 Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon. It is 2 o'clock well, yeah, 2 o'clock on the dot and We're about to start our afternoon nexus with a particular focus on the greater Cape Town, Boerland, Helderberg, Overberg and West Coast area. If you can hear me, drop a good afternoon in the chat box on the right-hand side of your Screen and let me greet everyone while we give some people a chance to join Hello to Felene and Dion. Nice to see you guys again Lisa Marie. Hello, Udo I hope you get your camera things sorted out. It'd be really nice to see who I'm sitting at a table with Hello, Melissa. Hello, Martin your bad. Hello. Hello Terry Paul Lorraine. I Think that's your head. Yeah. Hi your head. I hope you're well Natalie Janine from the here for Naomi. Hello. Hello Dylan. Hello, Marie Smith. I see you young. Hi, Deirdre Hi, Jill. Good afternoon everyone and welcome. Howdy, ma'am. Paul Ferns. Thank you for that Hello, Martin. I think I said hello to you before and I see you Susan. Hi Terry King Hi, Louise. Hi, Katie. Hello, Carl van der Berg. Hello, Hilda. Hello, Dylan. Hello, Maul. Sure We are just getting more and more people in this room. Fantastic. Hello Anna Marie. I see you're joining us from the Chas Everett and Feldriff. We're going to remain so fun. Feldriff. Hello, Arnold. How are you? Okay? I think it's about a minute past, not two minutes past. Let's get cracking. So good day everyone and welcome to the first Nexus of our Greater Cape Town, Burlant, Helderburg, Overberg and West Coast area. This Nexus is brought to you in partnership with our Strategic Partners, APSA and also PayProp. I'm Tracy Lee Millen. I'm the brand and marketing executive here at Private Property and I'm going to be your virtual host for this afternoon's session. So if you don't know what the word Nexus means, it's okay. I'm going to tell you Nexus actually means a series of connections that link to or more things. And in the context of this event, that's exactly what that what we are trying to achieve, which is a series of digital connections, digital networking events, which cultivates people connection. And we do that through knowledge sharing and networking. So last year, we tried this Nexus thing out. And it went super, super, super, and was very well received by the industry. So we decided we're going to bring it back and make it a bit bigger and better than before. And one way that we've done this is by tailoring the events to specific regions, so that the insights that we share within those specific areas are hyper relevant to you and your area, giving you the best possible chance of achieving success in a difficult or tough market. We've got an excellent lineup for you today. So before we get started, let me just take you up across this platform and introduce you to this platform that we call Remo. It's a very engaging platform. Many of you already found the chat button there. So I'm going to take you through the other two buttons real quick. In the chat function, you can obviously give us a comment, drop an emoji. In our earlier session, someone dropped a GIF, which was awesome. And you can ask questions in this area, in this chat area here, you can say hello to people, like I'm going to about to say hello to Louise Berger from Acer Fontaine, Brett Spark. I see you there. Thank you for letting me know that you can hear me loud and clear. Right next to the chat button is a participants button. And there you'll be able to literally send an email directly to someone. If there's someone that you've been meaning to connect with, if there's someone that says something in the chat that you need further explanation or description on, you can reach out to them here in the participants box. The box next door is a really awesome box. It's called Q&A, obviously for questions and answers. You ask the question here. I'm going to ask you a question. My question is today is special for PPY. Other than the Nexus, Y. And again, please, private property people, you're not allowed to answer this question. So you can see there, Tracy Lee, which is me. I've just asked a question. Today is special for PPY. Why is today special? If you know, let me know right here in the general chat. If you like the question, you can upvote the question. Can you see there's already two votes for this question? Click on the Q&A, then you can upvote the question. I see another vote coming in. When it gets to 10 votes, I will give you the answer. Okay, so other than knowing how to engage, I also wanted to be aware of the fact that we're going to give out a price for the most engaged and the best question. So get involved, get active, participate. You know, we don't just want to talk at you. We want to speak with you. We want to engage with you. Last thing I think I should mention before I get our first guest up on the stage here is that we have one and a half non-verifiable CPD points on offer from Aisa. All you have to do is stick around until the end of the session and then click on the link to register. Jan, is it the claim Saturday? When Jan comes on and does his talk right after your hit, he has to tell us exactly what he means by claim Saturday. I see the question. You get to meet me, Paul Ferns. You get to meet me. Do you want us to get to meet you? Find me on the floor and then switch on your camera and then we will meet each other there. I think right now, let me ask the very first person that's on our lineup to come on to the stage. Her name is Caroline King and she is the head of sales, strategy and analytics for Apsa Bank, our strategic partners. So, Studio, let's get Caroline up on the stage and I believe Caroline you're also going to bring on to the stage Dion Ferns sale who will also be introducing himself and answering a couple of questions should you have. Let's see, are there any other hello's that I missed? Hi, Keith. Hi, Naomi. Hi, Dion. Dion, are you the one joining us today, not Caroline? I am the lucky one. I can never be as pretty as Caroline Tracy. Never, never, never. Well, we are very privileged to have you with us today, Dion. Of course, for those who don't know, Dion is the regional manager for home loans at Apsa and he takes care of the greater Cape Town region. Dion, take it away. Right, everybody. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you for that warm welcome. Just from my side, it's really a privilege for me to be here this afternoon. These next events are absolutely amazing and thank you for private property, for hosting this. This really makes a difference for all of us as presenters as well. First of all, just a quick... Hi, everyone. I see that Dion is frozen and has no sound, is a little bit silent. Let's give him a minute or two to log back in. I believe that some of us have just been hit by the dread load shedding. There we go, Dion. Thank you for that content. He says, claimsat adach, the meaning is also known as Wednesday in South Africa. It's the middle of... Okay. It's kind of a celebration because it's the middle of the week and only two days to go before the weekend. Basically, it's just another excuse to have a social and get together or pry in the middle of the week. Thank you for that, Dion. Do I still have you guys in the room studio? Can you tell me in the chat whether we've been able to get Mr. Fonsell back? If not, then maybe what we should do is we should go... Okay, he's not back in. Can we then go to the mentee questions while we wait for Mr. Fonsell to come back in? Sometimes you just have to work with technology, hey? All right, everyone. So while we wait for Dion to come back, please take out your cellular phones and go to the website, www.mentee.com. That's www.mentee.com. You will enter a code which is 4562-8137 and then enter your name to sign up. I see we've not got anyone yet signed up for mentee. Get to www.mentee.com. Enter in the code 4562-8137. Let's see how many of us are in mentee. I see... I don't see anyone yet studio. Shall we give it a couple more minutes? All right, there we go. Nick, Natalie and Melissa, you're in first. We've got Dylan in next. Who else is going to join? Lisa Marie, you are in. Alta, Baidanki, I see you are in. Where are my absent people? Brett, I see you are in. Thank you, Susan. Estelle, thank you so much for coming in. 10 of you in already. Let's give it a couple more minutes. Come to our website called www.mentee.com. Enter in the code 4562-8137. Yes, we've been doing these nexus events from Monday now and I really think I'm starting to run out of English. My English is starting to run out. Are you in? www.mentee.com. Go to punch in your name, punch in the code 4562-8137. I see we've got a nice group of you in here already. Hilda, Louise, I see you. Lynette, I see you. Jeanie, I see you. Landa, I see. Alta, I've already mentioned. Brett, you're in. Okay, excellent. Let's give it maybe one or two more names, studio. And then let's get cracking with that first question. If you're still wondering whether to, you know, participate, you can always join mentee and then punch in the code, enter in your name, studio. Let's move on to the first question. You will see the options for answering on your cell phone. And I and all of us, we will see the responses almost immediately appearing on the screen on your desktop. So let's go to the first question, please. Thank you, studio. And the first question is, this is really for us to get to know you and know who's in the room here with us. What is your job title or your role within the company today? Are you a CEO, director, executive, franchise owner? Are you a principal agent or a managing broker? Are you an estate agent or an intern? Or are you other? Let's give a few minutes for those responses to come through. Okay, a few more minutes, 23 people answering now. Majority of you in the room are High Yolanda Principal, Principal Yolanda Potfasers. I see you. Where are you joining us from, Yolanda? Just drop your area here into the chat. Wonderful. 17 of you in the room saying that you are estate agents or intern estate agents. Wonderful, Yolanda. Wonderful to have you with us all the way from Somerset West. Is there anyone that is not from the Greater Cape Town, Burla and Haldeburg, Oberberger West Coast area? Anyone from anywhere else in the country? Because of course, with the internet, you can join from wherever. On Monday, we actually had someone joining as far from as far as the UK. Here we go. What type of real estate transactions do you specialize in? This is our second question. Are you focused on sales? Are you focused on rentals? Or do you do both sales and rentals? Of course, this is a question we're asking every single one of our next sessions so that we can get a good understanding of the kind of content we need to put together for rooms such as yours. Okay, wonderful. So a lot of you saying sales and rentals, but definitely the majority of you saying sales. Wonderful. Thank you, Marika. Marika, I see you. Let's get on to the next question, please, studio. My favorite one. Do you multitask when attending virtual meetings or events online? In fact, I should just ask your head smarts what she's doing right now. Are you multitasking your head? So let's see how many people are honest. Yes, I am guilty. It would be my very first choice because it's difficult not to. Your head, I see you. I see you. So yes, I'm guilty of sometimes multitasking. I'll be the first to admit no one is saying that my mind tends to wonder. Three people saying four people saying I'm 100% focused. We need some of that. We need some of that in a cup and we can all drink it. And then 10 of you saying sometimes sometimes you multitask and other times you don't. All right, let's go to the next question, please. Let's make this a good one. In your opinion, is it a buyer or a seller's market? Answer the question and then use the chat to tell me why. Use the chat function to tell me why you think it's a buyer's market or why you think it's a seller's market right now. Someone actually suggested earlier in the week that we add a third option, which says both. Overwhelming majority of you in the room today think that it is a buyer's market. Do you want to pop your why? Why you think it's a buyer's market into the chat perhaps? Okay, let's go into the next question, please, studio. Martin, your bear saying he thinks it's because of the low interest rates. Agreed. Dante, there's an oversupply of property making it that way. It's still too much stock in a price range on the market at this time. And you're saying because the rates are low and more nickels you're saying interest rates. There were a few that said sellers. Can you tell me maybe why you suggest it could be sellers? Pop your comments here in the chat and I will read it out loud. Yolande, thank you so much. You're saying buyers because it's of the low interest rate. Here we go. Overseas people cannot come. Okay, I see Yolande. And then Paul, you're saying oversupply and interest rate. Okay, the next question. In one word, how would you describe? Let's go back in one word. How would you describe 2021 so far? Not 2020. And let's keep it clean. We might have children watching this later. So in one word, how would you describe 2021 so far? The words that appear bigger than the others are words that have been entered more than once. So isn't this lovely to see 2021 for so many of you feels great and exciting? The word challenging is also quite visible. Good, excellent, life-changing, productive, turbulent. A couple of days ago I had the word crap, frustrating, Marika, I see you. Curtis, you're saying great. Yolande challenging. And Merle, you're saying busy, very busy. Thank you so much, Studio. The big words, they're great, exciting, challenging, good, active, below 3 million. Fantastic. And I think this is the very last question, which is a question that gets a lot of different answers depending on where you're asking the question from. So if you could change one thing in the South African real estate industry right now, what would it be? What would you change if you could change one thing? Remember, you can think about this a little bit. If you want, you can give yourself a minute or two to think about your answer. If you had a genie in a lamp, what would you ask the genie to do to change the real estate industry right now? Affordability, getting the EAAB up to date on admin. Someone is saying nothing. It's interesting times. We're in a never a dull moment. I tend to agree with you there. Not sure about the nothing part, to have qualified and registered agents. So if you could change that quickly overnight, you would do that. Ethical conduct by state agents and their principals or managers. Obviously more efficiency in the deeds office. Scroll down for me, please, studio. It would be great to have buyers and sellers agents. That would probably create more loyalty from one's clients. Yep, I wonder who said that. That is such, I think that's the very first time I'm seeing that in this section. Be nice to delve into that a little bit more. What do we mean by a buyer's and a seller's agent? Deeds office trading hours, EAAB system, EAAB agent to be qualified. The deeds office to work more efficiently or effectively, more rental training. All right, fantastic. Thank you so much. This really, really helps us to understand what the pain points of you in this industry is currently. What your pain points are. Thank you so much, studio. If you can tell me in the chat whether we have Dion back, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. If we have time, we'll do one momenty a little bit later. Studio, tell me if we have Dion back. Okay, fantastic. We're moving to pay prop. All right, so your head, your head smarts is joining us from pay prop. We'll get to Dion after the pay prop session. Your head, of course, is the head of data and analytics in at the company called pay prop. And she's joined by the CEO of pay prop, Jan Darval. And together, they're going to take us through the 2020 rental market in the review and what the future holds. They'll also give us a sneak peek at the pay props state of the rental market survey results before they release next quarter. We are indeed very, very privileged. Thank you, your head. Thank you, Tracey. And thanks for everyone who's taking the time this afternoon to listen to us and the other speakers speak. And of course, thanks to private property for the opportunity. I'm going to share my screen in a second. And I will also be switching off my camera so that my presentation with the graphs is nice and big on your screens. Let me just get the right screen. There we go. Okay, so as Tracey said, I will be taking you through what happened in the rental market in the year 2020. And then also chat to you about our server results, topics I'll be covering this afternoon is rent. We'll have a look at arrears and also credit metrics. For the Western Cape, I'm happy to say all news, almost all news is good news. So let it with rent. On a national level, if we look at year on year rental growth over the last two years, we can see that it trended mostly between three and four percent during 2019. And then it started trending downwards in 2020. You can clearly see where lockdown hit, it had a huge effect on the rental market, also on inflation. You remember, we weren't allowed to buy anything other than groceries. So that obviously affected the price of goods in general. Rental growth is also lower than inflation for most of the last two years. And here you'll see an historic event in November 2020, we saw the first negative year on year rental growth since we started the rental index back in 2012. So what that 0.3% means is that from November 2019 to November 2020, the average rental amount decreased by 0.3%. It's not a huge grand amount, but it is an historical event and really worth mentioning. Why was the rental market under such pressure during 2020? So there are two sides to the story. Firstly, there's a demand side and then there's also a supply side. So if we look at the demand side, it really boils down to affordability. I'm sure most of you have tenants who lost their job or lost part of their income or had a partner lose their income. So overall, tenants just weren't able to afford large rental increases. It's also possible that tenants are staying longer in their current property because they can't afford to move to larger and more expensive properties. So that decrease in demand also decreased the price. Looking on the supply side, two factors I play here. We know of many Airbnb properties that were because they were standing empty on the short-term rental market due to the travel ban. Those owners put those properties in the long-term rental market thereby flooding market. Secondly, because of the very low interest rates that we are currently experiencing, investors are buying more vitality properties and that's also flooding the rental market. So that low demand and high supply, those two factors affect the rental market quite a bit. Do we see it changing in the next year? The short answer is no. Both of these are not very elastic in the short term, meaning they take some time to change. So we don't expect the rental growth to shoot the lights up for the next year. If we look at the same data just quarterly, we can clearly see that downward trend that I spoke about earlier. At the end of last year, year on year rental growth, meaning the increase in rent from the last quarter of 2019 to the last quarter of 2020 was only 0.0% or 10 grand. You can clearly see here the effect of lockdown at the end of quarter one between quarter one and quarter two of 2020, rental growth literally halved. Now if we compare the Western Cape figures with that, it doesn't paint the best picture. As I mentioned earlier, rental growth for 2019 and into 2020 on a national level was between 3% and 4% and the Western Cape was a bit short of that from the beginning of 2019. Here at the end of 2020, we saw three consecutive quarters of negative rental growth, meaning that year on year rent is getting a little bit cheaper on average. Putting this into perspective, the Western Cape agents shouldn't be too worried about that negative rental growth for other provinces also experienced negative rental growth with the lowest being 3.3%. The Western Cape is still the most expensive province in the country. Looking at arrears, quite a big topic for 2020 also because many tenants lost their jobs and weren't necessarily able to pay their rent. They might be willing to pay, but they weren't necessarily able to pay. When you look at arrears, we look at two metrics. First, the percentage of tenants in arrears and then secondly, we look at what is the average size of arrears relative to rent? Let's start with the first one. At the beginning of 2020, just before lockdown, lockdown was announced here, smack bang in the middle of the two quarters more or less, 19.4% of tenants were in arrears. That means about one in five tenants were in arrears. Then came lockdown and this number jumped to 24.9%. So one in four tenants were in arrears and I'll explain why we saw this pattern in a bit. From the second quarter, we can see that this figure recovered quite nicely to the end of last year, but ending at 20.9, not quite at the 19.4 level that we saw before lockdown. Looking at average arrears percentage, so at the beginning of last year, a tenant who were in arrears owed on average almost 80% of one month's rent. So that is what that 78.5% means. That increased and spiked in the third quarter and then recovered down to 96% in the last quarter. That is quite away from the 78 that we saw at the beginning of last year and this is a more sticky metric than the percentage of tenants in arrears and I'll explain that in a second. So why did we see the trends that we just saw on that previous slide? For one thing, cash flow, certainty and uncertainty. If you can put yourself in a tenant shoes when lockdown was announced, many tenants didn't know when they would be able to go back to work, whether they would receive a full salary. So tenants stopped paying their rent in full because of that uncertainty. Then towards the end of the middle of the second quarter, it was announced that the economy will open and people could return to work on the 1st of June. This is now those who still had their jobs. So tenants started paying their rent in full again and where they could paid off their arrears. If we look at the average arrears percentage room, this one peaked only in the third quarter. These tenants who went back to work on the 1st of June and were able to pay off their rental arrears because they left this arrears pool. Mathematically, the average just spiked a bit in the third quarter. The remaining arrears are quite sticky and difficult to pay off because if you think about it, for this figure to decrease, a tenant will have to pay their rent in full plus make additional payment towards their arrears. In the current economic climate, that is difficult for many tenants to do. If we compare the Western Cape arrears figures with the National, this is a good picture that we see on this slide. At the beginning of last year, 15.3% of tenants were in arrears. So 1 in 6 that spiked at 21% in the second quarter and recovered down to 18% in the last quarter. So still higher than at the beginning pre-lockdown but likely lower than the national average. Looking at the average arrears percentage, it started out really well with very low levels of an average arrears percentage at below 70%. This also spiked in the third quarter and then recovered to 94%. So that 94% is quite a sticky number as I said and it is far off from the 68% of that we saw pre-lockdown. Then let's briefly look at credit metrics. So before we look at them, these figures come from credit checks done through the PayProp system. So it doesn't necessarily track a specific pool of tenants and what their credit profile looks like. It looks at the tenants who are applying for rent actively. So just keep that in mind when we interpret these stats. So we look at quite a few and I'm not going to talk about all of them. One that I want to highlight is major delinquencies. So a tenant or a prospective tenant has a major delinquency when they have a notice or a default against their name or if they had an account in arrears that was more than three months overdue. So at the beginning of last year, 18.4% of tenants or prospective tenants had a major delinquency against their name which is actually quite high if you think about it. That spiked in the second quarter at 20% and then improved again towards the end of the year back to level C in the first quarter. The other one that I want to highlight is the debt to income ratio. We all know that interest rates dropped by three and a half percentage points during the year last year and that's evident in this. You can see at the beginning of the year tenants spent almost 50%, almost half of their net income they take home pay on debt repayments. And at the end of the year last year that was only 40%. So that lower interest rate really had an effect on this. Of course if they spend less money on debt they have more money left over at the month and this is what we're measuring here with disposable income. Credit scores summarizes overall 10 and half and it was really good to see that this actually improved during the years from the beginning of the year at 642 and that increased to 645 at the end of the year. It is only three points I know but it was a bit of a surprise to see that. Now if we compare the Western Cape statistics to the National it looks quite green and that's a good thing. So income in the Western Cape is higher than the National and it's the second highest in the country. We can also see that fewer tenants have major delinquencies against their name. So there are more good tenants if you think about it that way than what we see nationally. Tenants also on average spend a smaller percentage of their net income on debt which means that they have more money left at the end of the month and then credit score wise overall credit health of Western Cape tenants are above the national average and nine points above the national average actually which is quite encouraging. So why do credit metrics improve in 2020 and when I say credit metrics I mean credit score like I said I didn't really expect to see that increase in credits for overall and there are a few possible reasons for this. So we all know from the news and the radio that in South Africa lower income consumers not necessarily tenants but lower income consumers were hit a bit harder by lockdown. So they lost more jobs, had more pay cuts, couldn't go to work. So it's possible that these tenants completely exited the rental market in the short term either by moving in with family or sharing a house with another family. It's also possible that tenants could be staying longer because like I said earlier affordability makes that they can't necessarily move to a bigger and more expensive property like they normally would. It's also possible and this is just my hopeful side but that tenants are financially a bit more responsible after COVID. We all had a bit of a a bit of a fright when hard lockdown hits and I think many people had to rethink about how they spend their money, where they spend it. So it is possible that tenants are just more financially responsible. Also like I said the lower interest rates did have an effect on the data income ratio. So it's also possible that tenants are actually paying off their debt with the extra money that they're not spending on interest. And then like I said I was expecting credit metrics to worsen. Another reason is that good tenants because of the low interest rate are actually buying property instead of renting. So I was expecting to see that that credit score worsen because good tenants are actually leaving the market. It's good to see though that there are still good tenants opting. Last but not least as Tracy promised a sneak peek at our second state of the rental industry survey we conducted at the end of last year and I took a few highlights out of the results that we'll hopefully publish in April. So we took part 95% of the participants who works in the property industry. That feels quite logical since we sent it to mostly pay prop users and other industry players whose contact details we have. 69% were either a business owner or a rental agent and then 64% had smallish rental books so 150 properties and less. Technology with the year that we had was obviously very topical. There should come as no surprise 55% of people said they increased the use of technology in their business during COVID. So this is 55% who fully agreed with the statement. There was another 25% who just agreed. So in total 80% of respondents increased the use of technology during COVID. 70% said that virtual viewings and 3D tours are here to stay. So even if things go back to normal they will still be a place for virtual viewings and 3D tours. And lastly 69% said that it's more productive to increase automation so whether you see technology than to increase the workforce. This is just an example of how people realise that it's better to work smart than to work hard. Looking at the type of movements we saw in portfolios or type of responses 70% of participants said that the rental increases they put through during 2020 was lower than usual. This again goes back to affordability. This was quite a striking one for me. 93% said that they made alternative payment arrangements with tenants during lockdown. So they're at the start of lockdown which just shows you how many tenants were actually affected by job and income losses. 55% said that they have more vacant properties on their books than they normally do. And then 64% said that they lowered their commission income. So this is quite a worrying statistic purely because commission is a rental agency's main source of income. Once you lower that commission percentage you basically shoot yourself in the foot over the short term but also over the long term because it's very difficult to actually increase that commission percentage in the future if you're just doing the same amount of work. Looking at challenges briefly 51% said that the biggest challenge is finding good tenants. So earlier today I looked at 2019's results. This was only finding good tenants was only second in line. First was managing areas. So it's quite surprising that this jumped over Arizona's now most agents biggest nightmare. Worries for 2020 most or more than two-thirds of respondents said that they are worried about the ongoing effect of COVID on their business. And I'll end with some good news. Last question of the survey was how optimistic are you about the future of the rental market? Only 5% said negative or pessimistic. 17% said that they feel neutral about it and an overwhelming 78% said that they are optimistic about the future of the rental market. I compared this statistic to the server results of 2019 and three lockdown before we knew that COVID existed only 62% of people were optimistic about the future of the rental market. So I'm hoping that lockdown and COVID and living through a pandemic made us all think about life a bit differently and made us more optimistic about the future. If you want more information about rental areas and credit metrics, you can download the rental index that's available. I'll drop that link in the chat for you just now. Thank you for listening. I'm going to hand over to Yan. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm talking to Sunny Stelenbosch, and I'm sorry for the age there as you would expect. I'm talking to you from a nice and sunny Stelenbosch. It's lovely to see so many familiar names and even faces on this particular event. So I want to make use of this opportunity of thanking Amasi, Tracy Lee, Ben Cole and everybody at Private Property for this wonderful opportunity. Today I did not prepare nice graphs and a nice presentation for you. Should I have, I would have titled it Death by PowerPoint because we are going to take a look into the future, but unfortunately it has to be in regard to regulation and I particularly want to touch on the legal landscape that awaits us sometime probably during the course of this year. Now, as you all know, the Property Practitioners Act was promulgated and published in the Government Gazette already on 3 October 2019. And with that being the case, some of you may be wondering why we as estate agents are still working in accordance with the Estate Agency Affairs Act of 1976. I think we all agree that this 45 year old piece of legislation is overdue for replacement. As this old 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 Byproc. The old act simply does not cater for today's realities and we need to see how this is going to change. Now, considering the new Property Practitioners Act, we must remember that this new act, like all other new acts, in itself only sets out the broad principles of the new law, not its implementation. Now, that is where regulations to an act come in, setting out the implementation and the application of the new act. Now, although the Property Practitioners Act was published in October 2019 already, its regulations have not been finalized. And only once they are published in the Government Gazette, the new act will be implemented. And that's when all of us estate agents need to start being compliant with the new act and the new regulations. When is that likely to be? We don't know. There's no indication of when we can expect it. But there's a very good indication of what we can expect. So the draft regulations were published for public comment already in March last year. And the period for public comments was extended until 20 November last year. And now we await the final regulations that publication in the Government Gazette that will bring this new act into operation. So sometime during the course of this year, it will be implemented. And what can we expect? Like I've said, I'm not going to give you a PowerPoint presentation. What I am going to do is going to share my screen and show you extracts of the act firstly and then extracts of the regulations. This is public information that is available on the web. You can read it at your own time. Please share that with your auditor. If you need to seek legal advice, kindly share it with your attorney. Follow the webinars that are being presented by industry commentators. And you have probably seen and heard a lot. I'm just going to point out three very salient aspects that are vitally important to rental agencies, property rental agencies. And I'm going to start, and I trust you can all see my screen. I'm going to start with section 54 of the act that tells us what the intention of the legislature is. Now it says there in 54.1 that every property practitioner must open and keep one or more separate trust accounts, which must contain certain references. Then every property practitioner must immediately after opening a trust account, appointment auditor, and then the authority must be notified. And the authority, ladies and gentlemen, is the new name for the EAAB. It will have a full name. But as estate agents are now becoming property practitioners, the EAAB will be referred to as the authority. And then there are certain things that must do in terms of section 54 that deals with your trust account. Subsection 2, 54.2 also says that a property practitioner may invest in a secret saving account, certain funds that which are not immediately required for any particular purpose, very similar to section 32.2 of the estate agency affairs act. And then it goes on with a few things that you must do. As you know, the act is also published in an Indigenous language. If you scroll down, you will see that there are quite a few things that a property practitioner must do. And then the authority, as the EAAB in other words, they may do certain things, the court may do certain things. And the property practitioner must do many other things in terms of section four that deals with trust money. None of this new. It is pretty similar to section 32 of the estate agency affairs act that most of you, all of you are probably familiar with. So section 54 is something that you should read. And if necessary, obtain legal advice. I'm reiterating that I'm simply pointing out these important sections. I'm not trying to give you legal advice. But what is very different in the new act and the intention of the legislature, what is very different is when we look for, as an example at section 23, the heading already is something really talks of exemptions in respect of accounting records and trust accounts. We've never had that. When we read section 23, subsection one, it says that a property practitioner whose turnover is below 2.5 million must cause these or its accounting records to be subjected to an independent review by a registered accountant subject to the provisions of section 54 that deals with trust money. Now, what is new is that there's a threshold of 2.5 million. It didn't exist before, but a practitioner who's below this threshold must cause his accounting records to be subjected to an independent review by a registered accountant. It's no longer a formal trust audit by a chartered accountant. And you can see it's prescriptive. It's must. So this is new. So I think that actually see the intention of the legislature. And if we take that further in section 23, 2, subsection 2, it says that the minister may by notice in the Gazette, and that's the government Gazette, determine the circumstances under which certain property practitioners may be exempted from keeping trust accounts. Being exempted from trust accounts as estate agents has never been possible before. And then also the minister may by notice in the government Gazette, determine a different dispensation for the review of accounting records for those property practitioners. What's different here? It's not an audit. It's simply a review. And it's not by a chartered accountant. It's only by a registered accountant, which means the intention of the legislature is to make it much cheaper, much easier, far less onerous, and that potentially could be very good news for rental agents who have very active trust accounts. So that was the act and the above section 54 and section 23 that we've just read deals with the intention of the legislature. And what is included now is that we should consider the regulations to see how it's going to be implemented once these regulations are published. Regulation 4 of the draft regulations that were published last year deals with it. And the heading says exemption from trust accounts. Now pursuant to the provisions of the sections that I've just read to you, a property practitioner is exempted from keeping a trust account if that property practitioner has never received any trust monies other than as permitted in regulation 4.4, which we will come to. And the property practitioner is also exempted from keeping a trust account if he no longer receives any trust monies other than permitted in regulation 4.4. So it's clear that there can be exemptions either if you have never received monies or that you no longer receive trust monies and that you're going to wind up your old trust account, we will deal with that now. So just the and, it's an and, it's not never all, all these are and and and and the property you can apply for exemption if you submit to the authority and affidavit in the form in terms of which affidavit the property the property practitioner asserts certain things. So there is an an annexure to these regulations that is the template that you need to complete as an affidavit in which you assert certain things. And firstly you will have to say that you are fully compliant with the regulations above and you will have to give an undertaking that you will not receive any trust funds after the date of your affidavit. And then you need to provide evidence to the authority or the EIAB that any previously existing trust account that was operated by you is still active. And so there must be an independent review of that. And then it gets fought. You must provide evidence that evidence that it's closed that it has been reviewed its history no longer. And if that has happened you can be exempted. So in regulation 4.2 it says where a property practitioner is exempted after you follow all those processes that you must carefully read in your own time. You can be exempted from having a having a trust account and further once if you are exempted in terms of the above you will be exempted from having to have your business accounts audited and you will only be required to have such account independently reviewed by a registered accountant. So this is all the detail that deals with it. And if we get to regulation 4.4 that is a very important sub-regulation for rental agents. It says that a property practitioner will further be exempted so you can so it's if you're small and if you are followed small means I mean less than two and a half million turnover follow these procedures and then further can be exempted if such property practitioner you as an estate agency has mandated one or more other property practitioners that specialize in collecting and distributing trust payments and such other property practitioner will then be referred to as the payment processing agent such as by prop to process such trust payments on its behalf. What is important to 4.4.1 is that if you want to apply for exemption of having to keep a trust account and to have it audited you must use an accredited payment processing agent such as by prop who also is a property practitioner. Your payment processing agent must be a property practitioner with a valid FFC and it must be compliant with all these regulations as well and then very importantly it must also process all trust funds received by you as a property practitioner not some on your own account and some in this account all trust money must be processed by your accredited payment processing agent considering 4.4.2 it can be exempted with each payment processing agent like a by prop mandated by you operates a trust environment that complies with the act and the associated regulations so it's not a single trust account it's a complete trust environment that has to be managed by the payment processing agent and the further subsections deal with it in more detail so each payment processing agent that's your by prop mandated by you the agency operates within its trust environment separately auditable client accounts both in respect of each property practitioner or estate agency to whom the by props of this world provides such services and in respect of each client of each such property practitioner in other words you must have separate separately auditable client accounts for each estate agency and within that account of each estate agency you must have separately auditable accounts for each landlord and each tenant so there's a big environment where trust accounts for each agency and then auditable client accounts for each landlord and each tenant subsection 4.4.4 sees the trust environment of the payment processor like by prop and each of the client accounts in other words each of the estate agencies accounts operated by the payment processing agents must be audited annually in compliance with the act and the regulations and the audit reports in respect of must be submitted to the authority of the PIB in compliance with the act so in other words ladies and gentlemen if you are a small operator you can apply for exemption if you have no trust funds in your own account and if you use an accredited payment service provider that meets all these requirements as per the definitions and you no longer hold any trust monies whatsoever in your own trust account you can apply for exemption and there I will show you an entry E1 on page 11 of the regulations that is the affidavit that you'll have to complete and submit it to the authority of the which you will probably have a four lease owner is much less complicated for cheaper arrangement in terms of payment processors trust account for your trust monies I hope that is good news for the smaller operators and the newcomers to the industry please make sure that you are familiar with regulation four and those two sections 54 and 23 of the stock of the property practitioners and on that note I thank you for listening to me and I will hand back to Tracy of the stop chain thank you so much Tracy Lee thank you so much for taking us through can you put yourself on mute so that we don't get feedback from the speaker perfect thank you so much Jan we have one question here that's in the Q&A how many properties on a national level are these statistics based on and then again you hit you answered that question nationally about 110,000 properties are managed through the pay prop system the western cave stats are based on about 30% of that figure and also your head dropped a link for you to be able to download their latest rental index here so we are really coming up against the clock right now and I have two more speakers to bring through to the stage let me immediately bring on yeah I agree Dylan let's say thank you to your head and Jan thank you so much for giving us all of those valuable insights in particular with a particular look at the rental market Dion welcome back are you back now I am back can you believe it can you believe it thank you team I really appreciate it sorry about that no no problem Dion thank you so much for coming back through I'm going to ask you to take it away and then immediately after you are going to go to Karl van der Berg from the private property family and he's going to give us a sense of what's going to happen with private property in the next couple of months in in how they're going to be growing their brand moving forward but thank you to Jan and thank you to your head and over to you Dion thank you Tracy and thank you everybody I'm really excited to be back this is really a great event and and to the private property team thank you guys you've just shown your agility really appreciate it I think this afternoon I'm going to start off by just taking a quick step back just to see where where we started a year ago so so let's let's just take a step back into history a year ago this time the first COVID-19 cases have already been diagnosed in South Africa and and and the new infections were absolutely skyrocketing at that stage our government introduced lockdown measures which compared to the top 25 strictures regulations in in in the various countries in the world and and and we were absolutely beleaguered by a global pandemic we touched all of us on an individual an industry a country and and and even worldwide at this stage last year economists actually said that the contraction in in our economy will be around about 8.3 percent with these dreadful numbers that we looked at at that time also just to catch up in June last year and I'm just coming to mind in terms of these numbers 53 percent people in South Africa said that their finance had been severely impacted 35 percent had experienced a salary gap 14 percent have lost their jobs already at that time and six percent were asked to take unpaid leave so so really lockdown level five last year came into effect and it actually us we're sitting here today it almost cost us two months of our lives where we couldn't waste and we had to rethink what is happening in our lives what is important for us and and and we actually had to had to rethink around the way we live the the the way we earn a living and the way we conduct our our business so so so where are we where what does this mean for the property market thank you Eastie so so what is what does this mean for the property market bearing in mind that we've lost two months of economic activity we've had devastating and on our sales in 2020 I think the industry saw this decline in the first half as well we saw it in terms of the applications that came through and our volumes for the first half of last year actually was nine percent down on 2019 in the western Cape we were very blessed we were only four percent down on the 2019 applications in the first first half however the second half we saw a remarkable recovery and I'm sure each and every one of you has actually felt that that ability and and and agility of the of the property market to to rebounds and our volumes actually grew by 36 percent in the second half of 2020 in the western Cape when we closed the year out we were up 35 percent against 2020 2019 in terms of our of our applications from a beach office perspective we we saw this activity translate into registrations very intermittently I must admit that but but our second half of the year we actually doubled our registrations versus the first half of the year and that left us only with an 11 percent down on the 2020 the 2019 numbers which we are currently picking up in the in the first quarter of 2020 2021 so so what we saw in the Cape region in 2020 was actually a tail of two halves a dramatic downturn in the beginning of of of the lockdown and then that even more dramatic increase that we saw in our applications in the second half of of of the year very interesting to note as well is that the quality of our customers did not deteriorate and that allowed us to carry on lending we didn't have to put in specific specific milestones to to to prevent us from not lending to good customers we were very happy with the customers that actually came came into into our business in in in that in that part thank you ST so so I I think it's important after after understanding this it's important to say what was our customer saying we we we really unpacked all these these activities and what was interesting to see is is the impact this had on all our different regions our regions did not one of them reacted the same and in some instances our decisions were absolutely made on weekly and daily whole horizons so if you look at the customer sentiment index of of of APSA for for those of you who don't know this as yet it's a proprietary index which tests customers confidence in the property market so if you look at at at numbers we see that all over all our provinces actually increased in terms of the sentiment index over this period and and and if you look at the the end of the year not only not only only for 2020 that we do good but we were actually the highest the sentiment index whilst the highest it has been since 2015 overall we saw a 9% increase in the sentiments towards buying and interestingly a 4% increase towards selling of of of the properties there are mainly four contributors if we if you look at these these these numbers which resulted in this overall confidence ending the year at at at 80% so so under on the demand side we will we will see the ability of of of property to increase in value over a period and currently the low interest rates that is that is making debt financing just much more affordable to everybody if you look on the supply side the support has been originated from the the resilience in house prices and and there was a very strong renewed impetus on ownership of of clients to invest in in in in their own properties I think another point that I that I would just like like to highlight as well is interesting to also note that that the the sentiment from the inland provinces increased by 4% and those of the coastal provinces by 6% and and I think that should give us some hope some hope to say what is going to what is going to happen going going forward thank you ST so if we if we look at the at the free regions and I'm and I'm in this presentation I'm we we are just going to look at the at the free metros how 10 cases in and western Cape we can see that overall all the metros actually showed an an increase the biggest increase was in the western Cape and and and this could have been due to the same immigration of of of customers who can now basically work from it from from anywhere and they are choosing the lifestyle of of of working from home versus the convention in in the various cities if we are ever compared that to halting we we we notice that halting by far gave us the the most new applications during during 2020 so so if you if you compare the western Cape sentiments this is the rest of the country we see that on the national index we actually lack the country by 1% that the sentiment towards buying property at 78% matches the national index but it's lacking halting and I'm just using halting as the benchmark by 2% on the sentiment towards towards selling the western Cape is is lagging the national sentiment by 5% and halting by 6% and the last one that stood out for for me to share was actually on buying versus versus renting the western Cape lacks the sentiment the national sentiment by 3% and and lack halting by 5% although or all these these sentiments are are positive there is still there's still a sentiment that that that the Cape can do better in in in in terms of of what it what it offers each new and its existing home buyers at at at the moment so so if I look at thanks thanks Estie if I look at the home owner's sentiment by customer type we actually saw a very very interesting picture so so first of all we can see that that all the customer types have actually ended up above the 2019 the end of year 2020-2019 number so if all all those all those customer types have picked up to to the pre covid covid levels the two interesting ones is is is the orange line and that is our existing home owners and then that purple line which is our our investors so so so normally our existing home owners lack all all these sentiment indexes purely because they have gone through this whole process of of buying and selling a property it's not the first time and and and they normally lack but what was what was great to see yeah and what was interesting is that 10 increase in the last quarter for them to actually end up so strong towards the end of 2020 if you look at the at the investors you can actually see that drop of that very strong drop off in the heart of covid of the pandemic you can see that drop off and and and and and and what we anticipate or what we contribute that that too is purely the the the economic instability that we are currently and experience all that was very very prominent in that stage and and also the the the defaults the default rates of of of of tenants actually was was was very high on that stage and and and we found that investors actually took a a back stage at that stage to say let us just sit let us watch and see but we'll just look at what happened in the last quarter quarter again they actually ended up above the first time home buyers who were actually the market that that that that drove the highest part of our activity in in in in 2020 thank you Steve so if if we look at this buying versus selling sentiment we will we will see that that gap between a willing buyer and willing seller seller since 2019 is still widening up if we look at the the willing buyer or the or the the sentiments towards buying buying property we will realize that that it actually reached the pre covid numbers in the middle of 2020 and and surely that drove that that that whole impetus on on on the market on new sales and and you should have felt that from a from a buyer perspective if you look at this the sentiments towards towards selling it still actually has not recovered back to back to the 1990 levels so so what does it mean it means that the gap between the between wanting to sell and wanting to buy as as I said earlier is still widening meaning that there are more willing buyers in the market than willing sellers at the moment and and and what we've seen is is the impact of that is that it's actually upholding the the the the property prices especially in that in that sweet spot where we found the the the the largest part of our activity in the 750 to the 1.5 million but it's placing a lot of pressure on on the stock in in this price price range and and and given given what what what what we see at the moment it might actually push the the prices of properties up as well so in in in the western caper say what we've seen is that the average size of a loan application increased by 29 percent since 2019 to just on about 1.333 million at the moment just purely from a from a bank app application point of point of view thanks esti so so what us what us what us the future hold in terms of of of interest I think I think we are we're we're we're all on on on the same page to say that the low interest rate cycle has been the driver of the positive sense sense sentiment in the market and obviously the the coincidental increase in in in in in the new property purchases we we we also we also clear that that the the rate cycle is very much on on on the bottom of of of the cycle and and we these these rates to stay there round about until q4 in 2021 when when when we do expect him to gradually rise again but I think deon may be frozen let's give him a little minute there but nirisa you're on standby aren't you excellent for studio fantastic and you can get to him on standby okay I am here thanks thanks chasey sorry guys I think deon is having some technical issues so I'm just gonna quickly step in so from an interest rate perspective what we are seeing is that we anticipate that the interest rates will remain favorable and and property is actually a huge stimulant stimulant for the economy so we anticipate to see interest rates increasing towards the 2023 but for now I think the rates are going to remain relatively stable you can move over to the next slide thank you okay so the house prices so what we are seeing from the house price perspective we can move on to the next slide is that the house prices are currently influenced by the demand of property so there's a lot more buyers in the market at the moment as opposed to sellers so the willingness of sellers is not as keen as what we are seeing from a buyer perspective from the majority of the applicants are our first-time home buyers so 52 percent of our applicants are actually made up of your first-time home buyers so we're starting to see the stock levels deplete but I think it's also important to understand that developments and developers play a huge part in our property industry to ensure that there is a continuous supply of properties and stock thank you you can move to the next slide okay so market growth by by province so you would see and really I think Dion touched on this the tail of the two halves where we started to see last year and in 2019 a slight decline in the property market but what we are seeing from a growth perspective whilst Western Cape is showing a two percent growth we we also understand that there's been huge interest especially with what we call semi-migration where you don't necessarily have to be in the province where you currently work especially now with people working from home and I know when lockdown first started a lot of people said do I actually live at work or work from home so I think it's become that entire balancing your working from home perspective and a lot of people are migrating towards the coast and Western Cape stats might even change towards the latter part of the year and we will continue to obviously do these surveys to understand what actually transpires over the year and then you can move on to the next slide thank you okay so I think also very important for us as APSA is that South Africans have shown their resilience during the pandemic whilst we gave 3.4 billion from a collections capability especially from a payment relief perspective back into the economy to help the South Africans we've also seen that 94 percent of our South Africans have actually been able to keep up with any payments after the payment relief holiday and I think this really shows that South Africans are proud homeowners because owning a home as a South African shows us that we want to build a legacy for our families and really a house is not just a house in a building but it's actually a home where we raise our kids and I think that shows where South Africans are from a home journey perspective and we thank you in partnering with us as we aspire to house and shape the industry in a meaningful way and I thank you for being part of that home owner journey and really for making dreams thank you Narissa thank you so much please put your microphone on mute so that we don't get feedback I see you also your network is also dropping a little bit there you can see the bars on the corner of your screen just two of the four bars lighting up can I say can I see from the chat who's still here with us did you enjoy Dion and Narissa's presentation thank you Estelle I see you're still with us your head you're still here Mikaela Louise thank you for that very informative Martin Marie Dante good presentation Marinda Arnold Alter Susanne Amalfediella thank you so so much Narissa I don't see any questions specifically aimed at at your session or at your talk just reminding everyone that if they do need to reach out to your anyone from your team they are more more than welcome to just hit you up directly on the participants button here and send your message directly maybe Dion or someone from Dion's team can pop his email into the chat if anyone has any questions that they want to ask directly to you guys so Narissa thank you so much for being on standby and taking the taking the baton from Dion and helping us just smooth over that little bit of a technical glitch there I will excuse you from the stage you can get back on the in the limo and drive all the way back to Johannesburg okay so who's still here with us in the room we're at the end almost at the end of our session we have one more person to bring up can I see you use your emojis give me one emoji that illustrates or demonstrates exactly how you feel right now Curtis Dylan I'm still here big smile on your face we see you great tag teamwork upside agrees in place they did a great great job Erhard thank you so much very useful information Marie that's a lovely smile I see there Louise awesome studio let's get the private property people ready to come on next finally I'd like to welcome private properties business development executive some of you may have met him in the past some of you may meet him now for the first time it's always a privilege for me to listen to him Carl is going to give us a glimpse into what the future holds for this brand and what true industry partnership might look like going forward and of course before I hand over to you Carl I asked a question right at the beginning I said why is it a really special day for us today at private property of course a year ago today on the 17th of March 2020 a week before lockdown we decided to change everything about ourselves especially starting with our logo and our colors and just our voice in terms of brand and so this is what's really special about today for us and thank you guys for being here for that Carl please enlighten us thank you so much Tracy and thank you so much to everybody from Cape Town that's joining us today um it's really good to see that a big bank like Epsa is actually quite agile and can think on their feet and they've got a plan B I hope my network holds so I had problems with it on Monday so I feel Epsa's pain but again it's an absolute privilege for us to actually spend some time with you guys today um we're obviously business that's been built around relationships and something that we're really good at is the physical ones you know having a cup of coffee with our clients sharing some thoughts sharing some understanding and knowledge and you know COVID's obviously taken that away from all of us so we're really really happy that we find this platform and it's a great way for us to really engage with with everybody out there so thank you again for putting some time aside and I really I've seen from the comments here that everyone's thoroughly enjoying it so thank you very much let's kick in so I'm going to spend a bit of time just talking around what is our property now where are we going what does that hold for yourselves as clients um and then I'll bring Felina and who's our provincial head and she'll just talk around some of these the stats that mean something to you in your area just some knowledge that we've picked up through what our consumers behavior is on our portal so first and foremost who are we so we trust it we we're choosing to become a trusted partner in the property industry so you know essentially what that means is we'll find ourselves in the center of the ecosystem to do anything with property we've got consumers that are coming for properties obviously we've got real estate agents we've got banks we've got developers we've got modular regeneration and we really are in the center of it and next this is an amazing example of how it is that we we sort of operate every day is we find ourselves in the center and we're using our relationships with our partners to come in and inform all of us and so if we have a much better understanding we are better equipped to be much better property professionals so that's really what it is that public property is we're in the center of this ecosystem when you start breaking it down we've sort of got two areas that we really really focus on the one on the one side is our consumers and we would classify a consumer as somebody that is buying property looking for property wanting to rent a landlord whatever that might be on the one side on the other side is yourselves as real estate professionals as banks as partners and the rest of that now when you're in the center you you're sort of walking a bit of a tightrope sometimes because if you listen too much to the one side so as an example if we if we listen to all of the needs of let's say real estate we run the risk of alienating a possible 57 million users that or users that come onto our portal very much the same thing is true on the other side if you listen too much to the consumers and what it is that they want or need we run the risk of absolutely alienating ourselves as our partners so it's a bit of a tightrope but we walk it very very well and something that we absolutely don't shy away from if we start looking at how is it that we are going to get to become these trusted partners it really really starts with being completely completely customer obsessed and again customers it's our clients it's our consumers it's end users everybody if we understand and we completely with what it is that our consumers are going through what it is that our clients are going through what pain points do we have what efficiencies are needed in both the business as individuals or as big corporates once we understand those needs we then get to the problem solving and we choose we're choosing to really start solving people's real problems and we're using digital technology to do that going forward once you've got that complete customer obsession and understanding and you start solving these real problems that's when the exciting stuff happens and that's when you can start creating some serious value propositions and this is a long journey but it's something that we are element that we're going to be doing for everybody in our ecosystem again as an example in one of our nexuses earlier on in the week somebody was saying that you know one of their pain points that they would like to see change in real estate was you know proper vetting of people before they put an offer to purchase in and you know it's a true thought in our minds you go you know can you imagine a world where if you get a lead from somebody that goes this and I want to go and have a look at that property and when we give you that information as a lead we can say to you this person has been pre-approved by ABSA this person wants a three bedroom two bathroom place in a specific area they have 2.5 children these are their ages they have a cat and a dog that that knowledge and that wealth of information is really what we need to start working at and that's again where the magic starts happening and we start creating some serious customer and client value propositions um let me spend a bit of time talking around where we are in our five-year strategy so 2019 was our year of preparation we got a new CEO and a Marcy and he's brought in a whole new crowd including myself and so 2019 we sat there and we looked at the business we looked at our history and we went where do we need to be and you know in five years time so 2019 was really around thinking around what it is that we need to do for this business 2020 was our foundation year and I'll speak a little bit more about that later on this year 2021 is our watershed moment this is the year for innovation this is the year for technology and this is the year for making some serious changes to our business 2022 is repositioning 23 optimization and 24 is really around scaling you know once you got the proper market share you got the right balance of consumers coming in you can really start a giving value to everybody in that ecosystem so if and I'm sure everybody noticed and Tracy's been talking about it but a year ago we were these blue red and white tellers I don't even remember being those tellers we're now this vibrant green so a little bit of time on this this is not just a mere brand refresh this is not just a mere changing color of a brand this marks a fundamental change in our business it marks a fundamental change in what we look like who we are how we engage how we speak to our consumers and how what products and services we give to our clients it's an absolute change so we're a 22 year old business not everybody knows that but we are 22 years old as far as we concerned we're one year old and today marks that one year birthday for us as a new business and something that's going to take us all really into the future at pace so we're in 2021 we you know at the end of this five year strategy of ours we're wanting to have five million unique users that come onto our portal every single month and look for your properties where are we well we're averaging in around 3.2 million every single month these are unique people coming onto our portal 12 months ago it's it actually equates to a million new people every month compared to 12 months ago and if we compare it to two years ago we've grown by well over two million unique people that is staggering growth we're exceptionally proud of it you know everybody we speak to it says to us you know that there's a tangible difference not only in our brand but they can see the value finally that we are providing so again very very proud of it we are ahead of where we expected to be this time of the year so really great things coming and some serious growth coming particularly in the second part of this year so let's talk around sort of the the topic really which is around evolution of technology and you know we talk around FinTechs and we speak around PropTechs so it's really technology that enables financial transactions and property transactions so before you start getting into that you need to understand what are we where's what digital environment are we in are we in an evolution or are we in a revolution so again as an example if you take our good old Nokia 2110s and you hold it up against our iPhone 12s that we have at the moment you just look at those two there you would seem that to be as an absolute revolution in technology when they're talking cheese the one could barely dial and barely see any smiths now the iPhone can do a whole range of things however that's probably over 20 years ago so if you chop to that it's actually an evolution and it's quite slow over a 20 year period an example of a revolution we've all actually gone through 12 months ago I used to be sitting in our beautiful Schlanger offices and case it in with 180 degree sea views now I'm working from my my home office I am waiting for my kids to come running through the door I do hear that they've just fallen home so they'll probably be joining us pretty soon and telling me that they're hungry or something on those lines but this is something that we've all gone through and what happened in a flash we all had to evolve to the scene and that's a really good example of an absolute revolution none of us knew or many of us didn't know about teams and zoom and hangouts none of us had experienced this remote platform 12 months ago but this is all very much part of our lives so as much as we've changed and we've had this revolutionary moment we need to be mindful that the consumers out there and those are the people that are buying and renting and bangles and the rest of them have gone through the same revolution they look they completely have changed the way that they shop and they search for information on properties I think in your heads presentation early on she mentioned the value around virtual reality on you know the tours on properties that and the likes of Matterport and the rest that are game changes consumers are wanting to get proper information they want to be properly equipped before they make the plunge around coming through and seeing the actual property you know and that's a good thing for real estate it's no longer around you know getting how many leads is this it's around the quality so if we can use digital technology to stop really separating those buyers from the shoppers I think it'll bode well for all of us in industry I mean I can only imagine the day in the life of a real estate agent we really you got your sole mandate you got put it onto the property portals and you inundated with two three four five hundred leads in a day how are you ever going to sit through that effectively well you're not going to be able to really without the aid of technology so our role as private property is to make sure that we're equipped with this changing behaviors of consumers and make sure that you guys have that that equipment and have that efficiencies to be able to deal with these changing times so actually that you're going to start seeing some changes in our environment in a couple months time and we'll spend a lot of time talking to everybody there's a significant amount of change management that we're going to do but we're going to be essentially building we've halfway through building brand new platforms so there's two platforms that we will be going live within the next couple months one is a consumer focused one so that really talks to around the ease of a consumer to find your properties us being able to understand the consumer and their needs a lot better it'll be obviously web-based and app-based and the other side is going to be a brand new thing for yourselves as real estate and our clients to be able to interact with us we're able to gather information to gather the data to understand what is your market share in the Western Cape or in your specific in Bergville whatever it might be understand your market share understand your leads where are those leads coming from where are the target market are there people moving from one boot to heartbeats whatever it might be but that's the level of data that we're wanting to go to stop providing to ourselves as clients so it's a big shift there's some serious things that we're going to be changing in the next couple months but again we will ease you through it and we'll talk quite well through it but again it talks around making sure that we understand yourselves and your needs make sure that we give you those solutions and really just make your lives a lot more efficient so we really are looking forward to this this has been probably 14 15 months in the making that we've been working on this and we really are around the corner from making some fundamental changes to others that we engage with you just in terms of my final slide here we talk around sort of when it comes to digital evolution or evolution we start talking around this disruption now disruptions grow in a bit of a negative conversation so you know a lot of people especially in the industry when we talk around you know we're going to use digital to disrupt people go okay that will must mean that they're going to cut out the middle man you know what about me as the agent they're going to link biases sellers directly it really isn't that when we talk about digital disruption we're talking about disrupting the status quo around how does that interact how we pass information around this much we know in South Africa property ownership is highly emotive there is probably the single biggest purchase that anybody in South Africa is ever going to make there is a human being that is buying there was a human being that is selling and there's a human being that is the agent the attorney even the bank and it's around how do we enhance these digital experience that they're very very human and really just connect people so we're very very excited again thank you to to everybody for joining us today all the technical glitches and all we'll come back on if there's any further questions but again we'll be sharing all of this information over the next couple months with you guys so again thank you very much and I will get into my limo Tracy and allow Colleen to come on thank you so much Carl we are definitely at the very end of our talk now but I know this part is very very interesting for for the attendees which is a real sort of digging drilling down deeper into these areas ready Cape Town Boerland Halderberg Overbug and West Coast what are we seeing in these areas what's happening in these areas hi Felene welcome to the stage thank you thank you Tracy and thank you Carl and thank you to everyone that has dialed into today's session earlier mentioned as well that us Cape Tonians don't only fancy our beautiful mountains and Cape Winelands but we also do love a good get together and are for one always at the at the actual events in our past lives mentioned that it always feels like a little bit of a family reunion today we'll have to be without the hugs and wine though so I do look forward to a time when we can engage like that once again and I believe that it will come however for today let's focus on the here and now and look towards what 2020 bought and brought us from an industry perspective for private property um it's always been very very important and we believe that the knowledge um we share empowers in equips the property shoppers that frequent our website those are of course our consumers the feet and the eyeballs coming to the website that turn into your buyers and to make the best property buying decisions right so however we do believe the same can be said for the property professionals that also obviously use our portal and for the purpose of today's presentation as mentioned by Tracy earlier um it was important for me to share area specific and relevant information with you with regards to the greater Cape Ton area obviously very aware of the time constraints that we have I've tried to keep it to the point but I think the point of course being that there's a large very targeted audience out there looking searching and most importantly inquiring about these properties people with property needs that you can attend to so because these markets within the area so greatly differ um we've broken them down into the four uh four following areas being Boilance which is all the way Sirius de Parle all the way around to Franz Schupke Worcester Robertson to the lovely town of Barrydale that is recently still more hot and then um Toe's River to Kalanesburg and then of course the gem called Stelenbosch then the Helderberg area inclusive of Somerset West Strand and Gorin's Bay and then the Overberg starting at Straes Bar working its way back to a gallus halds by Hermannus Klanemont Betty's Bay all the way and then of course Stelen uh Swell and Dumb inland back to Robbo and then the West Coast Atlantic Atlantis as a Fontaine and Grotto Bay Redenburg um and that's all on the screen there all the way back inland to Klan William Fundraint Store back into the Rebek Bay so I'll try my utmost best not to bore you or kill you by a PowerPoint as Jan earlier said however I believe that these stats are relevant to you and would be interesting to you based on where you've tuned in from today so firstly taking a look at the Boilands now for each of these areas I've given you an indication of growth or decline sadly in terms of search activity but also very importantly of the lead generation that has taken place in these areas so starting with Boilands showing a significant increase especially if we look at the views from 2019 into 2020 um for both sales views and leads 24% increase in 2019 in terms of leads followed by a further 35% and then the rentals also showing significant growth what is interesting to note here considering what we've heard about the rental market and having been in the Nexus seminars over the past couple of days and having prepared this presentation I can say that the fact that the rental leads remain steady at the same level as 2019 is quite a rare phenomenon at the moment rental lead increases are few and far between so that is interesting for Boilands moving on to the Helderberg area and the towns of Somerset West Strand and Gordon Spain interestingly um the most growth in terms of sales views and leads didn't take place in 2019 but rather in 2020 which is interesting for us and has grown by 58 and 20% respectively on the sales side then in the rentals 25 growth in terms of views and then there is that slight drop back into 2020 when it comes to rental leads which makes me think of the saying that someone that has figured out that taking a small step back after taking a big step forward is not an absolute disaster but rather we should think of it like a chacha so I suppose this has been the dance with COVID and its impact it's had on the rental industry at large moving on to Overberg once again seeing a larger portion of growth in sales views and leads in 2020 which is very encouraging and then from a rental perspective and yes I did double check those figures um the rental views and leads for the Overberg area increasing it increased by leaps and bounds in 2019 and then a further increase once again really positive rental growth there by 6% in 2020 which is very interesting indeed and then finally the West Coast now we are aware that the West Coast plays host to many and from a sales views and leads perspective it definitely shows with an 84% increase for sales leads well 2019 and a further 41% increase of sales leads in 2020 rentals on the other hand again shooting the lights out with a 151% in sales increase oh sorry rental views in 2019 further 28% in 2020 and same in terms of leads with a positive rental growth once again moving on to the top searched suburbs firstly looking at the western Cape as a province and then drilling down into the four areas that we've discussed for sales only I might add um if you're keen to see the rental suburbs please do let me know I'm happy to share the information one-on-one afterwards so looking at this slide what is very interesting here is that we see Mitchell's plane at the very top of the search results here with an average of 320 odd sales listing showcased in that area at any given time and by looking at these suburbs versus the list a year or two ago and it's always so interesting I find it a completely fascinating to keep an eye on these entrants it's our view that there's a complete new set of browsers coming to the site a market looking for properties just below the 1 million mark probably first-time home buyers hungry for information and knowledge about how they can find their first dream home at present a mostly untapped market and I always want to say hashtag opportunity here then looking at the other entrance here Constantia C Point Clermont Camps Bay also high in demand but then again we wouldn't want to be live close to the Serene beaches not to mention our beautiful mountain and then moving down the list beautiful table view remaining on the list as always bringing along its friend Parklands North the cool kids circle and then grassy park buttery and retreat also there I also spotted done our buy there in the beautiful garden roots so yeah quite interesting what we learn from these results then moving on to the area perspective I have noted the top 25 searched sales suburbs here for Boiland Paul a very old favorite like followed by Wellington Stellenbosch where the students get to living daddy's latest purchase often and followed by the ever-increasing puppet of Alderby estate where we see a lot of action happening Helderburg Strand Gordon's Bay Somerset West those are the central areas taking quite a bit of space there in the overburge it seems Clermont has something to go in search of and that's taking the top spot over there followed by Swelindam and Strasbourg and finally the heart of the Swanklands Marmotsbury being number one in the west coast list and then followed by as a fountain and friend boom and then moving on to my last slide that speaks to the median price in the Western Cape so now before we look at the data though I'd like to remind you of two things well firstly let's talk about what is a median a median price is the middle point for real estate prices it is not the same as an average though so the median price is the price in the very middle of a data set with exactly half of the houses priced for less and the other half priced for more secondly kindly note this is obviously listing price as it is displayed on the portal and not the final ceiling price as we are not tied into that information at the moment so with no surprises here the western Cape on average are about 30 percent higher than the national sales median on sales I said sales did you hear that sales and 28 percent higher than the national rental median so looks like everybody wants to live in Cape Town and they'll pay for doing for wanting to do so also interesting to note on the sales side we're looking at the median for February 2020 and comparing it to last month there's a mere three percent drop in the price median whereas on the rental side we notice a nine percent decrease in the medium or last year February and probably listening to you earlier giving great insights with regards to the drop in her presentation also actually mentioned probably right sizing from the landlord side especially in Cape Town all right and that is it um it's all I have for you that I'd like to share today however I would really like to extend an open invitation to anyone who would like to engage with us afterwards I will pop my details into chat just now my team and I will gladly set up um meetings to answer any questions that you may have with regard to your particular area the adrenaline Louise will um have also joined us today carry years unfortunately not able to but um we what we look forward to those invitations thank you back to you Tracy thank you so much for lean awesome stuff um I'm looking in the chat and I don't see any questions for you or for Carl just lots of smiley faces and uh sort of thank yous and things like that for lean please put your email address in the chat so that anyone wanting to reach out to you is able to do so and a big wave and a green heart from me to you have a lovely day you can jump in your limo Ms Veline and go back to your sunny sunny sunny spot over there it's really actually still quite chilly and overcast here in Johannesburg which I think probably also contributed to some of our technical glitches but I must say a big big thank you to the team um thank you to to studio thank you to the Apsa team for your agility before I let you go we're going to pop the link there we go Louise Berger you are on top of things today there we go there's the link for you to click on if you want to access those cpd points one and a half non-ferifiable cpd points on offer from Aisa Heta Strauss thank you so so much and then I did promise to uh give the best question pardon me and also for the most engaged and I have those names for you so for this session best engagement goes to Estelle Smith let's do a warm well well done Estelle congratulations and then best question goes to Dylan Emmett thank you both to Dylan and to Estelle and just I must say for the the previous session we had for also the Cape Town region I forgot to mention the names of the winners there and I think I can quickly mention their names here so that uh we have it noted down somewhere best question goes to Mark Wilson and best engagement goes to somebody with the name of Ross Taylor all right I think that's it from my side what a day it concludes our session for today huge huge thank you to Apsa and Payprop for sharing their knowledge with us and their insights with us thank you as well to my colleague Carl and also my colleague Felene for sharing your regional specific insights and Carl just painting the picture for the brand for the next couple of months and what we have to look forward to while the session is over we still have 24 minutes in this portal which you are welcome to stick around for you can chat with your friends or just move around the the various tables and go and speak to either the colleagues from Payprop from Apsa or from private property but from my side if you don't already subscribe to our industry newsletter please do studio if you could just drop that link for people to subscribe to the industry newsletter is jam packed full of information and also lots of information about when we're going to be doing events like these again if you enjoyed the session can I see you saying thank you and goodbye on the chat here I'm going to head out now thank you Curtis thank you Mandy thank you Ronaldo for that compliment great session it's great because you are here we appreciate you so much Keith thank you Jeanine, Louise, Miranda, Alta, Bayadanki, Alta, Bayadanki, Teri, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure thank you Felene thank you to you and your team of course and thank you dear Dre, thank you Heta, thank you Natalie have yourselves a wonderful Wednesday afternoon like Jan said earlier it's clean Saturday so go out there and enjoy your clean Saturday until we see you again goodbye