The Rental Market

The strain on the South African rental market has reached its peak as the latest statistics show that many tenants have now opted to purchase. Rental prices are set to be lower in 2021, as the pandemic left tenants unable to afford their rentals and landlords desperately searching for tenants. The high pressure on rental prices has left landlords scrambling to fill their vacant properties. The Tenant Profile Network (TPN), the largest credit bureau in South Africa, showed that according to their latest data, more than 11.4% of rental properties were vacant in the third quarter of 2020, as compared to 5.4% in 2017. The unfortunate drop in rentals were due to tenants unable to afford rent and therefore forcing them to move in with family members merging households just to sustain themselves during the struggle. The upside to the lower rentals were due to many tenants having opted to being homeowners thanks to the record low interest rate.