 and a very, very warm good afternoon to you. If you're just joining us now for this final Nexus, the Khauteng II Nexus, that we're bringing to you in partnership with Apsa. It's the last Nexus for this series and it has been a tremendous couple of days. Good afternoon, Jan. Let me just say good afternoon to everybody. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Ishtiak. Manin, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Leandra. Good afternoon, Jan Johannes Brits. Hello, hello, hello. Hello there, Henriette. Welcome to Private Property Nexus in partnership with Apsa and this is the final Nexus in the Khauteng region. Of course, my name is Tracy Miller and I am the Brand and Marketing Executive here at Private Property and I'm gonna be your host for the next session. It'll take us about an hour and an hour and a half to get through the program. Let me know in this chat box if this is your first time joining us. Good afternoon, Trish. Nice to see you. Hello, Cindy from Urban Spaces Realty. Hello, Nontlantla. Good afternoon. Nontlantla also says good afternoon to you all. Hi, Karen. Hi, hi, hi from Sotheby's International Realty in Centurion. Hi, Corinne. You are the principle of changing places real estate in North Riding. Very cool to have you on the platform here with us. Hello, Ursula. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for taking time out this Thursday afternoon to come and join us here for this Khauteng II Nexus. Hello, Sandy. Hello, Ronaldo. Let me figure out how to use this chat function here. Can you tell me where you're joining from? Titi, first time, Jarvis Silver Lakes. Welcome, Titi. Welcome, Dudley. Good afternoon. Let me know what area in the Khauteng region you find yourself in. And perhaps you are not in Khauteng. You could be anywhere literally in the world. I see Brineston. Hi, Ayanda from Brineston. Nice to have you with us. We've got Pierre from Benoni. Nice to have you with us as well. A letter from Centurion. Can you all hear me OK? Let me see in the chat. This is a very interactive session. Hello, Santon. I see you there. There we go, Pretoria East. We've got Blackheath, Joe Reena. I love that Blackheath area so much. Hello, Yuna. How are you? All right. OK, so I think let me get started. I wanted to give us let's give ourselves a couple more minutes to let more people come in a minute or two. And in the meantime, let's familiarize ourselves with this platform. So this platform has been designed to facilitate maximum maximum interaction. And I can see already some of you are using this chat to communicate back to us, to communicate with us. This is not a session where we just want to speak at you. We want to have a conversation with you. So during the session, we're also going to be asking you to take out your cell phones. And on your cell phones, go to a website called menti.com. You'll enter in a code and we'll see we'll ask questions and we'll see your responses in real time. Hi, Nina. I see you. It's your first time. Welcome. You have literally joined us on the very last Nexus in the series. And I must say, in partnership with Apsa and our partners PayProp, we have done a phenomenal job of just bringing the insights regionalized specifically to you to you to be able to make decisions and to be able to prepare your market with the kind of insights that you need to make it work. So our first Nexus we hosted last year in November. And of course, if you're wondering what Nexus means, Nexus, the actual definition for it is it's a series of connections linking two or more things. And so this is exactly what these Nexus events are about. It's a series of digital networking events which cultivates people connection. And through knowledge sharing and networking, we are facilitating exactly that. Last year we did the Nexus. It was very well received. And we decided this year we're going to do it a little bit differently. Instead of doing it nationally, why don't we go and delve into the specific regions and then bring you hyper-relevant insights in your regions? So even if you're not from the housing area, perhaps you're sitting in Cape Town or perhaps you're sitting in the Northern Cape and you want to know what is happening in Haating, this is the place to be. So before we go on, I need to just take you through this platform. We have found the chat. Very, very happy that you have. Let me see how easy the chat is. Or let me demonstrate how easy the chat is. Please can you drop an emoji that lets me know exactly how you're feeling right now? I'm going to drop a green heart because that obviously is how I feel. Hello, hello, Aishala. I see the smile. Michelle from Constantia Clou of Rodeput. Oh, Mohammed. Khan, Michael from Constantia Clou. Trish, I see your green heart. Wonderful. Alec, the eyes, do they mean you're curious? You want to see what's going to happen? So this is the chat function. 100% guys use this function to interact with each other, to interact with the speakers and to interact with me. The second tab right next to chat is a participants button. In this column here or in this area, you can literally see every single person in the room right now. And if you want, Hang Your Cursor over their name. And in fact, Hang Your Cursor over the little box there. And then you can message the attendee. You can message the delegate directly. Say somebody says something in the chat and you have some more insights to offer. Go ahead and reach out to them. And this is what you would call sliding into people's DMs. So slide into DMs here. If you can shed some more light on a topic or answer a question or have something specific that you want to offer, slide into the DMs here and let's facilitate that connection. The button right next to participants is called Q&A. So Q&A is where we ask questions, but we ask them publicly. So I'm going to ask a question. The question is, what is your favorite color? Can you guess what my favorite color is? Yeah, you guessed it. So there's something that you need to know about the question and answer tab. If you want to ask the question anonymously, you can say ask anonymously. I'm going to click ask anonymously. I'm going to ask and then you'll see I don't actually have my name appearing. There's also a little triangle at the top where you see the numbers scrolling up. That is if more people in the room want the answer to this question, they will upvote this question. I've just cast my vote. And then what it means during, right after the person's spoken or the presenter has completed their session, if there's a question in there that's received many upvotes, we will then ask the presenter to take time and take us through some of those responses. Let me have a look at what's happening in the chat. Navy blue for Erica, Muhammad, your Navy, Lily, red, wonderful, Ishtiak, black, awesome. My color is green. And then we have Andrew as well with black, navy blue, green. So I think we've kind of gotten the hang of it. Cindy Van Latem. If you put your answer into the question box, then it's not a question. So technically, we don't necessarily want to upvote that, but it happens. We sometimes, you see what studios just remove that because it's not really a question. Studio, can you remove this question as well, this test question? And then we show how easy it's done. Perfect. Are you all familiar with the platform now? Can I have a thumbs up in the chat if you're all familiar with the platform? If you are logged on a Chrome browser, you will definitely get the best experience. The last thing I want to tell you, and I will repeat this, when we break for networking, you're going to be taken from this main stage area to tables. And you can move around the tables, provided there's space at the table. All you have to do, double click on the table, it'll sound like a knock, and you then are in the room in that table. And if you want to participate or communicate with the people around the table, all you have to do, of course, if you want to, you can switch on your camera, you switch on your microphone, and for that networking period at your table, you'll actually be seeing who is sitting with you. So I know this is strange, we haven't really hung out with each other in a while. So what I'm going to suggest we do is we use the Q&A questions as interesting conversation starters if you struggle to make that connect. All right, so I think the last thing I have to mention is that we're giving out prizes, two prizes for the most engaged person, I call that person my co-host, and the best question. So how do you know if it's a good question? It's a good question if it creates more and more engagement. So if the question is a question that's on many people's minds and that one person asked that question and it gets upvoted and upvoted and upvoted, then that is absolutely the best question. But really the question is, the best question generally is the question that gets people thinking and that helps us to engage deeper and engage further. And then the last thing is we are going to give you one and a half non-verifiable CBD points which we are getting courtesy of AISA. And if you wanna get your points, stick around till the end of the session and then click the link in the chat to register for those one and a half non-verifiable CBD points courtesy of AISA. All right, let's get started. Studio, can we bring on to the stage our first, our very first speaker? And that is our partner's Apsa, represented by Caroline King this afternoon. I must say for the last four days, this sort of makeshift studio has been my home and I'm going to be very sad to let it go, but I'm looking forward to us actually connecting in this way again soon. Studio, shall we bring on our first speaker? Okay, Zwellettini, you're saying the sound is unstable. If the sound is unstable, it could be the connection. Possibly refreshing your browser can assist you with that. Monique Brun, can you tell me, are you good with the sound? Can you hear? Monique could see us says the sound is good and clear. Awesome, let me see what's happening with CARES. Oh, it's Ishtiak, yammer, yammer, yammer. Let's bring Ishtiak up on to the stage and he is the regional manager for home loans here in Hauteng and he is going to give us some of those insights specifically at a national and regional market level and also give us some interesting home loan application statistics. Is Ishtiak ready? Let's have a look, Studio, where's Ishtiak? Thank you, Erika, I appreciate the feedback. Thank you, Kornal, I appreciate the feedback. Excellent, let's see, where is Ishtiak? I think Ishtiak must be stuck in traffic, hey? Ishtiak, can you get into your limo and get on to the stage? If not, I'm gonna potentially decide to move on to our next speaker. I see Ishtiak, you say you are there, are you struggling with your camera? Let's move on to the next speaker studio. Let's bring on to the stage. If your head and yammer are ready, we can do the pay prop rental section now and then as soon as Ishtiak is ready, we can bring him back on. Is that good, Studio, can I hear a witness? In the meantime, can you tell me something that you absolutely love, love, love about chatting? What do you love about chatting? Let's use our chat to think about what you love about chatting. The vibe, the weather, absolutely Cindy, I agree with you Trish, the sunshine, absolutely the people. Okay, your head, are you ready? Awesome. Oh, I know, and it's the last one, your head, your head for all of you who might not know is joining us from the beautiful Stellenbosch and I hope to visit that region in the next couple of months, you know, it's been locked down and we haven't been able to do much traveling, but up now, as you can see on the stage, we have your head Smut and she is the pay prop head of data and analytics and later she'll be joined on the stage by the CEO of pay prop Jan Davel and he has some very interesting thoughts to share with us, but first your head is gonna take us through the 2020 retail rental marketing review and then Jan will take tackle what the future holds from a rental point of view. Thank you, your head, this is the last time, the last talk that you're doing in this series and how has the last couple of days been for you? It's been really wonderful and the engagement has been great on this platform. I must say from virtual platforms, this one is really, really quite something. Awesome, awesome. Please, everybody enjoy your head Smuts from pay. Thank you so much, Tracey and thanks everyone for joining this last next event. I feel strangely sad that this week is over. I'm going to tell you a bit about what happened in the rental market in 2020. To do that, I'm going to switch off my camera and share my screen. If you will allow me a second, there we go. So what happened in the rental market in 2020? Obviously a lot of things, tenants were under pressure, the rental market was under pressure and I'll tell you a bit more about that. I'll also tell you about what happened with the rears because of job losses and all of that. That was quite topical during 2020. And then lastly, a little treat for you. Sneak peek from our pay prop state of the rental industry survey results. So it's not up yet and we will be releasing in April but I pull a few interesting stats for you at the end of my presentation so you can look forward to that. Let's jump right in with rent. So if we look nationally over the last two years, that's what you see on your screen and we compare inflation, the blue line to rental growth, the red line, then you can see that for most of the past two years rental growth was lower than inflation and for most of 2019, trended between three and 4%. Then lockdown came and you can see that rental growth took a bit of a dip and towards the end of the year last year something historical happened. We saw negative rental growth year on year for the first time since we started the Pay Prop Rental Index back in 2012. So what that means is that between November 2019 and November 2020, rental growth or average rent got a little bit cheaper, it got 0.3% cheaper, it's not a lot more than 10 grand but it was still the first negative rental growth that we saw. So why is the rental market under such pressure? So there's two sides to this coin. There's a demand side and then there's also a supply side. So if we look at the demand side, affordability seems obvious. We all know that many tenants lost their income or lost their job or have a partner who lost income but they were under financial pressure for most of 2020. That means that they simply not able to afford large rental increases. So many tenants would either be staying where they are, they're not moving to larger and more expensive properties or if the landlord insists on a large rental increase they would prefer to move to cheaper accommodation. Then on the supply side, two factors there. So because of the travel ban, many Airbnb properties on the short-term rental market were standing empty. So they weren't earning any income and many landlords put these properties in the long-term rental market. So that flooded the rental market with too many rental properties. And then the second factor there is the low interest rates. Many investors were buying or still buying buy to let properties because of the low interest rates which again means that there's more properties entering the rental market. So there's oversupply. And that oversupply together with the lower demand level puts downward pressure on the rental price. Do we see that changing anytime soon? The short answer is no. Both the supply and demand for property is quite inelastic in the short-term which means that it takes a while to adjust to a new equilibrium. Looking at the basically the same statistics just quarterly year on year and we added a trend line. You can clearly see what rental growth has been doing over the past two years. Like I said, it was trending between three and 4% for most of 2019 into 2020. And then at the end of the first quarter in 2020 lockdown hit and rental growth literally half. We ended the year last year at 0.2% rental growth. So again, what that means is that average rent between quarter four of 2019 to quarter four of 2020 increased by only 0.2% or 10 grand. Now if we compare the provincial statistics we can see that having outperformed the national rental growth for most of 2019 it's equally in the second quarter and also for 2020 but it followed the same trend. After lockdown hit, rental growth slowed into the second quarter and the third and then at the end of last year only saw 0.7% growth. While it is low, it is still higher than the 0.2% that we saw nationally. Putting things into perspective, so five provinces experienced negative rental growth in the last quarter of last year. So the 0.7% that you see the full cutting wasn't really all that bad. The Western Cape is still the most expensive province in the country but only one with average rent of more than 9,000 round a month and halting is the second most expensive at 8,421 round. That is about 600 grand higher than the national average at 7,854 round. Moving on to arrears. So when we look at arrears we look at two metrics. First the percentage of tenants who are in arrears and then also the relative size of arrears relative to rent. So if someone is in arrears, just what percentage of a month's rent is that negative balance that they have? So let's look at the first one. Percentage tenants in arrears. At the start of last year, almost 20% are almost one in five tenants were in arrears. Then they announced lockdown and this jumped up to almost one in four tenants in the second quarter. I'll explain the reason why we see this pattern in a bit. I think the important thing to notice is that it peaked in the second quarter, it's been improving ever since it ended the year at 20.9%. So while it's better than it was in quarter two, it's still not quite where it was in quarter one at just below 20%. Looking at the average arrears percentage, we started the year at 78%. So what this means is if a tenant had rented arrears, they owed 78% of a month's rent on average. Okay, so almost 80% of a month's rent was the average arrears size relative to rent. This then increased in the second quarter, peaked in the third quarter at just over a month's rent and improved likely in the final quarter of last year down to 96%. So this is quite a way away from the first quarter statistics. And this metric is a bit more sticky than the percentage tenants in arrears and I'll tell you a bit more about that on this very slide. But first let's look at why we saw the pattern in the percentage tenants in arrears. Why did it peak in the second quarter? And most of this has to do with cash flow uncertainty that tenants might have had during the beginning of lockdown. So once it was announced, many tenants weren't sure how long they will be staying at home, will they be getting the full salary? So there was a lot of uncertainty about cash flow and finances for many, many tenants. That meant that they stopped paying their rent in full or make payment arrangements. And once the economy opened, it was months in the middle of May that those who still had jobs could return on the 1st of June. These tenants now sort of paying their rent in full because that cash flow uncertainty was gone and whether could they paid off their arrears. Now the ones who couldn't go back to work because they either lost a job or couldn't pay off their arrears because they had a loss of income, they might not be paying their rent in full. So if those tenants who went back to work with their lower arrears paid it off, that automatically means that mathematically the average arrears size will increase. So that's a more realistic picture of actual arrears. And for these tenants, paying off the arrears is a bit difficult because if you think about it for this number to improve, a tenant has to pay their rent in full every month and then on top of that, pay off the arrears. And in the current economic circumstances, that is just not possible for maintenance financially. Comparing provincial stats to the national stats, it is luckily a positive picture. The tenants in Haltein were on average in the first quarter last year. 18% of them were in arrears. This also peaked in the second quarter between 3% and improved down to 19.6%. So below the national average throughout. And then looking at the average arrears percentage, we can see it started the year more or less in line with the national average. A tenant with arrears owed more or less 80% of one month's rent. That peaked in third quarter at 108% above the national average and improved to the last quarter last year. So at the end of the year, if a tenant were in arrears, they owed one month's rent. That is it for arrears. Let's move on to the fun part. So our state of the rental industry, we just did the second one, conducted the second one at the end of 2020. We did our first one obviously at the end of 2019. And it was quite interesting to see what the results were. So who took part in the survey? 95% of the participants work in the property industry. 69% were either a business owner or a rental agent. So when we want their perception about the rental market that are the right people to speak to. And then 64% of survey respondents managed smallish rental books, less than 150 properties. So technology is obviously after the year that was last year, even more of a topic than it was the year before. And I just want to highlight three server results for you this afternoon. So 55% of people said that they've increased the use of technology in their business during COVID. This 55% were those who said that they fully agree with that statement. There was another 25% who said that they agreed. So overall 80% of the participants increased the use of technology in their business during COVID, which really shouldn't come as a surprise. 70% however, said that virtual viewings and 3D tours are here to stay. So this is obviously part of the technology that they're using, but 70% of people they don't think that it's going to go away when things return back to normal. Virtual viewings and 3D tours will still be a thing. And then on productivity 69% said it's more productive to increase automation than it is to increase the workforce. So this is just an example of working smart and not hard using technology to empower the people that you have who are working for you, using technology to empower them to help you grow your business. Looking at portfolios, 70% of participants said that they, the rental increases that they put through during 2020 was lower than usual. It's actually quite a high number. I was quite surprised to see this number and I say 93% of participants said that they made alternative payment arrangements with tenants during lockdown. So either someone can pay rent or they wanted to use a deposit, but 93% of participants made alternative arrangements, which really shows you just how many tenants were actually affected by income and job losses. 55% said that they had more vacant properties than before and the oversupply in the rental market that I spoke of earlier speaks to this. And then 64% said that they have lowered their commission in the last year in order to keep a landlord or keep a mandate, which is quite a worrying number if you think that your commission income is your main income stream in a rental business. And once you've lowered that percentage, you might struggle in future to justify increasing that commission percentage again. So it could cause cashflow problems into the future as well. Looking at challenges, 51% of respondents said that the single biggest challenge is finding good tenants. So the year before finding good tenants was only the second biggest challenge and it was 24, 27%. So it really is a struggle after the year that was last year and with many good tenants buying their own properties instead of renting with a lower interest rates. It really is a struggle for agents to find good tenants for their vacant properties. And then looking into the rest of 2021, 68% said that their biggest worry for 2021 is the ongoing effect of COVID on their business. And I'll end with some good news. The last question is hard to miss if I hear about the future of the rental market. Only 5% said they're pessimistic about it. 17% were quite neutral. And then a whopping 78% said that they were optimistic about the future of the rental market, which is a great stack. And I looked at the year before, at the end of 2019, only 62% of participants said that they were optimistic about the future of the rental market. And this was pre-pandemic. So maybe COVID made us all think about life and think about our opportunities and our blessings a bit differently. And maybe we're all just a little more optimistic in 2021. If you want more information about provincial and national rent areas, credit metrics and a few other interesting articles, you're welcome to download the latest rental index. I'll drop that link in the chat for you in a second. And that's it from me. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks again, private property, for having us and sharing your stage with us. It's been an absolute pleasure. And I'm gonna hand over to Yan for you. Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to join you here from a beautiful Stelenbosch. It has actually been an awesome day. I think I actually should have been in a board meeting with my surfboard, but yeah, we are. And I'll just have to entertain you for a while. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a beautiful presentation with graphs and pictures that could brighten up your day. Unfortunately, I will be talking of some of the less pleasurable things in life. And that is legislation and regulation. But before I dip into that, I would just like to extend a special word of thanks to Amasi, Tracy Lee, Ben Cole, and the rest of the awesome team at Private Property for affording us this opportunity. I think it's an awesome event. This is our last one in the series and it's been very engaging. But so thank you to Private Property for this initiative. Well, as I said, I'm not gonna put up pictures. What I will be doing later is just to share a screen with you and I'm gonna try and navigate on my screen without making you seasick. But what we are going to talk about is the new Property Practitioners Act that, as you know, was promulgated already or published in the Government Gazette on 3 October 2019. With that being the case, some of you may wonder why we as estate agents are still working in accordance with the Estate Agency Affairs Act of 1976. And I think we'll all agree that this 45-year-old piece of legislation is overdue for replacement. The fact that the Estate Agency Affairs Act dates back to an era before the internet, before digital marketing, before social media, and very importantly, also before automated and integrated payment platforms such as Byprom. The old act simply does not cater for today's realities and the question is, what can we expect this year? When we consider the Property Practitioners Act, we must remember that any new act in itself only sets out broad principles of law. It doesn't deal with the implementation. And that is where regulations to an act come in, setting up the implementation and the application of the act. Although the Property Practitioners Act was published in October 2019, its regulations have not been finalized or published yet. Only once these regulations are published in the Government Reset or the Act be implemented and then it's by then that we need to adhere to its provisions. When is it likely to be? Well, nobody knows. But what we do know is that firstly, the draft regulations were published for public comment already in March 2020. Due to the COVID-19 and lockdown regulations, the opportunity to submit comments was extended to November 2020. And we now await the final regulations that will bring the Property Practitioners Act into operation. So what can we expect from the new regulations? That is the question and that is what I will be talking to you about. Now firstly, it is important to remember that I'm not giving you legal advice. I'm simply going to share publicly available information with you. The Act has been published. It's available on the internet and most of you have gone through it and have attended seminars on it. And the draft regulations is also available. It was published for public comment. It's available on the web and at the end of my presentation, I'll just share a link to the regulations so that you can maybe read it in more detail. I'm going to be talking you through it. I'm not going to be reading it verbatim in the interests of time. But I will point out a few silent aspects. And I'm going to start looking at the Act so that we can determine what the legislator's intentions were. And then later we're going to look at specific extracts of the regulations. So I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to start with Section 54 of the Act. So we're now talking of the Act and starting with Section 54 that deals with trust accounts. And this is something that all of you will be familiar with as the contents of this section is very similar to that of Section 32 of the State Agency of Friends Act that also deals with trust monies. This is more comprehensive, but in essence, it is materially the same. There are no surprises, nothing too new, just for more detail than I'm just going to highlight one or two aspects thereof. So if we look at this, it says that every property practitioner, and by now you will know that the State Agents in a very broad definition are referred to as property practitioners, and must open and keep one or more separate trust accounts which must contain a reference to this section with the bank registered in terms of the bank act and so forth. The same as what it used to be. And then the property practitioner must immediately after opening a trust account, contemplate it in paragraph A appoint an auditor, also nothing new. And then C, the property practitioner must immediately after opening a trust account as contemplated in this paragraph and appointing an auditor as contemplated in B above to provide the authority as prescribed with all information in respect of such account or accounts and such auditor, also nothing new. What is new though is the term authority. That's the new name for the State Agency for the Forest Board, EIAB, but the principles remain the same. And I'm not gonna continue reading everything to use subsection two, my supervision for the investment of funds that are not immediately required, pretty similar to section 32 sub two of the ALT Act. And it carries on telling you that the property practitioner must return all trust money and so forth and so forth. All the things that you must do, you can read that at your own time. If you prefer another language, you can also follow that in an indigenous language and so forth. And if we then consider 54.6, also what you must do and then what the authority or the EIAB may do and what the court may do. And so it carries on. I'm not gonna deal with the details of 54, as I said, no surprises, pretty much what we are familiar with and pretty much makes sense. However, religious light to show the different intention in section 23 of the Act. Still in the Act, but we've now scrolled up. I'm going to point you to section 23. Once again, giving you advice, just sharing information. You probably should seek legal advice. And I would suggest that you talk either to your commercial attorney or your auditor in order to assist you with this, should it be unclear to you. But let's see what it says. The heading says exceptions in respect of accounting records and trust accounts. So there are exceptions that are coming. That's the intention of the legislature. Now, considering the contents of section 23.1 of the Act, it says that a property practitioner whose turnover is below 2.5 million grand must cause his or its accounting records to be subjected to an independent review by a registered accountant subject to the provisions of section 54 that deals with trustment. Now, if we just stop there for a moment. So what is new here? Firstly, it appears that there can be exceptions. Then it talks of a threshold of state agents with turnover is below 2.5 million grand who must then subject their books for an independent review by a registered accountant. So it's no longer unordered by a chartered accountant. It's only a review by a registered accountant. Now, you'll probably all agree that this would lead to significant cost savings, a far less generous process, and making it much easier. So that's the intention of the legislature. Now, let's look at section 23 sub two. It says the minister may, by noticing the government is it, determine the circumstances under which certain property practitioners may be exempted from keeping trust accounts. Now that's also new. Currently we can't be exempted from keeping trust accounts. We must all have trust accounts. So there's something new that's in the intention of the legislature. And then 23 to B, the minister may also by noticing the government is it, determine a different dispensation for the review of accounting records for those property practitioners. And if we then look back at 23, one again, independent review by a registered accountant. This is material really different. Now it's important that we have a look at what the regulations say. Now we must remember that there are only draft regulations. They were published on mentioned to dates. It's been there forever. There's been numerous different versions of it. And then it was published and the period for public comment was extended. So we're pretty comfortable that it's in its final, final stages. And I think it's just a matter of time before it's going to be published. The important regulation in these draft regulations that were published is to be found in regulation four. And the heading says it all. Exemption from trust accounts, which is a completely new concept. So if we read it together, it says that pursuant to the provisions of section 23, which the one I've just read, of the act, the following is prescribed. A property practitioner is exempted from keeping a trust account if there are certain conditions. One, a property practitioner has never received any trust monies other than as permitted in regulation 4.4. So if you've never had it, it can be exempted. And then there's something special about regulation 4.4. And if we look at sub two, a property practitioner is exempted from keeping a trust account if he no longer receives any trust monies other than as permitted for in regulation 4.4. And we'll get to 4.4. So if you've never had trust monies or if you've stopped keeping trust monies, you may be in a position to apply for exemption from keeping your own trust account and having reported it. And then importantly, and another condition, if that property practitioner or estate agent submits to the authority, that's the EOAB, at the time of applying for an FFC and affidavit in a certain form in terms of that and in terms of which affidavit, that property practitioner asserts certain things, certain statements that you need to make. Important here that there's already a template affidavit that you need to complete and it's an attachment to the regulations and it's a very simple process to follow. So in that affidavit, you need to state a few things. You need to say that you are compliant with the provisions of these regulations and you must even undertaking that you will not be receiving further trust funds into your own trust account and you will under outside that and provide evidence that if you had a previously existing trust account that that was wandered down properly and that it's no longer active and then if this is all, all of this have happened, you can be exempted. And so let's look at the contents of Regulation 4.2. It says where the property practitioner is exempted in terms of the above, such property practitioner will not be required to again have such account reviewed or audited. So you have to do it once, you make an affidavit and it's dead, it's gone, nobody will worry about that again. Regulation 4.3 says where you're exempted in terms of 4.1 and as complied with 2, you will be exempted from having to have your business and other accounts audited and will only be required to have such accounts independently reviewed by a registered accountant, much simpler, much cheaper. So I think that's good news to many of the newcomers or startup businesses, smaller operators, we work in a highly fact-oriented market and I think this is significant relief to many property practitioners. Now let's get to 4.4. This is the very, very important draft regulation and this is where we actually see the intention of the legislator when we consider agencies who have dormant accounts or who use payment processing agents platforms such as FIPRO. Let's have a look. So you remember the above and you can have a look at it again later, but 4.4 states that a property practitioner will further be exempted from operating a trust account and obviously then having it audited if such property practitioner is otherwise compliant with all the above and if such property practitioner has mandated one or more other property practitioners that specialize in collecting and distributing trust payments. So property practitioners that specialize in collecting and distribution of trust payments will be called payment processing agents and that's like FIPRO. To process such trust payments on its behalf in respect of all trust funds received by that property practitioner. Now, ladies and gentlemen, there are two, three important things here. When you might use of a payment processing agent or an automated payment platform like FIPRO, that service provider must be a property practitioner itself. Must they have a valid FFC, must be in compliance with all these acts and regulations, otherwise it doesn't meet the definition. Secondly, it must process all trust funds received by your agency. That means that should you be a sales agent, you can also qualify for this but then your sales deposits need to be handled by your conveyance attorney. If you're a rental agency and you utilize an accredited payment processing agent that meets the definition of these regulations, you can also follow this process and apply for exemption. Let's look at the second condition. Each payment processing agent, that's like your FIPROPS, mandated by the property practitioner operates a trust environment that complies with the act and associated regulations. So a talk of a trust environment, numerous agencies, numerous clients, one environment that has to be audited as a collective and we will get into the details of that now. So I'm going to scroll down trying not to make you sysic. 4.4.3 says each payment processing agent, it's like each FIPROPS or equivalent, mandated by a property practitioner must operate within its trust environment, separately auditable client accounts. Both in respect of each property practitioner or the state agency who provides such services and in respect of each client of each such property practitioner. So let's unpack that. So your payment processing agent like FIPROPS must have a holistic trust environment that is auditable. Then for each estate agency that supports that payment processor, there must be a separately auditable account. And within each separate estate agency, there must be further separately auditable accounts for each landlord and each tenant. Then only you meet the requirement. So if we look at sub-regulation 4.4.4 and in order to qualify the trust environment and each of the client accounts operated by the payment processing agent by FIPROPS must be audited annually in compliance with the act and regulations and the audit reports in respect of must be submitted to the authority, the DAIB in compliance with the act and the regulation. So at different levels, audit reports are submitted and then lastly 4.4.5, the property practitioner who uses their payment processor like FIPROPS may not hold any further trust money as whatever outside the manifold provided for in these regulations. So the good news is there's a threshold, there's a definite intention and then subject to following a certain procedure and using an accredited payment processor like FIPROPS regardless of the threshold or the amount that you process, you may apply for exemption and then only need to have the accountant overseeing your books. It's no longer formal audit, formal and onerous process. Good news to everybody who has been using FIPROPS is that even in the absence of these regulations, FIPROPS has been compliant with all of this for the past 17 years. So I think that's good news to our clients. And then lastly, I just wanna show you this is what the annexure looks like. It is an affidavit by the business property practitioner in other words by the estate agency in respect of the trust monies. You have to make these, you need to state this under oath, make your application and once these regulations have been published, you are in a position to apply for exemption in terms of the new law. I trust that has been good news for you. I wish you a good afternoon and I'm gonna stop sharing. Thank you so much for listening to me. I'm handing you back to Tracy Lee. Awesome, awesome, Jan. Can you stay on the stage for me? I think there's one question here that's been asked twice. I'll check Cindy's question in the Q&A in a minute but there's a question that was asked earlier and I think it's a good question for Jan to answer which is, is turnover the total sales done or commission earned? And the same question was asked by Shay. Is it expected that if your turnover, more than 2.5 million, it will be done by an auditor? I think Jan, if you can just come back on the stage, there we go. Let's see if Jan or Jan, there we are, there we are. If you can just clarify that for us, Jan, and then let's handle the rest of the questions in the chat so we can move the program forward. Just repeat, sorry, there are so many comments and questions here, this is the one by Shay. Let's start with the one by Shay. Yes, that's the one. Okay, there's the numerous one. Let's see Shay says thanks and then he's turned over the total sales done or the commission earned. This is, this was Cindy and I think Shay has said something similar. So the turnover is the turnover through your account. It's not the value of the properties that you sell because one or two sales reach the threshold. This is your turnover as a business. In other words, commission and other income. And is it expected that if you turn over more than 2.4, would it be done by an auditor? Yes, then it's very similar to what it currently is. That is what we deduce from this. Right, Tracy, what was the next one you wanted me to look into? Oh, no, I think the next one is in the Q&A section here but I think you can answer them directly. You can answer Cindy directly if you don't mind Jan. I'm gonna ask you to say thank you so much. There's one, would you charge the agency for the audit? So each agency will still have his own auditor but our auditors and the estate agency's auditors have agreed upon procedure which leads to significant discounts, cost discounts for your own auditor. I think that settles the question. Thank you, Tracy Lee. I can hear your limo pulling up there Jan. Thank you so much. I'm out of here, I'm out of here. Serves up. Serves up for Jan. He's gonna go and find somewhere to surf in Stalambosh. Yeah, I tell you, South Africa is a country full of marvels. Can you give me an emoji, like an applause emoji, a smile emoji, just to let me know that you're still here emoji. Thank you, Jan. Manin, thank you for letting me know that my mic was off. Sometimes it's better to actually switch the mic off while the other person is speaking to prevent feedback. Emma DeVal, you asked a brilliant question. Thank you so much. Thank you, Shay. Thanks for the engagement. Shay, you said that is fantastic. If a corporate landlord that only does rentals and no sales, trust accounts made no sense as interest doesn't need to be earned on a corporate deposit. So this makes it so much easier. I'd like to think at the end of Jan's talk, there's sort of a collective sigh of relief. Let's see, are there any other questions? Our sender, your question was for Payprop. I think Jan answered it, but Jan and your head are still here and they are more than willing to share their contact details with you and they can get in touch with you and take it further. All right, so let's see who else is still in the room. We're still here. Jorina, you're back, non-clanted, Lamini. Welcome, Ayanda. Welcome, Sue. Welcome, Carol. Glad you guys are still with us. I'm now going to ask you to take out your cellular phones, please. Let's take out your cellular phones. Go to a website called www.menti.com. Dudley, I see that finger, Dudley. I see your thumbs up, Nadia. Go to menti.com and punch in the code 45628137. 45628137. 45628137. And this is an opportunity for us to get to know you. Please enter your name and we will see you as you enter the platform. I'll see the names coming up onto the screen. Johan, you're in first. Thank you so much, Shay. You're in it to win it. Riyad, you're in. Adam, you're in. Johan Trish, I see you guys. There's eight of us in. We have 135 people in the room. And I think let's push up our number of menti participants to about 50 studio. When we get to 50, 60, we can catch the rest on the flip side or you can catch us as the questions go. But just to keep the program moving forward, 22 people in at the moment. Diane, I see you. Reena, I see you. Nikki, I see you. Madeleine, Berger, Marsha, Emma, Manco. I see you too. Rachel, I see you. Simone, I see you. Alex, Diane, one or two more. We're up to 40 now. Let's get it to 45, maybe 50. And then let's get cracking with the questions. Rosa, you're saying I cannot of load shedding using my phone to listen to you. Yeah, okay. I see you, Rosa. But next time, I hope we don't all have to deal with this load shedding stuff. I'm just glad that you're still able to make it and that you're able to actually access the platform on your cellular phone. All right, studio. I think let's go. Zwilettini is asking, what is the name of the website? Again, there, Trish has just popped it into the chat. www.menti.com. Enter in the code, enter in your name. I'm going to talk real slow and see if you're gonna get in time at least to answer one or two of the questions. So the first question was, what is your role? You, what is your job title within your company? And the majority of you are property practitioners in the room. Thank you. I'm glad you're in Zwilettini awesome stuff. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We have 55 responses to that one question. Responses are still rolling in. Fantastic. It's really good to know who we're speaking to and helps us to prepare the content for the room better. Let's go to the next question. Property practitioner, Tersha Mathis. That sounds good, right? Who thinks that sounds good? Okay, what type of real estate transactions do you specialize in? Sales, is it sales and rentals? Is it just rentals? Do you just focus on rentals? All right, look at that. Sales, sales and rentals. The majority of you have a very strong focus on sales, then sales and rentals. And some of you, very few of you are just focusing on that rental space. Let's move on to the next question. Please, studio. Adam, sales and rentals. Tersha, sales and rentals. Fantastic. I see all your responses here. Here's my favorite question. Do you multitask when you attend virtual meetings? Let's see who's gonna be honest. I'll be honest. I'll be honest first. Yes, I am guilty. I get a little bit distracted. The kids are running up and down. The dogs are barking, you know, load shedding, all sorts of things. And it's different from having the person sitting across from you, isn't it? So do you multitask? And the majority of you are saying, yes, yes, we do. I'm guilty. And some saying sometimes. And 10 people saying, no, I'm 100% in. And then number, sorry, three of you saying, yeah, my mind kind of tends to wander. Very, very, I think it's all got to do with the content though. And it's got to do with creating engagements like these to keep you in the room. Jorina, I see you guilty. I'm guilty as charged too. Let's go on to the next question. Please, studio. And then we're gonna get ready to bring on our next speaker who's going to focus for us on sales and home loans and what that looks like in the housing region specifically. But he's also gonna give us a national view in your opinion. And this is a question that you can answer. In your opinion, is it a buyer or a seller's market? Some of you saying seller's market, majority of you saying buyer's market. Hi, Dion, you're saying seller's market. Okay, Emmanuel, you're still saying both. I get you, I hear you. We asked all the regions these questions. And at the end of the session, we're gonna put it all together and we'll play it all back to you. Thank you, Katharina, for also giving us your response. There's two more questions to go, but I see Istiak has joined us. Istiak, if you wanna put your microphone on mute in the meantime, you can stay on the screen. I don't mind. Let's move on to the next thing. Next question, please, studio. Next question, please. And let's keep it clean. I know this is hurting. We say it like it is here. We don't mince our words, but let's keep it clean. This is 2021 we're speaking about. Now, 2020 is behind us. How would you describe your 2021 so far? Deanna Spilling, moving forward. Leslie Ann, optimistic, challenging coming out. I see challenging popping up nice and big there. When the word is bigger, it means more of you have said that same word or typed in that same word. So this word cloud basically tells us with just by looking at it, what the sort of sentiment or how you feel about 2021. Challenging, interesting, optimistic, positive, difficult is there. When we went to one of the other regions, someone put in a word that I really shouldn't repeat, but yeah, it's tough. It's not easy for everyone. Challenging is the biggest word here. Okay, studio, let's move on to the final question. And this question is, if you could change one thing in the South African real estate industry right now, what would it be? If you can't respond on mentee, you're welcome to respond in the chat as well. If you don't have, if you're actually accessing this nexus on your phone, you could just use the chat and interact. So if you could change one thing, have a thing. If you had a genie and a bottle and you had one wish, just one wish, Cindy, you're saying transfer fees, more, more, make the EAAB work, keep interest rates low. Okay, all the red tape, you're saying easier access to the board. Is it border bond? I'll have a look at that afterwards. Better input from banks to help those struggling. We've got a banking partner on the line right now. I think that's a wonderful little segue into Istia. Thank you, studio. And that concludes our mentee section. Thank you so much. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of insights there. We obviously want to get closer to you. We want to understand your pain points. And Williamson, you're also echoing a lot of the sentiments saying EAAB. And then Erika, the perception about selling on auction, very, very interesting. Leandra, I'm not gonna say anything about that. And then Liz, Leanne, you're saying confidence. All right, Istiak, I think I'm gonna hand over to you now. Let me introduce you and what you're going to be talking to us about. Istiak Sato is the regional manager for home loans in the Hauteng area. And he's here to share valuable national and a regional property market insights, as well as interesting home loan stats. After Istiak's talk, we're going to go straight into a break. And then when we come back, I'm gonna bring out our very own Carl van der Berg from private property, and he's gonna give us all actually a little bit of a glimpse into the thinking behind this brand and where this brand is headed. Studio, I see Istiak has kind of gotten off the call again. All right, in the meantime, let me ask some questions or see if there are any questions in here. Okay, Cindy, I see that you've asked that question. I think Jan answered it, but also I think Jan could probably deal with that question in a more direct way. Okay, let's see where Istiak is. There we go. Hi, Istiak. Hello. Are you with us? Yes, I am. Awesome. Awesome. Enjoy everyone. I'll be back after Istiak and then we'll go into break. And from break, we're coming back with Carl van der Berg. Thank you, Tracy. And good afternoon to everybody. My name is Istiak Sator and I'm the regional manager for AXA Home Loans in the Khaoteng area. For those that don't know, Khaoteng means a place of gold. And this was from a Suthu language. I'm very excited to be with all of you this afternoon and to join you on the virtual stage. And a huge thank you to our strategic partners, Private Property, for having us and hosting such an awesome event. Yeah, so let's get started. I just wanted to share, you know. 2020. Wow, what a year. On the journey that there's been a different journey for all of us. Of 20 plenty, should we say. However, I don't think of us anticipating all those last 12 months was unfolded. COVID-19 has really hit us, hit the industry, our province, our country and the world at large. In Khaoteng, in the beginning, it was all under control and then a number of positive cases had increased and so did the debts. If we look back exactly a year ago, we were all getting ready for this lockdown level five. A concept unknown to all of us and for the industry in particular, it meant complete shutdown for many of us and people were not able to do what they love to do best for almost two months. Those months almost required for us to rethink what was important and how do we actually navigate through this pandemic? I'm sure that over the past year, some of us have lost some loved ones. For many in our countries has also impacted the way we love and earn a living and conduct our business. So what does this mean for the property industry? What exactly did this mean? I think the best way to describe it is a tale of two halves. And really, if you look at it, it's opposing two halves. The lockdown essentially put us in a position where we took two months out of economic activity and then it resulted in a very devastated impact in our industry. We experienced a decline in property sales and for us as a bank, we saw the decline of application volumes. During the first half, we were experiencing a 9% decline being compared into the previously of 2019. However, the second half picked up very nicely and really showed a very different picture. The opposite actually happened. We bounced back and we all experienced a great uptick. We saw application volumes grow by 36%. So from a negative 9% to a positive 36% in the two different halves, in addition, deep office perspective, we saw the growth in activity translating to greater registrations within the second half of the year. The registrations for the second half almost doubled the first half. Another very interesting point to share, we did not see a deterioration in the quality of the customer that came through the door. We were seeing the quality of customer holding out as we entered into the second half to keep our approval rates in line with those pre-lockdown levels. So this then drove our registrations in the second half. From an industry perspective, the tail of two halves in 2020, the real tail was a dramatic turn down in the first one and then the resilience of the human spirit and this turning from a negative into a positive. And what are our customers saying about home ownership? To be very honest with you, watching all this activity in the market was indeed very exciting. So what we basically did is Epsa had a home ownership sentiment index and we're going to go through some of the movements that customers experience and also we will be talking about the different results in the different provinces. So the Epsa Home Ownership Index is a test of customer's confidence in the property market, very pleasing for us to see that the end of last year that the customer confidence was at its highest. Not just for the 2020 period but since actual inception of the index in 2015. There are four main contributors to the confidence increase of 4% in quarter four of 2020 which resulted in this overall increase. One being the ability of property to increase in value over time. Secondly, our current low interest rate cycle made debt financing more affordable. And when we cross over to the supply side we've seen support that is originated from the resilient house prices. From a Hautieng perspective, we were just above the average of the national sentiment coming in at 81%. The national average being 80%. Okay, so we're just going to look at the different provinces. If you look at KZN, they came in at 77, the Western Cape at 77, sorry, 79%. And then obviously Hautieng as I alluded to early on of 81%. We must acknowledge the notable increase of 10% in the Western Cape compared to previous years. A huge factor to consider here would be that of semi-gration. The drive to the sentiment could attribute to customers having the need to work from anywhere where they want to virtually. At the heart of this was a decision of lifestyle in the ease of comfortable work home environment. Hautieng however remains the region with the highest sentiment at 81%. And this was evidenced by the large increase in applications. We received an overwhelming 85.8 billion in total from a value perspective in 84,298 applications. We managed to grow year-on-year by 28%. As mentioned for Hautieng, there was a 82% sentiment of buying over renting. I think we're going to go through with that on the next slide. Okay, here we go. So 82% was buying over renting. Ultimately, the question is why do we rent? If you can afford to buy a factor that many people consider, the sentiment of about 81% towards investing. As we all know, coupled with low interest rates, many people took the option of investing. And that was a very appealing type of thing for most of our customers. We also saw an increase in renovations. Once again, adding to the need to make a lifestyle change, especially with people working from home, maybe looking at opportunities to create a bit of an offer, a small little crash in the outskirts of their property, which actually improved in terms of people taking up and trying to take further loans to actually renovate. Okay, and then we're going to look at our buying and selling. The sentiments to each buying property is our top line in red, returned to 2019 levels by much year last year and ended at 8% higher than when we compared it to the year before. If we look at this, the main driver behind the increase in the interest in properties, as you are all experiencing at the same time, is that we must not ever note that the bottom line in the sentiment towards selling is not recovered from 2019 levels. This has decreased by 7% year on year. The gap means that we're wanting to sell and the wanting to buy continues to widen. Impact of this is that the market specifically has a price range between 750,000 and 1.5 million where most of this activity occurs. And this is also putting huge impact on the stock that we currently have. Therefore, purchase prices have been in general much higher as buyers have been reaching to buy more expensive properties given the improvements in affordability resulting in a reduction of interest rates to increase the next price band. So what does the future hold? What is a crystal ball of property saying for our industry? Interest rates, we've established by now the low interest rates coincidental increase in home purchases, the age old age of striker, strike while the iron is hot. And in this case, it's definitely hot with low interest rates. We believe that this will continue and will remain at current levels until the last quarter of 2021. And this will gradually that these interest rates will not have recovered to pre-lockdown levels by the end of 2023. House prices, decent development supporting this is the increase in the number of willing buyers place huge pressure on prices, although it remains to be seen how much they will support the increase. Purchase prices have in general been higher as buyers have been reaching to more expensive properties given the improvements in the affordability resulting from reduction in interest rates. Market growth by provinces within the red bars at the bottom, it reflects the market growth in 2020. As we can see regions performed lower demonstrating that despite the amazing recovery in the second half, there was not sufficient to recover fully for the 2019 year. Again, join the city or the country of two halves. The top row shows the predictions for 2021. We can see that the expectations are really positive. And many, many regions have shown a good growth. Even the cases at the moment, we see this coming down at some stages after the two full months performance in 2021. Applications volumes continue to be resilient up by 21% versus February last year. And there's still a level of uncertainty in the forecasting model. Our crystal balls are a little murky at the moment, but however, if we look at the in Haotieng especially, we continue with a lot of the investors in the North areas in your high parts, your sentence, a lot of property sales going on and some of them even cash sales. So thank you for assisting and partnering us with this journey. At Epsa, we aspire to house the nation and shape the industry in a meaningful way. Thank you, thank you so much for allowing us a platform on this virtual stage. Number eight, over to Kaysi again. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Can we stop sharing that screen for a second day at studio? Ishtiak, you're gonna stay on the stage for us because there's a few questions that I think is in this Q&A section here that you would be ideal to answer. I think you've already answered Renee's question, which was what do you think interest rates are going to do in the next 24 months? I think you gave a little bit of a murky crystal ball prediction as far as I can remember. Then also of course, Renee, you can tell us if you want more, if you feel like he has to give you a little bit more information or you can just reach out to Ishtiak and the team and have a conversation with them. The next question is from Shay. Do you think there could be a way to limit transfer fees, cost for first time home owners, even if they are over 35? That's one question. Do you wanna go for it Ishtiak, or should I go through? No, definitely we would look at that. I mean, I don't think the age is the issue. It's more based on your first time home buyers. And I mean, I think up to now there is a lot of costs that the attorneys do not charge when you want to buy, I think I could be mistaken but I think they moved it up to about a million. So first time home buyers, a lot of the banks are offering to include costs as well. And we've also got one for young professionals but we are looking at it. So we're not gonna restrict you to age. One, let's not be ages honey, let's not be ages. No, no, Muhammad asked a really good question. I was one of the upvotes here because one thing that we've learned is we are stronger together. So here's the question, how do multiple individuals limit their surety in a group or new company purchase to their own shareholding? Do you have any thoughts to share on that? Well, it's a difficult one, but I mean, you probably would ask each one to sign their own surety and it becomes difficult because when something goes wrong, they're all gonna be looked at individually as well. I think that's not something that could be answered like today. I think we're gonna have to explain to one of the new people. Yeah, no, I think Ishtiak, it's a question of case by case basis. That's a good, that's a really good way to answer that question. Cause of course, it can't just be a blanket approach for everyone. Emma asked, can transfer costs be added to a bond? I think that this will help people more and to buy more properties. During this, a lot of people have a lot of money for these costs. I think you just mentioned that you do have a product that does exactly that. Yeah, we can go up to 105% but also understand that by your, what we would call loan to value, by your interest rates gonna be. So sometimes it's a good way to actually see if you can save for a deposit and save over between two or 30 years. All right, I think there's one more question I'm gonna take. There's quite a few questions here. One from Cindy, one from Jorina. Again, Cindy, Muhammad also has another question. Renee has a question as well as Dudley. His question is, how many applications are being turned down? But I think that question kind of goes hand in hand with where is that one that I saw now? Oh yeah. So just on that, Tracy. Sure. Yeah, I think in terms of turning down, we definitely have an appetite to actually approve more applications. But your challenge is you're multi-submitting to all the banks and your application might be turned around because a competitor is a better offer. So it's not really us declining, it's the fact that they've taken an offer elsewhere. With someone else. Okay, Mr. Jack, I need to bring Carl Feinberg in because I can hear his limo is making donuts there on the courtyard. He's like, I gotta bring him in. But what I do want to make sure of is these questions that are being asked here, your team will take the time to and yourself will take time to respond to this. So there's quite a number of questions and I can't get to all of them at this time. Okay, there you are, Ishtiak. Thank you. Guys, let's give him a warm round of applause in our world, it's like this or emoji. Let's drop an emoji and say thank you to Ishtiak from Apsa joining us today for the final afternoon session of Nexus GP2. Khating is such a big region. We had to split it into two. Thank you so much to our strategic partners, Apsa. We really do value your input. Okay, I think I've spoken a lot. We've spoken a lot. There's been a lot of conversation. Can we take a five minute break? How would you guys feel with a five minute body break? You can go fill up your coffee or you can maybe chat to your table mates. Five minutes, let's see what networking potentially could look like in this space. Remember to get the most out of your platform or your five minute networking experience. Switch on your camera, switch on your mic. Say hello. If you struggle to make conversation with new people, which I doubt, knowing who you are, what kind of people you are, your people's people. So I don't think you struggle. But if you do, if like me, you do struggle sometimes and you're a little bit shy, why don't you just look at some of the questions here and stress test it with each other? You know, how would you look at some of these questions at your table? So I'm gonna give us five minutes studio and studio is gonna give us a countdown. When we come back, I will bring onto the stage. It's my pleasure to bring him onto the stage. I'm actually Karl van der Berg from Private Property and he's gonna tell us what's in store for the brand and that will be our final speaker of the day and our final speaker for the next series this time around. So enjoy your break and I'll see you in five. And we are back and we are back. Are you back with me? Are you back with us? Let me see some emojis. Let me see your emoji. How do you feel? I know it's the last day. I'm just so glad that we got here. Like when we thought about doing this from last year's one event to this year doing four days, two events a day, sure it really does take it out of you, but it is incredibly rewarding to be connecting with you in this way. It's not how we want to connect, but you know what? Who says it can't feel personal? Who says it can't feel warm? Who says it can't feel real? So I'm gonna ask Studio to bring onto the stage right now the brand, I'm the brand and marketing executive for private property. I'm kidding. I'm gonna ask them to bring onto the stage Carl Fundenberg, our business development executive and Carl is gonna give us a glimpse into what the future holds for this brand as well as what true industry partnership might look like in the future. So Carl, please join us on the stage. How are you still at the office? I am, here's Tracy, how are you doing? Awesome Carl, I'm amazing. Take it away. Thank you so much. Well, good afternoon and welcome to our extended private property family and fratting. It's an absolute privilege for us as private property to be able to host this event. You know, we're a brand that has been built up on relationships and it's been exceptionally tough for us over the last year. Not to be able to spend face time in real time with our clients and our partners. But we're really happy that we've come across and bought up this platform. We know it's working exceptionally well for us. Nexus has really grown from strength to strength and it's a wonderful way for us to go to just share our knowledge and just be with each other. So we're looking forward already to the next events but we'll be sharing that information later on. Today I'm really just gonna be spending a little bit of time talking around where private property is now and where it is that we're going and where this industry in itself will be going over the next couple of years. And then after March Bill, I'll be bringing Claudia up onto the stage and she's gonna be sharing some really good insights from private property that we know about specifically to your area and your region. So let's get stuck straight into it. So, you know, private property is choosing to be a trusted partner in the property industry and really what that means is that we need to be in the center of the entire property ecosystem. So, you know, things that are in our ecosystem is obviously real estate. It's attorneys, it's banks, it's mortgage originators, anybody and everybody that makes a profession out of property or real estate and then really, really importantly as the consumer, the people that are buying properties, the people that are renting and landlords and the rest of that. So we're choosing to be in the center all of this and you know, today is an exact perfect example of it. You know, we're bringing in our partners and our clients together and we're using our influence to be able to share knowledge and share information. So really, really good example of being in the center that ecosystem is today. Really, there's two sides of this ecosystem. It's really one is the consumer and we refer to it as a consumer as the people that are buying properties and people that are looking to rent properties and the rest of that and then our clients who is yourselves. It's real estate agents, it's the banks and it's mortgage originators and the rest of that. And we're in the center of all of this which means we walk a little bit of a tightrope. On the one side, if you listen too much to what it is that a client wants, which is real estate, you run the risk of alienating what could potentially be 57 million people coming onto our portal. You know, it's people that might not be buying now but will be buying in the future. So we need to keep an eye on that. And the other side is if we listen too much to the needs of the consumers, we absolutely run the risk of alienating our clients. So it's a bit of a tightrope that we walk as public property but one that we choose to walk and one that we do considerably well. So you know, what steps do you need to take to become a trusted partner? So the first is really just absolute customer obsession. And what we mean by customer obsession is knowing exactly what the pain points of consumers, what are the pain points of real estate and just understanding your business. How do you interact every day? What do consumers want to be really good at that with our social media? We interact exceptionally well with our consumers. We've got over 550,000 people following us on our Facebook page. We do daily podcasts and they interact with us and they tell us what it is that they're wanting. What are their pain points? Is it finance? Is it finding the right property in the right area at the right price? And obviously on the client side is just really understanding exactly what real estate needs, exactly what our tourney partners need and what are their pain points. And once we understand all of that through customer obsession, we then have the ability to solve real people's problems. And that's really, really important for us. And we're choosing as a business to solve these real world problems by using technology. So again, once you understand what are the customer obsessions, you have the ability then to solve the problems. And once you do these two, you've got the ability to really create magic. And that magic is around creating value propositions. So one of the comments that was made in one of the earlier nexuses was a pain point that real estate agent had was, there should be a way that we should vet a person before they sign off to purchase to make sure that they can actually afford the property. And that's exactly, it's a perfect example of what it is if we're wanting to do. And it'll take some time, but we walk in this journey together and we'll get there. But you can imagine this world around, instead of just giving you hundreds of leads every day, and I can only imagine the laugh of an estate agent where you go and list this brand, you sell mandate and you get 200, 300 leads in a day. It's not humanly possible for you to respond to those. So you can imagine a day where you get a lead from private property and we say to you that says Colben and Berg, he's been pre-approved by EBSA for this amount already. He's looking for a three bedroom, two bathroom place in Danefern. He's got 2.5 children and a cat in a dog. That is value and that is really, really weird is that we're striving to get to. So again, we understand the customer and the consumers concerns and their pain points. We can then solve through digital technology and we then get to create some real, real magic. So where is private property? We currently almost, well, we're almost midway through our five year strategy. 2019 was really around preparation. So 2019 we had a new CEO come in. He's brought in an entire new executive team. One of them are probably the oldest serving one and I've been in the business for 18 months. And 2019 was really a year for us to sit back and look at what is our history as private property? Where are we currently and more importantly is where do we need to be as an industry and as a significant role player in that industry in the five years time? 2020 was around foundations and I'll speak a little bit more on that. 2021 really is the watershed year for private property. It's the year of our innovation. It's the year of us using technology to simplify people's lives. 2022 is repositioning, then optimization last year by 2024 scale. Scale speaks to having the right market share, the right amounts of consumers coming in. And really that's when you can start making sure that you deliver value to really everybody. But let's just look more recently. So I spoke around the 2022 foundation being a foundation year. I don't know who can remember us being red, blue and white. I definitely don't lost. Yesterday was our anniversary, but it's a part of private property. What I really want to show is, this is not just a new brand for us. It's not just a new logo for us. It is really, it signifies an absolute and a fundamental shift from who we used to be to who we are now. So, never mind the 22 years that we've been in existence. To us, yesterday was our first birthday. It shows that we are, we talk to people differently. We have different products and services. We show up differently. It's not just a green change for us. It's not just a brand refresh. It really does signify an absolute change. And everybody that we speak to is saying as resonates and they say, there's so much more value there. It's been so much improvement. They love the way we interact. And there's almost 700,000 people on all of our social media following. So, it really is a fundamental change. And it's something that we really are very, very proud of as private property. Just in terms of where we are, in terms of some of the numbers, we expect you to be at the 5 million unique users per month by the end of our five year strategy. Where are we now? We're sitting at 3.2 million unique people coming to look at your properties every single month. Now, that's a massive number. We're exceptionally proud of it. But if we start looking at our recent history, if we look at compared to exactly 12 months ago, it's a million more people every single month. And that's some serious growth. If we take it back a year before, in the last two years, we've grown by more than 2 million unique people coming onto our portal every month, exceptionally, exceptionally part of it. We're ahead of where we expect it to be this summer of the year. So, it's just, it's five million is probably a bit of an under shot. We're expecting to be significantly higher than that. So part of the conversation today, and I suppose it's been really, everybody asks us around, you know, proctics and fintechs and the use of technology. And really, you need to start asking, you know, are we evolving when it comes to the use of technology? Or is this an absolute revolution of technology? So by way of definition, let's just use a couple of examples. So if you pick up your old Nokia 2110 phone and you put that against your iPhone 12, that looks like an absolute significant change in the use of technology. However, you've got to consider that that's 25 years apart. You know, Nokia 2110s were made almost 25 years ago. So if you plot it on a graph, that's actually quite slow progress. It talks around an evolution. If we want to define a revolution in technology, let's just use something that we've all gone through lately. 12 months ago, we sit in our beautiful offices, private property, we've got beautiful offices with 180 degrees C views. And then next thing, we were working from home. We were using tools like Teams, like Zoom, all of these things, like the remote platform you are now. 12 months ago, we had never even heard of these things and now it's part of our daily lives. That's an example of an immediate revolution in the use of technology. What's really important is, so we've changed and we've had to change as an industry. But what is happening with our consumers? They've also changed and we need to make sure that we're ahead of their changes. You know, your head spoke earlier on around the use of virtual reality when it comes to platforms. Absolutely, virtual realities in your metaphors is essential. Consumers are wanting to get a really, really good idea of a property before they take that next leap to go and look at it. In my opinion, both really, really well for real estate. So essentially what it starts doing is it starts separating the shoppers from the buyers. It starts narrowing, getting 500 leads to getting 100 quality leads. So these are things that we should be embracing. Also look at it in terms of Facebook. Consumers are searching for information very, very differently. So with private properties Facebook, every now and then we showcase one of your properties. Every time we just put a property onto our Facebook page, we get 15,000 people viewing that at any one stage. So that's some serious numbers. In fact, we did a virtual show the other day for a property. We had over 500,000 people view that video. That is staggering stuff. So again, it's an example of our consumers changing and we as an industry and as private property need to make sure that we're ahead of this curve. So what's next? So in the next couple of months, private property will be launching brand new platforms. So what does this mean? Essentially there's two sets of platforms that will be launching. The first is very much centered around a consumer. So really about how does a consumer navigate your property? How is it that they find that property? How do they find properties in multiple areas because there's just a street dividing them? How is it that private property can learn more about them? And it's just really an ease of use both app and web based. The other portion is for real estate. How is it that a real estate agent can access the information about their listings? How has it been performing in terms of leads and views and the rest of that? But really start building up to go, where is your market share compared to your competitors? All of those leads, where are those people coming from? You know, are they, you've got a property in Sonning Hill and a lot of people from Dawn Cliff are looking at that. So we need you to start getting to that use of data. And this is really the start of it. So we'll be engaging with you before this, just to do some change management and really start engaging with you and just prepping you for these changes. But it's a significant change for us. So it starts out as a real simple, beautiful looking works really, really well. And then we start engaging with you. What are your needs? Where do we, where do you, where are the pain points? What can we solve for you? And we start every two to four, we start building these products in. So again, watershed year for us as a business. But again, imagine that world, where instead of getting 500 leads, you get three that pre-approved and that, you know, you've got a 50% strike rate. And together that's what it is that we need to build on. My last slide really starts talking about, you know, the humanizing this digital strategy. And it's, you know, we use this word disruption in our business a lot in the tech space. And I fear that when we say disruption, people get a bit of a negative connotation on it. And I industry people go, okay, they're going to disrupt real estate. That means cutting out the middleman. What is it going to do? That really, really, really couldn't be further from the truth when we talk about disruption, we're talking about simplifying our lives, creating efficiency through the use of digital. So let's just look at it really in a South African context. This much we know. Property ownership is highly emotive in our country. It's probably the single biggest purchase any South African will ever make. There is a human being selling it. There is a human being buying it. And there's a human being real estate agent that's navigating all of these things. There's a human attorney that's helping this, even believe it or not, but there's humans behind a bank. So it really is around creating these efficiencies and humanizing the digital journeys that we all win on it. So again, everybody, thank you so much for joining us on Nexus. I really do hope that you've enjoyed it. We'll definitely be doing these events again. It's been hugely rewarding to us. A big thank you to Absar partners for joining in this, as well as Jan and your head from PayProp, a real, real privilege for us to be working together. And I wouldn't be able to end this off with a real big shout out to Tracy Lee. She's been an amazing host and amazing colleague and she's put this together. And also the people behind the scenes, Hesse and Ben, that are in the studio. You've run this event like absolute clockwork. A big thank you. I'll leave the stage now and we can bring on Claudia. Good afternoon. It's really nice to join you as a born and raised Hau-Tinger and having lived in other parts of the country. I can unequivocally state that the busyness and the buzz and even the ridiculous speed and challenges here in our province still makes it the land of opportunity. And I am very happy that all of you could join us today. So there are words, some of them new, some of them old, that has been buzzing for quite some time. One of those is semi-gration. So it is a term that's been around for quite a while, but it's been used a lot and it's been used a lot to speak of trends and things. But if we think of the word, it kind of has a fun and an opportunity, an opportunistic and an aspirational sound and feel to it. So that is a word that I like a lot because it sounds interesting. Data, statistics, metrics. If we're honest, they don't really sound that entertaining. However, what makes them fun is when you start unpacking it and discussing it and even debating it and disagreeing on it and taking from it what could be of value to you and the success of your business. So I am going to be very brief today and touch on limited high level performance related data. But I do encourage you the engagement level between you, our parting clients and our relationship managers are extremely high. And I really want you to use the opportunity to make contact with them, draw from what they know and discuss it unpack it and see how it can be of use to you and your business and how it can increase your exposure. I have just posted my email address in the chat box for in case of the very unlikely event that you may not be familiar with who your relationship manager is. So let's get started. On the performance of the website and browser behavior, et cetera our sales views in hunting are very promising. I'm rising with 42% from 2018 to 19 and 52% last year despite everything that we went through. 2020 has been fairly short with only January and February that could be fully measured. But what is encouraging is that we are already on 20 million sales views and very close to 700,000 sales leads generated in January and February this year and this truly illustrates promise for the year to come. Rentals much as to the trends that have been mentioned today have not performed that exceptionally. However, a 36% increase from 2018 to 19 and 7% last year despite the market seemingly and specifically taking a total dive. 2018 to 2019 the leads remarkably increased but did reduce last year as we have spoken about and it's quite understandable. On January and February 2021 we are however standing on 11 million views which is quite impressive and we have sent out in excess of a million leads. This does illustrate that there is interest and there's interest that is being converted into leads for you to be able to do your magic. Like I said, sounds like boring stuff if you go through it on a slide but there is a lot of nuances in between that I encourage you to speak to your RM about. On to the next slide. So this one is kind of ridiculous because it shows us the top 50 searched suburbs. If you look at the entire data set it might have gone on and on and on for hundreds of suburbs because after the last or the lowest one which is Witwerke the trend pretty much remains the same. This illustrates an interest across the board across all price classes across all geographical groups and across gated security conscious browsers to people who want older and more established residential homes. So the spread is really, really quite even. Brineston as the most searched suburb is a good illustration of the fact that there is really interest in all kinds of properties since Brineston pretty much has it all from high end sprawling residential properties to quite a bit of sectional title and security assets. So over to my last slide I promised I'll be brief and I really hope you discuss this with our people the median price. So I'm sure all of you know this but the median price is the middle point of residential prices with exactly the same number and amount above and below. It is not the same as an average because it's not affected by the outliers so statistically it is truly the best measurement for property prices. So if we look at the sales median it remains higher. The black line is the national median. It's higher than how thing interestingly enough it started out in 2018 exactly the same. So it continued to be fairly stable until about April, lockdown levels last year when it started to decrease. However, if you look at the difference in the amounts it is around 100, 150,000 grand difference where how things prices are lower than the national median. Rentals are fairly in line with the national median and did like a little bit of a decrease or experience to decrease again understandable with the median being around 8,500 grand per month. So this is me and like I said it's only an introduction to everything there is to analyse but I'm really glad you stuck around and heard me out and I will see you soon either face to face or definitely in another session like this. Thank you. Another Nexus. Thank you so much, Claudia. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I'm going to ask you to just have a look at the chat and maybe pop your email address into the chat in case anyone wants to get in touch with you or discuss. There was a question around a product for commercial. I think you're going to get our Quinton from our side to get in touch with the gent asking that question. Leslie Ann from Nikag saying, hi, Carl, good to meet you. The face that fits the voice on the phone. Yeah, he looks exactly how he sounds and he's an awesome guy. I'm so glad you guys got to meet. Mohamed saying, good day, Carl. Erica, you think that these kind of events are time efficient? I believe that's what that comment was about. Right. I think, yeah, that is the question. It was Renee. What does private property offer for commercial and retail landlords as an advertising platform? So Quinton's going to get in touch with you. Thank you, Erica, for telling us that the colors are much better. We are growing green. We are not just going green for us. Green is actually a verb. So as you can see, we are now literally at the end of the session. We still have 113 people on the line. Let me start off by saying thank you to you. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy busy schedule. Out of all the meetings you could have attended, you chose to come and spend an hour and a half an hour and 40 minutes with us. And for that, I am really very, very grateful. And I know everyone at private property. I know our strategic partners, Apsa and PayProp also want to say thank you for this session. For this session, I would like to reward three people. Actually, it was so difficult for me to choose because look at this chat. It's just so much content, so much information, so much engagement. But there's three names that keep popping up. And I'm going to say these were my three co-hosts for today's session, the last session. And it's the last session, so we're going to make it a big one. So Cindy, Renee and Shay. You are our three winners, most engaged, best questions, and all of that stuff. I'd also like to thank Apsa, specifically Jeff, Caroline, Nondomiso, Zintle, Malose, and of course the amazing regional team that actually joined us for this last week. Ishtiak Narisa, Dion, Tando, and Venusia. Thank you so much for doing this session. Tando and Venusia. Thank you so much for doing the dry runs and going over just so that we can do this well and give a good experience to the delegates that decided to come through. I also want to say thank you very much to your head and to Yan, unbelievable working with you guys. We started talking about doing stuff together, not so long ago, but COVID happened. And guess what? Now we're doing this. And whether COVID happened or not, the party must go on. So thank you to Paperup. Thank you to Yan. And thank you to your head. I hope to come and visit you guys in the beautiful Stellenbosch very soon. I also want to just say thank you. And I want you to join me in saying thank you to the studio. And I'm talking specifically now about Hesti and I'm talking about Henny, the people in the background. I also want to thank our private property team, Ben and Trish, and also Lee and Sia. Thank you so much, our content team, for putting together this sort of concept of Nexus. And also to Kayla, who without whom none of this would also be possible. The last link, two link studio that I need you to put into the chat for me if you can, just that link for CPD points. So in case you missed it earlier, please put that link in there. And the other link is we have an awesome industry newsletter. It'd be great if you could sign up. We intend having these events again in the future and it'd be awesome if you can join us. And then yeah, I think that is it from me. I hope to see you on the socials. Like Carl was saying, it's a big focus for us. That's where the attention is. That's where we got to be. So we have five flagship shows, Home Shopper Show, which is a show that focuses on luxury and aesthetic. And then you have Show House, which is also on the weekend. The private property daily podcast really is one is the most popular show that we currently have yesterday 222 episodes already 222 episodes because it's a daily podcast. We also have a farmers podcast. If you are interested or you know anyone that wants to get closer to that farming notion, work the land farming the land, the farmers podcast is there answering questions from people who are just even just thinking about it. And then the final show we have is a fantastic show called FTHB, first time home buyer show. And in that show, we really talk to the ordinary person on the street and we get to understand how they manage to get their dream of home ownership realized. And we hope that encourages others to also pursue their dreams in a couple of months time. We're going to do another Nexus. Let us know if there's a particular Nexus you want us to do for instance, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, one on maybe the property practitioner's act. Maybe that's a good Nexus. What do you guys think? Let me have a look here in the chats. Thank you, Melissa from Apsa for answering a lot of the questions here in the chat. I really appreciate it. I see your email address there as well. If you want to take the conversation further. Okay. So let us know what kind of Nexus you want next. Other than that, we also have a virtual property show planned for later in the year and real estate industry summit is coming back. The real estate industry summit is coming back. This is coming back 2019. Acculus, yeah, you heard something about farming tuning tonight at eight o'clock or just go onto our private property Facebook page because on there you will just see loads and loads and loads and loads of content. Okay. So the real estate industry summit, that's what I was talking about. That's coming up in a couple of months time, but for now I have to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I hope I was able to, to reach you. I hope I made you feel part of the private property family. And I hope to see you again at another Nexus in the near future from me Tracy Miller, or I should say my name properly. Hey, I'm going to say my name properly Tracy Lee Miller from Tracy Lee Miller. I want to say thank you. And please, please look out for us in, in the males look out for us on social media. We can't wait to spend time with you again. Have a wonderful rest of your Thursday afternoon. God bless and goodbye.