Thursday 26 July 2007

Foreign Investors - Buying Property In South Africa

NEWS NEWS NEWS
I LOVE NEWS



Call me weird but I just love picking up the paper and finding a property related article, specifically a property related article that's worth blogging about.

Today's lucky winner is the Pretoria News.



Property South Africa


Property in South Africa still open to foreign buyers



There's been alot of talk about adding restrictions on the foreign ownership of property in South Africa. According to the Pretoria News the reason there's been such escalations in the price of property is because of the foreign investmentors that have been pouring into S.A. over the last 5 years.

Is that true, partially, they bring money in, they're willing to pay more so property prices jump up! However, lets think a little about this, NCA being released, new credit laws, interest rate hikes, they're all BIG BIG BIG contributors to the property price escalations. Personally i think it's someone who's blaming foreigners for the average price of a house on the Pam Golding website sitting around the R1 500 000.00 mark :) *duck*

There have been some serious considerations though in terms of putting restrictions up:

- Long Term leasing of property versus outright sale of land
- A possible moratorium on sale of land to foreigners
- Th identification of instances where a prohibition on foreign ownership of land could be justified, such as national key points, water catchment areas, land along border lines and internal borders
- Special ministerial approval in cases where certain categories of land were considered for disposal, such as land earmarked for land reform, restitution or integrated human settlement

There are those that are of the belief that foreign investors are the people that have made this country the financial success story that it is today. BRING EM ON! WE WANT THEIR MONEY DAMMIT. STOP BEING SO ANAL. Let them spend their money in OUR country. In terms of loans and financing, foreign investors are already limited to a 50% loan.

What we should do is only provide loans to foreign investors if the property is over a certain value i.e. R5 000 000.00 and then still only give a 50% mortgage loan. This way half the money needs to be brought into South Africa and the other half can be financed by our banks. Either way don't shut them out, they're the people that bring the spark to SA...

WizardMan Out!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The property moratorium is a brilliant idea! There's too much property development going on in SA. The moratorium will help dry up many of the building projects now being considered and cancel those soon to be started. While the end of new construction will reduce the growth rate in the economy and eliminate thousands of jobs, not to worry, the workers can be put to work on the preparations for 2010. No doubt the moratorium will be seen in the overseas press as the beginning of a movement down the path followed by our neigbour Zimbabwe. The resulting dramatic fall in the Rand currency rate and the drying up of foreign investment in SA industrial projects may be a good thing. South Africans will have to think twice about buying imported goods as prices rise. The government can always raise interest rates above the current 13% to deal with the price inflation. This will have the added benefit of further crippling the growth rate, and this will make houses cheaper for all of us to buy. We don't need foreigners to pump billions of hard currency into our economy. If Zimbabwe can do without it, so can we.

Anonymous said...

And I assume that you're a die hard supporter of Robert Mugabe?

Have you totally lost your marbles man...

Philippines properties for sale said...

I think investing a property in Africa is a great deal. Because I see some the images of the place and I like it.

Paula M

Unknown said...

I agree with your points completely. In real estate investment, just like in equity investment, one has to find a value situation or it's just not worth it.

real estate ph