so let's give it a couple more minutes and see how many people we can get to sign up to the Mentimeter let's see we've got Inna we've got Claudia she's in thank you so much there's a couple more Flores thank you so much Carl you are in let's see who else can get into this Mentimeter it's a short little game the answers I will ask the questions but the answer and options for answering will appear on your cell phone and what you then do is select the correct answer the answer that you want to offer and I will read out the answer immediately Chris you are in Catherine you are in Jane you are in Marina you are in Leticia I see you who else is in Shoki you are in all right let's get a couple more people in we have 50 people in the room and I can see we have only got 15 people in the Mentimeter so I think I'm going to give it a couple minutes and have a little sip of my coffee while we wait for a few more of you to join the Mentimeter oh I kind of like cold coffee okay there we go more people we've got up to 20 now and let's give it a little bit more time one or two more minutes I see we also have two questions Chris Buetta is asking is there a backlog at the Haating Deeds office and then the second question is from Jane how long does an estate more or less take to be finalized first question is there a backlog at the Haating Deeds office and then the second question is how long does an estate more or less take to be finalized let's see if we can get those questions answered from some of the experts here in the room but I think let's I'm good to go studio let's go to the first question in the Mentimeter the first question is what is your job title or your role within the company are you a CEO director executive franchise owner are you a principal agent managing broker or are you an estate agent or property practitioner as it will be called or are you other let's see what will we have in the room thank you so much for all those responses let's move on to the next okay there we go people still thinking about about their role second question what type of real estate transactions do you specialize in boom did you see that I in the those responses came in thick and fast a lot of you saying sales and some of you saying sales and rentals and fewer saying that you focus specifically or specialize specifically in rentals I'm sure that you're going to really really enjoy the talk that your head smuts and yandavel from pay prop is going to treat us to next let's go to the next question this is my favorite do you multitask when attending virtual meetings or events online let's see how honest we are somebody said yes I'm guilty another few people said yes I'm guilty my mind tends to wonder the third option is no I'm 100 focus and the last option is sometimes so it looks like the bulk of us in the room are a little bit guilty of multitasking and honestly this is the reason we have engagements such as the Mentimeter and competitions and things like that in these virtual events the the next question is in your opinion is it a buyer's or sell a buyer or seller's market what do you think is it a buyer's market or a seller's market and maybe if you if you if you can give me your rationale in the chat box while we wait for the next speaker to get ready and get onto the stage get into that limo so an overwhelming majority of you saying that it is definitely a buyer's market potentially has to do with some of the conditions that Narisa mentioned to us earlier and do we have another question studio how would you describe please and because the the answers are visible immediately it's obviously prone to bad words so I'm going to ask you to keep it clean keep it tidy in one word how would you describe 2021 not 2020 2021 so far I agree with who ever said fast astounding we can see that challenging yes of course promising is a is a good word too little time very rushed bombastic and fantastic promising seems to be the the word that has been mentioned more than once of course how these word clouds work is if the word gets entered more than once it takes prominence so look at that challenging and promising coming out at the same time I guess the old saying of nothing worth having you know it comes easy everything worth having is worth fighting for fast promising challenging good prospects wonderful I think that's overwhelmingly quite positive let's get to the last question I think this is the last question let me see studio if you could change one thing about the South African real estate industry right now what would it be I'd love to see what your responses are take a little bit of time to think there's no one rushing you you only get one chance one thing you change about the South African real estate industry right now what would that one thing be we still have no responses just yet let's see who is going to be first with an answer there we go the time between signing a contract and registration less admin very very interesting response that because of course for many people property purchase and even property rental is such a massive massive commitment one kind of feels like it needs that admin but less admin I hear you eaab eaab and fc ffc and cpd I think if you if if you have time please stay with us for the the last part of your head's talk where she pulls Yan on to the stage and he's going to have some incredibly important insights to share with you around the property practitioners act it's not on the agenda but it's information that has proven to be incredibly useful to the various property or in this nexus program that we've put together the monopoly property I can't say that name out loud sorry and the eaab time frame with transactions less interest rates into electronic property registration that's quite a diverse number of things that you would change about the industry I think that's it from a mentee point of view I'd like to almost immediately call on to the stage your head your head thank you so much for all of the responses I see there's a couple of questions here the question that chris bueta asked which is is there a backlog at the housing deeds office it hasn't received an upvote yet let's see if someone wants that question answered and then Jane you asked how long does an estate more or less take to be finalized and then the last question was madena absent please upgrade the future rent option uh very very interesting I think what we can do is let's take a little break and then let's use the q and a questions as points of discussion when we get to our tables when this break that we're going to ask to have we'll let's do a five minute break and then let's just get everyone's opinion around the table um on what they think um is there a backlog at the housing deeds office what has been your experience how long does an estate more or less take to be finalized and a question for for absa I'm going to see if narissa can maybe answer that question for you marina directly in the meantime go grab yourself another cup of coffee we'll be back in exactly five minutes thank you so so much for everyone that's taken the time to join the nexus with its focus on empumalanga and lumpopo in partnership with absa we'll be back in a short short and welcome back everyone welcome back to nexus empumalanga and lumpopo in partnership with absa and right now it brings me tremendous pride to introduce pay props your head smiths and she is the head of data and analytics your head is also joined later on by the pay prop ceo yan will take us through the some of the rental market interview what the future holds and also give us a sneak peek into the pay prop state of the rental market survey results a little ahead of the release which is only going to be next quarter um your head are you on this there you are you're on the stage welcome welcome lovely to see you again where you're joining us from hi tracy thanks for having me i'm joining from a beautiful and sunny salamosh fantastic enjoy this thank you okay everyone i'm going to share my screen and um stop my video on my end so that you can see um the graphs nice and big on your screen um screen sharing going just one second there we go right so as tracy mentioned i'm going to be telling you about what happened in the rental market in 2020 certainly with COVID and lockdown it was a very interesting year and that reflects in the figures so i'll be covering a few topics starting with the rent then we'll look at the rears credit matrix and then also i'll give you a sneak preview of the pay prop state of the rental industry survey let's jump right in with rent on your screen you'll see inflation in blue and rental growth in red this is a year on year measure so for example if we look at december uh that represents the change in the rental price from december 2019 to december 2020 so as you can see rental growth uh trended below inflation for the past two years and in november 2020 we saw the first negative rental growth for the first time since we started tracking this back in 2012 so it was just 0.3 percent year on year uh which was equal to a 10 grand reduction in rent over the year but still something worth mentioning why was the rental market under such immense pressure in 2020 so there are a few reasons for this on the demand side we have obviously after COVID affordability issue i'm sure we all know someone who either lost a job or had to take a pay cut or had a sponsor or partner lose a job so affordability within a household played a big role in this when tenants have smaller incomes they aren't necessarily able to afford their larger rental increases and they also won't be looking around to move to larger and more expensive properties that puts down the pressure on the price because the demand is a bit lower on the supply side we saw many ebnd properties being moved from the short-term rental market to the long-term rental market because of the travel restrictions so these properties were sitting empty and the owners moved them to the long-term market so that they can get at least some sort of income on this another factor was the low interest rate that made it so attractive for investors to buy more white lead properties and both of these factors meant that there was an oversupply of rental properties in the market further putting down the pressure on the price now if we look at basically the same rental growth information as in the previous slide just quarterly and we add a trend line we can clearly see what we saw on that previous slide and that is that rental growth has been trending downward for the past six quarters for most of 2019 it trended between three point nine four percent so between three and four percent for most of 2019 and even into 2020 and then at the end of quarter one lockdown hit almost a year ago and you can clearly see the effects of that on the rental growth in the last quarter of 2020 rental growth measured only zero point two percent and again that means that from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2020 the average rent increased by only zero point two percent right if we look at provincial statistics against the national you can see that not going so great in Nampo the rent is actually getting cheaper year on year and it has been doing so for the past eight quarters at least and I think two before 2019 that you can't see ended the year at three point three percent decrease in the rental price and this was the lowest rental growth out of all the provinces looking at Nupu Malanga at the beginning of 2019 the province actually up from the national average and then took a dip in the middle of 2019 and we are seeing rental growth trend between two percent and one percent since then actually outperformed national rent in the last quarter at one point four percent so to put this into perspective five provinces out of the nine experienced negative rental growth in the last quarter of last year in other words rent got cheaper from the last quarter of 2019 to the end of 2020 so you'll see here Lampoko is the lowest Nupu Malanga is right up there with some of the highest and you can also see the average rental price here for Lampoko seven thousand six thousand nine hundred and Nupu Malanga seven and a half thousand both below the national average of seven thousand eight hundred moving on to areas so obviously with tenants losing income or some of the income these figures spiked quite a bit during 2020 when we look at the areas we look at two metrics we first look at the percentage of tenants in areas and then we look at the average areas size relative to rent so let's start with the first one at the beginning of last year just before lockdown almost 20 percent of tenants were in areas then lockdown was announced and that jumped up to 25 percent so in the second quarter one out of four tenants were in areas good to see that that started improving towards the end of the year ending at 20.9 percent not quite yet at pre lockdown levels if we consider the other metric at the beginning of last year a tenant in areas on average owed almost 80 percent of one month's rent that increased to 104 percent in the third quarter and again improved in the last quarter but is still quite the way off three lockdown levels this metric is a bit more sticky and I'll tell you why in a second so the reason for the for the movement or the trend that we see in in these metrics I think it's understandable that when lockdown was was announced tenants weren't necessarily sure what the cash flow was going to look like for the next few weeks at first we thought a few weeks and then it turned into a few months so it's very possible that they stopped paying their rent in full and then in May it was announced that the economy will open and everyone could go back to work on the 1st of June those who didn't lose their jobs and they started paying their rent in full and where possible paid off their areas looking at the average areas this peaked in only in the third quarter so mathematically all these tenants who could go back to work and could pay off their areas did so and when those low percentages are gone then mathematically the average will actually increase so that's why we saw that spike in the third quarter it's difficult to get that figure down because if you think about it to get that figure down to owe a smaller percentage of your rent you have to pay your rent in full and then you have to pay off on your rental areas and in the current economic climate that is difficult for many tenants to do if we compare provincial figures to the national figures Fallen Popo we can see that the same trend was followed so again spike in the second quarter and then improved down to the last quarter but the levels aren't quite yet where they were at the beginning of the year although they're not too far off luckily then if we look at the average size of areas the story is a bit different on average Lampopo tenants owed more than the national average this actually peaked in the second quarter and then again improved to through to the fourth quarter at the end of the year tenants in Lampopo who were in areas owed just over one month's rent moving on to Malanga these figures actually look quite good started the year off below the national average at 17.3% spiked in the second quarter and then ended below the national average at 19.5% so still a bit off from where it started at the beginning of last year but definitely improving improving looking at the average area size again same trend was followed spiked in the third quarter ended below the national average and at the end of the year last year in Malanga tenants who were in areas owed 90% of one month's rent moving on to our credit metrics so these figures are pulled from all the credit checks that are done through the paper off system so this is when a tenant applies for a rental property our clients will do the credit check so it doesn't necessarily track the group of tenants who are already living in a property it looks at the credit profile of someone applying to rent a property so keep that in mind when we interpret these stats we look at quite a few metrics everything from income to debt to income ratio and of course the important one is the credit score and I just want to touch on a few of these looking at major delinquency so a tenant with a major delinquency either has a default or a notice against them or they are more than three months in arrears on any one of their accounts this increased a bit in the second quarter and then recovered nicely down to the last quarter of last year and the second one that I actually want to highlight is the debt to income ratio we all know that the repo rate dropped by a three and a half basis points last year which is really a significant reduction and you can see the effect of that on the debt to income ratio at the beginning of last year tenants spent almost half of their net income on their debt repayments and at the end of last year that has decreased to 40% of their net income that obviously makes a huge difference on someone's cash flow and that is reflected in these figures of course if you have more if you spend less on debt you have more money left at the end of the month and that is what we're looking at here when we look at disposable income so that the percentage of the tenants net income increased over the year looking at credits calls in general so that is basically the summary of someone's credit help and that actually increased over the year it improved even though it was only by three points but it is really good to see that it improved over the course of the year I need to buy one point there in the second quarter Comparing the provinces to national and again don't want to hinder on this I just want to highlight the few important differences debt to income ratio you can see 48% spent on debt in Lampoko as opposed to 40% nationally they have tenants in Lampoko have a slightly smaller percentage of disposable income left at the end of the month at in quarter four and then slightly behind the national average on credit scores but really not a major trend smash at 643 competed the national number of 645 in the Malanga we also see the tenants are spending more on debt than the national average at 50% but it is worth noting that at the beginning of last year it was at 56% tenants only have 22% of their net income left after paying their debts and their rent and here unfortunately we can see a significant difference in credit score the overall credit half of tenants in Malanga it's nine points below the national average of 645 looking at major delinquencies you can see that 27% of tenants are more than one in four tenants actually have a major delinquency against their name compared to 18% nationally so why did credit metrics improve in 2020 and when I say credit metrics I actually mean the overall health so we now look at the credit score and there are a few possible reasons for this this is just educated guessing it's possible that the lower income tenants and I think you all know from reading the news and listening to the radio that lower income tenants are actually harder hit by lockdown than tenants in the in the high income brackets and it's possible that these tenants moved out of the rental market in the short term so either they moved in with friends and family and I haven't had the means to start renting again so that's why they aren't fresh credit checks done on these tenants and that could be why the figures are actually looking better tenants would also be staying for longer and that goes back to the affordability issue we discussed earlier they could be staying in the rental properties for longer and not moving to bigger properties and again no new no fresh credit checks done on these so that could also push up the credit matrix lastly and I'm hoping that I'm not just optimistic but that I'm realistic as well hoping that tenants are financially more responsible after COVID I think everyone got a bit of a fright when lockdown hit and hopefully we're all thinking about our finances a bit differently have a bit more money to spend due to the lower interest rates so hopefully that is one of the reasons so I was expecting to see the credit matrix worsen and also because good tenants with the lower interest rates are actually buying property and they're moving out of the rental market but it is good to see that there are good tenants still available in the market even after COVID to pull all the rental properties now for the fun part the paper upstate of the rental industry survey results at the end of last year we conducted the second survey only and I nitpicked a few of the best results to share with you here so who took part in this survey we sent it to all paper clients and everyone who signed the poor rental index and other industry players 9 to 5 percent was in the property industry 69 percent of participants were either business owners or rental agents and then 64 percent managed rental books less than 150 properties so they're not massive books they manage 150 properties or less the first category was technology and this really should come as no surprise 55 percent of participants said that they increased the use of technology in their business during COVID and of course with people being forced to work from home and this really is not a surprising statistic at all 70 percent said that virtual buildings and 3d tours are here to stay and I think we're all seeing great technology in this field so yeah that's here to stay according to 70 percent of our participants 69 percent said that it will be more productive to increase automation than to increase the workforce so that is a great example of working smart and not working hard looking at the rental portfolios over the year a full 70 percent of respondents said that the increases that they put through on rentals were lower last year than in other years that again was down to the affordability issue that we spoke about earlier 93 percent said that they have made payments arrangements with tenants this just shows you just how many tenants were actually affected by loss of income during lockdown 55 percent said that they have more vacant properties now than they used to have and 64 percent said that they have lowered their commission in order to keep and mandate this is a bit of a problematic number if you think that in a rental portfolio your commission income is your main stream of income and once you've lowered that commission percentage it really is difficult to raise it again so just something to keep in mind before you lower your commission just know that you might not be able to raise that percentage in the near future looking at challenges quickly the biggest challenge for rental agents or is finding good tenants that is the single biggest challenge I mean 68 percent of our respondents said that they are worried about the ongoing effect of COVID-19 that obviously um it covers a whole bunch of things from cash flow to viewings to technology you name it not all news is bad news luckily the last question was how optimistic are our participants about the future of the rental market only five percent said that they are pessimistic 17 percent said that they were neutral about this and a whopping 78 percent said that they are actually optimistic about the future of the rental market I looked at the previous year's results and they pre-COVID 62 percent of people said that they were optimistic about the future of the rental market so maybe COVID made us all think a bit differently about life and what to regret people but it's good to see that uptick in that statistic for more information you can download the pack up rental index on that link I'll drop it in the chat box in a moment and then I'll also answer your questions in the chat box if there are any handing over to Jan who will tell you a bit about the future of the rental market thank you for listening well thank you your head you can maybe there we go well good afternoon everybody it's lovely to to share time with property professionals of Humalanga and Lampopa I'm delighted to see a couple of familiar faces familiar names I've already chatted privately to quite a few of you awesome to see you putting the continent in person but hopefully we will be back in that environment against well it is our privilege and always a pleasure to participate in a private property event and I want to thank Amasi, Tracy Lee, Cole, Ben and the rest of the awesome team of private property for affording us this opportunity now ladies and gentlemen today I'm not going to do a PowerPoint presentation should I have done that I probably would have had to title it deaf by PowerPoint because I am going to talk to you very briefly about legislation and regulation to see what the future holds and I'm going to talk specifically about the regulations the draft regulations to the property practitioners act now as you all know this act was promulgated or published already on 3 October 2019 but that being the case you may be wondering why we as estate agents are still working in accordance with the old act the estate agency affairs act of 1976 now I think we will all agree that this 45 year old piece of legislation is overdue for replacement so why are we still following it the problem is that the estate agency affairs act that's back to an era before the internet before digital marketing before social media and very importantly also before automated and integrated payment platforms such as 5 prop the old act simply does not cater for these realities of today and the new act is not an operation yet so what can we expect well considering the property practitioners act and all other new legislation we must remember that any new act in itself only sets out broad principles of the new law it does not deal with the implementation that is where regulations to an act come in setting out the implementation and the application of the new act now although the new property practitioners act was published already in October 2019 its regulations have not been finalized or published only once these regulations are published in the government cassette will the act be implemented and that's when we also need to follow it and when is it likely to be published 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 but due to COVID-19 and the lockdown regulations the opportunity to submit comments and we all participated in that that opportunity was extended until November last year 20 November to be specific and since then we haven't seen or heard much once it's published it will bring the new act to into operation and now it's important to look at what we can expect it is important tonight that I am going to point out a few of only two sections of the new act and I'm going to refer you very specifically to a regulation in the draft regulations I'm not trying to give you legal advice my advice is that you seek legal advice that you have a conversation with your auditor and to see whether you can benefit from these regulations and I expect that there might be good news to some of you who participate in the rental property market I am going to share my screen and I'm not going to navigate too much I'm trying to avoid trying to make you seasick I just want to show you that what I am quoting and reading to you does in fact exist it is the new act and it is the new draft regulations it's all public documents it's published on the internet feel free to have a look there are only three numbers you need to remember I'm going to start with section 54 of the property practitioners act and I'll be looking away at my screen section 54 of the new act is basically in essence the same as what you know as section 32 of the estate agency affairs act it deals with trust monies short-term trust money longer-term trust money and although it's slightly more comprehensive it is materially the same as what you know and understand under section 32 of the old act I'm just gonna I'm not gonna read it verbatim in the essence of time and it is quite comprehensive but I will just highlight a few salient points section 54 starts with saying that every property practitioner must open and keep one or more separate accounts and it must be referring to certain bank sections and immediately after opening such a trust account you must appoint an auditor and then you must immediately notify the authority now that's different the authority yes the new name for the eab you must notify them of all these trust accounts and your auditor and then it carries on in subsection 2 to say that similar to section 32 sub 2 you can have other savings of interest bearing accounts or amounts that will be kept in trust for longer periods and then it goes on and it goes on to say what you must do and must do and for those of you prefer reading the act in other languages it is also available there and then sub six sub section six tells you that often seek the important report you must do this and the other then the authority might do certain things or might do certain things and that carries on I've done I've done want to dip into that details but it is important for you and your auditor and your legal advisor to have a look at these draft regulations and to ensure that you do comply with the provisions of this regulations that will be applicable on us in the near future what is more important and I'm not going to stroll I've got a different screen I'm going to take you to section 23 of the act and this section 23 subsection 1 reads a bit awkwardly and then it talks of something that we haven't seen before and it says that a property practitioner whose turnover is below 2.5 million ran must cause his her or its accounting records to be subjected to an independent review by a registered accountant subject to certain provisions now what is different here is there's a threshold of 2.5 million in your in your turnover then it says an independent review by a registered accountant it doesn't speak of doesn't talk of a formal audit by an accredited chartered accountant which is quite significant then if we consider the contents of subsection 2 it says the minister may by notice in the government is it determine the circumstances under which certain property practitioners and you know by now know that that is a state agents may be exempted from keeping trust accounts quite interesting and new and then further the minister may by notice in the government is it determine a different dispensation for the review of accounting records for those who are exempted so this shows the intention of the legislator and what is important now is for us to have a look at the regulations which are still draft regulations to see whether this hardest intention is going to be implemented and how it's going to work in practice so I'm now so what we were started was section 54 this was section 23 that introduces a new legislative framework in terms of which certain property practitioners can be exempted from having trust accounts keeping trust accounts and having it audited the relevant regulation in the draft regulations of 2020 is regulation 4 and as you can see the heading is exemption from trust accounts now pursuant to the provisions of section 23 of the act that's the section I've just read to you the following is prescribed 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 shall deal with shortly and a property practitioner is exempted from keeping the trust account if he no longer receives any trust monies other than as permitted in regulation 4.4 and very importantly it's always and if that property practitioner submits to the authority and affidavit in a specific form in terms of which that affidavit the practitioner asserts that we meet certain criteria now I'm not going to deal with all the details of that and you can you're welcome to have a read through it's all very simple and it's it all makes sense quite achievable and what is important is that underneath this specific regulations there is a template document that shows you exactly what all the requirements are that you need to make now let's say somebody who wants to be exempted and follow those it's all subject into the sub section for some regulations to follow now what is important when we look at regulation 4.2 it says that where a property practitioner is exempted in terms of the above such property practitioner will not be required to again have such an account review or audit it so you can have it wrapped up parked and it's in end of the story regulation 4.3 where a property practitioner is exempted in terms of the above such property practitioner will be exempted from having to have his business and other accounts audited and will only be required to have such accounts independently reviewed by a registered accountant it's a far simpler and a far cheaper process subject to you meeting the criteria now 4.4 this is the most important one and this is where rental agents really need to consider their options a property practitioner will further be exempted so this is after all the above and regardless of the threshold of a turnover of 2.5 million rank any property practitioner who is otherwise compliant with all these regulations and the act may be exempted from operating at his own trust account if such property practitioner is otherwise compliant meeting everything and if such property practitioner has mandated another property practitioner that specializes in collecting and distributing trust payments and such a property practitioner will be called a payment processing agent and that's typically the service provider like by proper and that this payment processing agent there needs to process such trust payments on the property practitioners behalf in respect of all trust funds received by that property practitioner in other words you must use a payment processing agent who is firstly a property practitioner himself obviously with a valid FFC and who is otherwise compliant and such payment processing agent must process all your trust funds you may not have a trust an active trust account yourself it must be wrapped up as explained above then subsection 4.2 you may be exempted if each payment processing agent mandated by you the property practitioner operates a trust environment that complies with the act and associated regulations now what is important here is the trust environment your payment processor the pay props in your life must operate a trust environment that is auditable in its entirety the entire environment all estate agencies all landlords all tenants all trust monies must be auditable in one trust environment we then move on to subsection sub-regulation 4.3 each payment processing agent that's the bankrupt and the likes and each of the client accounts operated by the processing agents are audited annually in compliance with the act and regulations and the audit reports in respect of our submitted to the authority in compliance with the act and the regulations we unpack unpack that like I said it's the entire trust environment that needs to be audited and the report needs to go to the authority which is the EAAB and then each of the client accounts operated by the by the pay props of this world are to be audited annually and submitted to the authority and everybody needs to be compliant now what is important here is 4.4.4 the trust environment realistically and each of the estate agencies accounts operated by the payment processing agent must be audit audited annually and the reports must be submitted but each of these must be separately auditable and I think I've missed 4.4.3 because that's where it says separately auditable client accounts both in respect of each property practitioner in other words each estate agency and as well as in respect of each client of each such property practitioner in other words must be separately auditable also in terms of every single landlord and every single tenant which means there must be a proper segregation of trust funds and each of those client accounts must be auditable secretly like I've said earlier also holistically in a complete trust environment and once all these sub regulations are being complied with you as the estate agency the property practitioner concerned also must hold no trust monies whatsoever outside of the manner provided for what we've discussed here so that and if we then scroll down there's an annexure year one it's an example it's a template that you need to complete should you want to apply for exemption it's an affidavit that says that you comply with all the above mentioned so should you use the right payment processing agent and should you be otherwise compliant and follow all these steps you can bypass the onerous and expensive obligation of keeping a trust your own trust account and have it having it ordered with annually and the good news is that even in the absence of all these new regulations pay crop has been compliant with all of this all along for the past 16 years all of our clients received received have been receiving audit assistance and we're quite comfortable that our clients will soon all be able to apply for exemption as envisaged in this these regulations and on that note that's all from me thank you so much Tracey B back to you let me introduce myself I see Tracey's got a couple connectivity issues give me a couple of thumbs up in the comments box just to make sure that you can guarantee me it would be great perfect so let me introduce myself my name is Colvin and Burke I'm the business development executive at private property and it's real it's really as an absolute privilege to be able to spend some time with everybody today albeit virtually we obviously prefer the physical world where we can sit down have a coffee and engage with you and share our experiences and our knowledge but as private property we're really happy with this platform and it's an amazing way for us to actually still connect with a wider audience and just really be able to share all of our stuff so I've got a couple of short slides that I'm wanting to talk through really sort of focusing on what is the private property of now and what is our role going to be going into the future and that will be followed by Claude Evelife who is our provincial head and she'll start sharing some information around what it is that we're seeing in your exact provinces so let's start off with you know what are we choosing to be as private property or essentially we're choosing to be a trusted partner in real estate much like what you're seeing now we're in the center of an ecosystem right so Nexus is an is a perfect example of it where we've bought through our connections with our partners such as Apsa and PayProp and brought them to the fold to be able to share their knowledge and information with yourselves as real estate so that's the exact sort of replication of what it is that our property is choosing to be really in the center of the ecosystem by way of example we've got really two big things that and that we focus on on the one side is the consumer and we would classify the consumer as somebody that's searching for properties either to buy and rent and on the other side we've got our partners and our real estate clients and then convincing attorneys banks or more derivatives and everybody else in the industry and we sort of got to follow a bit of a tightrope with balancing the needs and wants of both of both parties by way of example if we lean a little bit too much and really just cater for exactly what industry and real estate is wanting we run the risk of losing our consumer base and what happens with consumers if we're not engaging well with them is they merely just vote with their feet and find other avenues to find their information and likewise if we're too consumer centric we start alienating our clients so it really is a bit of a tightrope but it's something that we choose to be and something that we really are good at what's how do we get there in terms of being a trusted partner what starts off with being completely customer obsessed completely understanding exactly what it needs as real estate partners and what our consumers need the tops of information and again as an example we've got almost 550,000 people following us on our facebook page we have daily podcasts and all we do on those daily podcasts is share the information that we have and our partners have we understand and we're getting to understand it even better now around exactly what it is that a consumer wants and they want information so we play into those needs we obviously also need to understand the frustrations and the needs of our real estate clients and once we understand these these needs and once we can then start solving problems and we need to solve them using digital technology and we very much in that in that phase now and I'll share a little bit more information around how does that we intend to solve these real world problems that are that everybody in the ecosystem has and again once you started getting there then we start creating the real fun stuff and that's around creating valuable propositions for everybody and by way of an example we had a suggestion in the Nexus event yesterday morning around I think it was one of the pain points in the state agent was having saying you know they wish that clients when they sign an off to purchase that they had a an approval principle that way you know that they they're quite serious and that's exactly the vision that we have as part of property you know can you imagine a world where when we send you a lead for somebody that says I want to see this property I want to go and view it and when we send that lead to you we tell you that they've been pre-approved really by Apsa we tell you that they're wanting a three bedroom house and whatever it is we tell you that they've got 2.5 children and a cat and a dog and that's valuable information we've got to move away from where we are now where we just flood you with with leads mostly more of okay quality it's just we need to start not worrying about the quantum of lead but the quality of leads and essentially digital technology and what it is that we embarking on as a business is really going to separate the the buyers from the shoppers and that's what exactly what it is that you you're wanting to see so where are we now well we sort of two years on into our five year strategy and what we're wanting to be at the end of our five year strategy is to have five million unique users coming onto our portfolio every month where we are now we're at about 3.2 million average which is significantly higher than where it is that we were expecting to be at this time of the year just by way of illustration as well if we consider last year around where we were this time last year we've grown by over a million unique South Africans that are coming onto our portal if you go back two years we've grown that by more than two million unique users and you would have seen it you would have seen it and we hear it from all of our interstate partners that there's absolute that they've seen an absolute growth and an absolute turnaround in power property which we're incredibly proud of and it's just the start of it the slide you're seeing there is just really a quick snapshot of our of our strategy for the next five or for the five years 2019 was really around preparation we got a new CEO and he brought in a new executive team of which I'm one of them and we've all come in with it with different backgrounds and we spent 2019 really just thinking around what it is if we wanted to do in this business and where it needs to go 2020 was our foundation year and it was a massive year for us obviously for all investors it was full of hardship and it was full of struggle but there was massive wins and massive achievements as well 2021 is our watershed moment and that's really around innovation and we're going to start bringing in some really great technology into your world and our consumers world and I'll share a little bit more information on it just now 2022 is repositioning 2023 is optimizing and then it really starts talking to scale and scale is where the where we need to go as a business we've got the right market share with the right balance of consumers and then we can really grow and give complete and utter value through to everybody in the ecosystem you would have noticed about this time it's almost exactly a year in March we moved away from the blue red and white and we very much a different organization I can't even remember being that old brand only nurses green you would have seen our hearts are green in the comments there and it for us it's not just a brand change or a brand refresh and we've got a different color it's very much also about how does that we show up in the community how does that we engage with our consumers and you would have seen this again in our facebook pages you would have seen how does that we engage with yourselves so it's it's not just a brand refresh it's a complete departure in our old way of working we're a 22 year old business and really our anniversary was last year and this is this is year one of our of our new life in terms of so I want to spend a little bit talking around pop techs and fintechs and that's it's something that we need to grapple with you know we're in an age of technology but we need to understand what role technology has in our world when we speak about fintech which is financial technology and in our past pop tech which is pop tea technology first we would understand where are we are we evolving in terms of technology or was it an absolute revolution in terms of technology so as an example if you look at evolution well let's take take an example so everybody remembers having a Nokia 2110 you hold that Nokia 2110 up and you hold up your new your new iPhone 12 there is a massive difference in the technology the speed of computing and all the rest of that but then consider that Nokia 2110s were 25 years ago so it seems when you just compare the two that it's an absolute revolution in technology but really isn't it's a slow and changing and evolving use of technology as an example of a revolution 12 months ago I was sitting in our private pop tea offices and I'm slung a rucks in Durban with 180 degree sea views now I'm in my home office I'm waiting for my kids to barge through the door and join the meeting and tell everybody that they're hungry or whatever it might be but it's our new way of life most of us didn't know what teams was we didn't know what any of this technology was a year ago it's not very much part of our lives that is an absolute change in a revolution in technology what's really really important to notice this is that consumers have changed we might be struggling with change we might be slow without change but the consumers the new shoppers out there of property whether it's to buy or rent have changed if you have a look there's a massive need around virtual reality on platforms around metaphor consumers once you really interrogate a property before this if they make any choices around viewing it and the rest of that if you have a look at our facebook stuff that we've been doing every now and then we'll showcase some of your properties on our facebook page every time we showcase a property we get almost 15 000 hits per property that is extraordinary numbers we actually had a show a virtual show house the other day we had over 500 000 people view their property this is a rapid departure from the norm and we as part of property and yourselves as real estate need to make sure that we're ahead of this because our consumers are changing that brings me to to building a modern platform in the next couple months we'll start engaging with us quite differently we are rapidly changing our technology and what it is that we're going to be doing for both consumers and yourselves as real estate so in the next couple months we'll be launching a brand new platform for consumers and that is it's going to simplify hard is a hysterical property better filtering understanding the area is better a finding more properties a lot easier what they currently do and it will be web-based as well as app what we also have is we'll be launching a proper real estate app and web-based service as well for real estate that way you'll be able to get information like you will be sharing with you now at your fingertips we can tell you what the market shares are like we can tell you the lead performance where are the people coming from so the two need to work in tandem and you know it's it's it'll be slow progress but we'll get to that point after launch where we can start really giving you that rich information from a consumer and really handing it to you on a silver platter which is really what is it we need to do again I talk around that that example around having a pre-approval so when we send you that lead you know that person's good to go for credit that's value and that's what we need to start striving for we'll be sharing this a lot more information with you over the next couple months there needs to be a quite a bit of change management it is a very different way of us doing business so we'll engage with you and we'll share a lot of this information over the weeks and months to come I just want to talk around humanizing digital strategies so you know we we talk around disruption when it comes to technology and I get a sense that when we say the word disruption that it's it's seen in quite a negative context in our world a lot of people when we talk around you know disrupting real estate that everybody goes well that's a play to you know cut out the middle man cut out the real estate agent cut this art it's it's not that and it can't be that definitely not in our country we know this we know that property ownership in this country we know that it's the single biggest property purchase anybody will do and we know that the difference anything makes is the human it's the human that's the estate agent it's the buyer that's a human it's a seller that's a human it's the registering and transferring to any that are human it's around making sure that we humanize this by bringing the people in at the right time with the right information it's not about cutting anybody out so really this is our journey over the next couple months we're looking really really forward to to sharing this with you again what will happen over the next couple months is we'll launch a few things we'll engage with real estate what do you like what don't you like and then we'll start every two to four weeks there'll be updates it's a it's a bit of a it's not quite a sprint and it's definitely not a marathon but we'll get to that point where we just are in this wonderful ecosystem where everything just works exactly as hard as if we needed so again thank you to our partners for joining us today thank you to all of you for for spending the afternoon with us and we look forward to seeing you again hopefully in the in the real world but if not we'll definitely be engaging quite often on nexus thank you I think to the studio you'll be bringing up Claudia now thank you Carl thank you very much for taking us through what's the private property brand has in store and while we wait for Claudia I just wanted to acknowledge some of the questions that's been asked here in the Q&A box and there are some responses that I'm happy happy to take you through once Claudia has done her talk Claudia where are you joining us from sis um I'm in Pretoria born and bred so yeah from home today awesome over to you Claudia thank you so much um I'm really happy to be talking to you today it's such a nice platform and to have us all in a room with a facility like this provides an opportunity that let's be honest we didn't really have to get so many people together in what is now commonly referred to as pre-pandemic times so I hope you like the platform because we will be doing a lot of things with big big rooms and crowds in the future um I'm the provincial head for Hauteng, Bumalanga and Limpopo and I will be sharing some information and tracking and performance data with you today it's not going to be long but it's really really good so I think let's get on with it we'll start with Limpopo and with the sales performance tracking which is obviously of great interest to you these are remarkable numbers you will see that since 2018 the views have increased substantially and really really exponentially and as did the leads as well so the views indicate that there is a lot of interest and it has increased and thank you for putting your stock on private property because it just widens the scope of possibility just so you know 2021 is not on yet because we have merely done January February to date or the two completed months but things are really really looking good sales views are just over 265,000 until the end of February and we are very close to sending you um 11,000 leads so it's really looking well and if we can take a look at the rentals which track quite well with what you had shared with us earlier and what we know of the market there has still been an increase in views and interest over the last um the last year 23% after the 36% increase from 2018 to 2019 and as to the rental views we have had in excess of 140,000 which even though conversions aren't that many it does show that there is definite interest to see what is out there as to leads 28% in the previous year is really good and 2019 to 20 as far as rentals are concerned again tracking with the national data and trends not a lot but it is not negative to date um we have generated around 12,000 leads and 140,000 views so there's definitely definitely action the next slide will tell us about the top 50 searched suburbs so I went and I did a little bit of research on all of these additional to what I know and oh yeah my hands start going um what it indicates is very positive because it is literally across all LSM groups across all price ranges and a broad scope of interest around as far as the different parts of our communities are concerned so bend or is a good example which is the suburb that gets the most searches and if you know it you will know that it is mostly residential but has properties in all price classes and that goes for the entire province warm boss will um as mainly interest is a lot of international investor and then second homes for weekends and holidays holokwane which is a hub that'll always always do well and there's a lot of development there more and more and opportunities for people that are ready to settle down so the province caters for all sorts and the interest has been very very broad of course if you would like to know more and how to enhance your exposure in certain suburbs then inna de venor is available and we will I'll tell you a little bit more about her a little later on the next slide can sound very serious but it's not really it's also indicates a constant so I'm sure all of you know this but the median price is the middle point of property prices in an area or a neighborhood statistically it is the best indicator to determine property prices and to measure them per suburb area province a nationally like we did what you will see the top one the black line is the national median on private property lempopo tracks slightly lower which implies that it's more affordable but on the sale side what is quite positive is the increase showed shown from middle last year so that obviously implies that prices are slightly higher in your province and that means good things for commission and that the market market is stimulated so that's good news for the province but overall fairly stable rentals as you'll see the black line the national median is higher than than lempopo's median but it's doesn't vary that much and if considering everything that is going on in the rental market it is fairly stable and it kind of got back up to where it was so this is stable and not negative news but it is more affordable in lempopo than elsewhere which is a wonderful which is a wonderful thing to know and which makes your scope quite quite good then on to the next slide which is longer so this is good this is really nice to see especially because if you look at the exponential growth in the views which was 63 percent 2018 to 2019 47 percent last year and considering that to date we have received over 700,000 views in the province and generated and this is remarkable 180,000 leads then it really tracks well what is so nice to see about this data is the relation between the sales views and the sales leads if you look at the 47 percent increase last year and the 45 percent increase in leads this implies that you are dealing with a lot of buyers coal made the distinction between buyers and shoppers but this shows that views are converted to leads which then leaves you with the opportunity to do your magic so this is really promising and it's very nice to to know that the province is doing so well on both views and leads if we look at rentals still very much in line with the market thanks very much in line with the market growth over the last year has not been a lot it is still not negative as far as views and interest is concerned and we have received in around 140,000 views to date this year conversion to leads leads are down considering that there was a lot of them and that the stats looked very good 14 percent is seems a lot but it's not that much but it is negative growth it makes complete sense and this is something a wave that we will have to ride out it does however not indicate that there is not potential the positive views even though the growth is slight is a good is a good indicator of potential there as to the top 50 suburbs this is also a very nice one Nelsprite that is fairly obvious so much development going on there I know of course the city is going to launch soon and Nelsprite is truly buzzing and it's and it's really a hub Secunda development industrial mining doing well there again another demographic that is interested in a suburb in your province so if we go down it's also very clear that all price classes all LSMs and an entire demographic is visiting private property is interested so a lot of potential there then the median for Malanga also fairly stable fairly stable the national median you have seen and Malanga is quite a bit lower than the national median and has picked up slightly over the last couple of months that's a good sign rentals have come down but if you look at the numbers it is with a mere thousand ran from 85 around 8500 ran to 7500 ran so it looks big on the graph and it is a decline but it is by no means an indicator of zero activity all that prices have dropped remarkably so again this is not bad if not good news to all of us and with that I am going to just say thank you thank you and Ina who is your very very passionate relationship manager I'm sure most of you have spoken to her worked with her and met her she's also loving face to face connections and visiting you guys in the promise she will post her detail in case you don't have it as well as my contact detail in the chat so please do feel free to make contact with us and see how we can assist and join hands and get you the best performance because both from purple and from Malanga allows for it there's a lot of scope thank you thank you so much cloud here thank you very very much I'm just before you get off the stage let me just check if there any questions for Claudia or for Karl while I have you thank you Marion for sending through the congratulations to the team and the happy birthday for our new brand identity which is of course tomorrow no I think Claudia you're good to go thank you ma'am okay well have a lovely afternoon guys thank you fantastic okay so I think that brings us to the end of our session we still have 46 people on the call which is fantastic studio we're not going to do the second mentee instead I am going to acknowledge some of the questions that have been asked absent please upgrade the future end option that was a question or a request posted by marina marina also asked may we apply direct or must the bookkeeper apply for exemption of the trust account and that of course has been directed at Jan and I think Jan you did answer it in the chat and then is there a backlog at the heart and deeds office Narissa I think you answered that question and then the question that Jane had which was around how long does an estate more or less take to be finalized so if we look at the chats some of the questions have been answered there Narissa thank you for dropping your email address in the chat for us to look at your head thank you for dropping in the latest pay prop rental index here and then the rest of you said that responding to Jane and a state can take 90 days or longer to register it depends on whether all information is up to date example rates and tax and so on and so forth Narissa you are also responding to marina's question around or request around upgrading the rental product you were saying that hi marina we look at 80 percent of future rental income it all depends on rental in a particular area we will also look at the quality of customer in customer investor customer investor and we can then use that or they can then use that to appeal for a higher consideration thank you so much Narissa for also responding to Chris's question around the backlog saying that the usual turnaround time is five days and now it's taking between seven and ten days to register a bond um Chris thank you for responding everyone thank you so much for responding and then Hanli I like your comment you're saying that you love what Karl is saying right now hi time to skatey quir and pandy cuff I hope I said that right I know exactly what that means Jan your response to marina I'm going to just acknowledge that the regulations state that the property practitioners can submit the application it is also the property practitioner who deposes the affidavit and not the auditor I hope that answers your question if you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact us to reach out to myself Karl Ben Trish Claudia and also Ina and then from a pay prop perspective we start I think we still have your head and Jan here and then also big big thank you to the Apsa team Narissa thank you for popping your email address in there and answering some of those questions that we had wonderful so we've got about 23 minutes left we're going to leave the platform open so that you can still network with each other and before I go I just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you to our partners Apsa thank you so much to your heads Mats and Jan Darval from pay prop really appreciate the insights that you've shared with us especially around some of the clauses in that property practitioners act that can help some of us some of our property practitioners think differently about how they're going to navigate around the new the changes in the act okay and that concludes our presentations for the day thank you everyone for sharing your knowledge with us and sharing yourself with us don't forget to be able to get those uh non verifiable cpd points from Aisa please follow the link that is being pasted into the chat right now while I said the sessions are over the event is going to stay open and before I go I'd like to say congratulations to Jane and Marina van der Marve you are our winners for the next Nexus and Humalanga and Lumpopo um uh engagement competition Chris you have a question here any feedback on the EAAB issue with regards to FCCs I think what we should do here potentially Jan would it be possible for you to reach out directly to Chris so that high five real Ned Polokwane well done Marina thank you Catherine for that um Jan can I ask that you possibly reach out to Chris and maybe give him some feedback on the issue I think he asked a question around FFCs um and yeah I think that brings us to the end of our Nexus for today if you are not subscribed to our industry newsletter please do so we're popping the link to subscribing into the chat as well in a minute there we go and thank you so much Inna for for um for posting your email address and cell phone number into the chat um before I go can I just see a last couple of emojis to know you're still in the room with us and have enjoyed your time with us um Hanley Krüger you're saying thank you everyone enjoyed very much or we enjoyed having you Hanley Jane thank you for hosting an insightful meeting it's uh it's not on zoom the platform that we're using is called Vmo you can see it right next to the live button quite an engaging and new platform we'll definitely be rolling it out a little bit more um in in in this year if FFCs involve another issue you will post a link thank you so much Carl thank you for that green heart Flores thank you so much for the for the money emoji we must claim that money emoji thank you Jan I can see the link there Nerissa thank you for joining thank you for joining with your team Renee Catherine Jane thank you Magda van der Berg thank you Claudia thank you Johan Chris everyone I wish you a very beautiful thank you Veronica for those beautiful yellow hearts thank you Lena appreciate you dropping us that emoji George and Marina David or David Flores Magda bye bye Danky with that I'm going to say goodbye we still have 20 minutes left in this environment so don't rush off if you don't have to remember switch on your camera and switch on your microphone and have a chat with with the fellow colleagues in in this event today thank you so much have a lovely lovely Tuesday tomorrow we have another Nexus for another region you're welcome to join and we have another one the final Nexus in this series will take place on Thursday so from me Tracy Miller and the marketing and sales team at private property have yourself a beautiful Tuesday