 Are you thinking about immigrating but can't bring yourself to leave South Africa? You can have the best of both worlds by semi-grating. If you want to know more about the semi-gration craze sweeping the country, you are in the right place. I'm Dumie and welcome to the 500th episode of the Private Property Podcast. Before we get started, I would just like to thank all our viewers for tuning in every single night, 7pm and allowing us to reach this milestone. From all of us here at the Private Property Podcast, we would like to say thank you so much for spending your evenings with us right here on the Private Property Podcast. Congratulations once again to Tabiseng Ramalaliflora for walking away with that 500 grand cash prize from Friday's show. Thank you so much for engaging with us and you can also be like her. Just shoot your shot and share this post and take your friends as well and the person with the most shares will walk away with that 500 grand cash prize. So before we get started, let's take a look at our Noteboard to see what the hype about semi-gration is all about. This is the Private Property Notice. Let's begin. According to Lightstone data, Hengting has the highest rate of people who are choosing to semi-grade in 2021. This is followed by the Western Cape Pumbumalanga as well as the Eastern Cape. With the interest rates being at an all-time low, now is the time for those who want to semi-retire. Home buyers are taking advantage of the availability of affordable housing before it's all gone and they want to secure a spot before they become the expensive again with the developments that are coming in the market. Hermanus, according to the South African report, is the fastest growing South African town for high net worth individuals, a large number of Cape Town Pretoria as well as Johannesburg residents have relocated to Hermanus over the past 10 years. And seaside towns like the Garden Route, like Mussel Bay, Plettenbeck Bay, George as well as Nile and I have emerged as the semi-gration hotspots in South Africa. That's all for tonight when it comes to semi-gration. We hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about it. And if you are looking to semi-grade, stay tuned because we are going to be talking semi-gration all throughout this week and of course more in today's episode. Our guest tonight has over 14 years of experience as a consumer and marketing executive and he's deeply committed to the use of cross-industry skills, knowledge and expertise to ensure business growth and innovation. He also knows a thing or two about credit and the rental housing market. Viewers at home, please help me welcome the head of marketing and sales at TPN Credit Bureau, Valdu Marcus. Valdu, thank you so much for joining us once again right here on the Private Property Podcast. Thank you very much to me and thanks for having us. And yes, congratulations on your 500th show. Thank you so much. I'm sure people are screaming at home and saying, yes, we finally reached 500. People have been going crazy on building up to the 500th episode and we are really, really looking forward to celebrating it more. And we're talking semi-gration today and let's just jump into it to say the person who's watching this for the first time was who's hearing what's the term semi-gration for the first time. What exactly is it and how does it affect them even? So semi-gration is, I think it's become a trendy word but it's been going on for quite a few years. We know that previously as urbanization people moving into cities for job opportunities for career opportunities for better education. But interestingly, the past couple of years we've seen a reverse almost of that. People are moving out of the bigger cities to go and find that unique spot that offers great education, a place that offers great lifestyle and also not just to retire for career but generally to bring up your kids good service delivery, reliable services which has become more and more important and therefore people are looking from bigger cities to smaller cities. Sure and you just spoke about it because my next question was what are some of the reasons why people semi-grate and you just touched on the reason of children and maybe even service delivery, what are the opportunities that semi-gration presents to landlords and even tenants? I think the most obvious one is to look at property prices. So what you would normally be able to afford in a big city you can get a lot more value for money. Bigger families are opting to go for bigger family homes where they can establish themselves for a longer period of time so the family can grow into the house. COVID of course have accelerated it and highlighted the fact that we are restricted. If you live in a big city the lockdown restrictions prevented us from free movement. So someone with the big yard appreciated that big yard for the first time because they used it, they could move around. So apart from COVID accelerating it, I think there's a general movement towards better mental health, high stress jobs now that we're working online across borders not just in your local time zone means that people do want to enjoy a slower lifestyle when it's available to them after hours. Sure and you know based on your experience do you think that the search of greener pastures ends up in a fairy tale or do we have some challenges of course that come with it and in your experience have you seen this being successful for many people who do emigrate? We have definitely seen it and that's why we continue seeing this trend growing. There is of course its own challenges. We see that a lot of companies are introducing their return to work policy so if you decided to move to a smaller town your company might decide to say you need to be back in the office and that in itself will pose certain challenges although we work online collaboration creativity is always hyped during at the office sharing with your colleagues. And then there's also the stories where you have moved to areas especially if you've got close family knits and friendship groups you have a support system moving to a smaller town moving into another province you take away that and you'll have to rebuild it. So although there's upsides some of the downsides is that you're leaving familiarity but it's not a brand new concept to us because South Africans have moved between provinces to chase careers for many many years. Sure and you know just before we went live we were talking a little bit more about the hotspots right and we have identified some of those hotspots. Do you see anything else that is outside of the ones that we identified that might just be maybe an area that's coming up that maybe if or even not just maybe for residential purposes if there are new warehouses and factories and even corporations that are legit saying okay now we are moving from Johannesburg for example to Port Elizabeth because it's closer to the harbor and all of those things. Are we seeing such trends? Yes we are and I think one of the ones that's only started really picking up now is Nelsprate. Nelson Mandela Bay has definitely seen an inflow of people moving out of Ha Teng as well as Quazuli Natal. Interesting it's not just if you look at Ha Teng it's the past decade that we've really seen that there's been a net outflow of people to various provinces and of course the most popular being Quazuli Natal as well as the Western Cape but we also see some people moving into the Eastern Cape although it's only marginal compared to the other two provinces and once again it's got to do with the quality of life, the education available and with international flights now moving to Cape Town flying direct it's become a lot more accessible Cape Town itself has been identified as the Silicon Valley of Africa and that's built into smaller towns like Nisner as well as Stalinbosch. Sure and what would you what advice would you give to somebody who is you know considering immigration and we can also even open it up to businesses as well people who are business owners who are not too long ago were speaking about adaption and supply chains and business owners adapting to the changes that are happening to the market what advice would you give them when it comes to immigration? Well understand where you are in your life plan you know are you starting off with your career you are a lot more mobile you can move around that kind of lifestyle you would enter into a lease agreement rather than purchasing a property if you're young family and you're deciding this and we really want to move to a place where good quality of life good schooling that's going to be a longer term strategy because you don't want to take your kids out of school constantly so that might be a longer term strategy and then invest in a property purchase that so it really depends on where you are in your life plane and of course businesses are also looking at fragmenting their offices so they're spreading their risk they want people to access offices when they live in Quasir Natal in the Western Cape in Haating and it makes it easier for people to connect via the digital channels so businesses are also looking up taking up smaller offices and spreading them so people can access them and can interact with them if it's required I think the third thing that we really have to to consider here is is that of course as the cost of fuel prices have increased substantially value chains from harbors into inner cities like the provinces like Haating will add additional cost which if you live on the coastal towns closer to harbors that prices might be slightly lower in your opinion over the next two to three years what are we seeing is this trend or this immigration wave going to die down because of all of these new things that are coming up you know you've mentioned how how volatile the market is becoming and also how policies and organizations are now becoming stringent because vaccines are available because the main reason why I feel like it it's the immigration spiked up was because of COVID-19 and because now people are being slowly acclimatizing themselves to how the world has changed and now bringing in the vaccination and now bringing in all of these things that have changed the landscape are we seeing this immigration trend dying out or are we seeing it ramping up in your opinion what do you think is going to happen in the next couple of years there's definitely in my opinion there's definitely going to be areas where we're going to continue seeing the growth and the reason for that is as these towns expand they build great infrastructure they can support larger volumes great lifestyle is going to be at the top of the list when people start looking at immigration so I don't think the trend is going to slow down the speed and acceleration thereof is going to be dependent on a the supply of affordable housing and property within those towns of course as demand ramp up prices go up and supply lags a little bit so we might in the near future see a bit of a slow down purely because property prices might be inflated in those areas but the long-term trend I believe we will see the movement of people continuing sure and you know with with all of the movement and all of these things that are happening what should estate agents and people who are actually roleplayers in the in the property market look out for if I'm a property investor what would you advise I do are you saying I should now start buying properties in different cities what would you what would you advise me well yes I think one of the big trends that is as we're seeing right now is student accommodation and students are moving away from home into towns like bunch of sturm a Stalin Bosch UCT that in itself has become a really good investment for for especially property owners that want to start out with a smaller capital outlay your holiday towns will always have the long and short term lease demands and one of the key things that you will need to look out for is infrastructure development and the robustness of the municipalities ability to fund the increase of influx of people and this infrastructure that's required for it and then of course trying to find that what is next and if we had the crystal ball we would have loved to say what what town is next but I would keep an eye out on for instance smaller towns within within the Western Cape as well as going then into the northern Cape and the guru I think there's some interesting developments it's not going to be huge movements but there's going to be a couple of hot spots that one should look out for and keep an eye out for sure no thank you so much for that and any last words before I let you go tonight no it's I think it's it's good to be on the show and I'm being able to share our knowledge with everyone and you know what we're seeing in the changes immigration is is a trend and it's been coming for quite a few years so we expect it to see it continue sure but thank you so much for joining us and we really really appreciate it have yourself a good evening thank you very much and thank you to you for staying to almost the end of our show tonight of course I'm not going to let you go until you know who won the 500 grand cash prize for our 500th show and tonight's winner is none other than can I please have a drumroll because this is a very special one none other than Anelda Everton Anelda is one of our star engages on the private property podcast thank you so much Anelda and congratulations to you and if you want to be like her doing sure that you you you tune in every week day at 7 p.m. right here and interact with us on our comments and remember a healthy dose of property information might just be what you need to make sure that you are on your A game this is the private property podcast and from myself to me and the private property podcast family have a good