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Hint of fewer foreign buyers of SA property

Source: Fin24, 05/07/2015

Johannesburg - There is a hint of a slowdown in the prominence of
foreigners buying of domestic residential property, revealed the
latest FNB Estate Agent Survey.
According to John Loos, household and property sector strategist of
FNB, the drivers of such a slowing may be threefold.
Firstly, a reasonably "well-behaved" rand in recent times caused a
bout of house price inflation of domestic homes in certain foreign
currency-denominated terms, and a lack of further South African
housing affordability improvement in others.
Secondly, residential property`s global popularity as an asset class
may just have cooled off mildly in recent times.
Thirdly, it is not inconceivable that a deterioration in domestic
economic performance along with heightened social tensions could cause
greater foreign residential investor caution.
The estimated percentage of foreign buyers declined from 5.5% in the
preceding two quarters to 4% as at the second quarter of 2015.
This decline in the foreign buyer percentage in the first half of 2015
follows a prior broad rising trend that lasted from a low of 2% late
in 2010 to a 5.5% high by the end of 2014.
Loos cautioned that it is still difficult to draw conclusions from the
survey as to whether there is yet an absolute decline in the overall
number of foreign buyers.
He pointed out, though, that of interest is the seeming gradual change
in the key sources of foreign buying over the longer term, with more
coming from the rest of the African continent in recent years.
Foreign buying of SA property by African continent buyers remained
significant in the fisrt half of 2015, estimated at 20.5% of total
foreign buying.
"Domestic residential property continues to appear cheap to foreign
buyers, if one compares it to levels back around 2011 before the
multi-year slide," said Loos.
"However, that foreign currency-denominated SA house price decline
slowed significantly in 2015 due to recent a period of relative rand
stability, and actually even showed some significant increase in euro
terms."

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