Absa Home Loans facilitating property ownership through Khaya Lam
Title deed ceremony at De Doorns in 2021
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When people own property, they feel vested in South Africa and this gives them security of tenure with access to education, employment and economic participation
”
Property ownership has been, and will always be important for South Africans. “When people own property, they feel vested in South Africa and this gives them security of tenure with access to education, employment and economic participation,” says Gail Day, chairman for the executive committee at the Free Market Foundation (FMF).
FMF, a non-profit, public benefit organisation, is an advocate for property rights and would like to see South Africans insisting that government respect private property.
In its quest to ensure black people can own property, something that the 1913 Native Land Act prevented, in 2013, FMF launched the Khaya Lam (My Home) Land Reform Project to enable South Africans to have fully tradeable title deeds.
Absa is one of the sponsors of this programme.
Through this project, the FMF identifies old municipal rental property stock across the country, and with private sector funding, these houses are then given for free to tenants who receive full title deeds through the Deeds Office registration of the property. FMF reckons there are about 5-million municipal-owned homes which could be transferred via this project and others.
Khaya Lam uses the private sector funding to sponsor the conveyancing process which currently costs about R2.750 from the municipality to a legal tenant for a home worth conservatively R100 000 or even closer to R120 000. Some municipalities have budgets for this project, but it remains unclear as to what extent.
“If local government is proactive in identifying which houses it owns and rents out, and starts a process of turning these tenants into real owners without unnecessary restrictive conditions in their title deeds, more people will own property,” Day says.
From inception, it took FMF three years to achieve the first 100 property transfers (title deeds). “To date, FMF has transferred 7 668 properties and we are targeting 10 000 by the end of our financial year in February 2023,” says Day, adding that if this is achieved, the project would have injected R1bn into the economy via sponsor funding.
Day says the economy gets a boost when low-income groups own property in towns and cities, especially when new homeowners learn how to leverage their assets by increasing their capacity and value and starting small businesses of all kinds. This process will occur most rapidly if town planning laws do not hamper developments.
Title deed ceremony at De Doorns in 2021