The recovery in South Africa's property market, which began in the second half of 2009, has continued to take hold, according to bond originators ooba.
According to ooba CEO Saul Geffen, the monthly trends in the statistics tracked by ooba, which include movements in house prices, approved bond sizes, deposit requirements and bank decline ratios, all suggest that the positive conditions for homebuyers will continue into the second half of 2010.
The oobarometer price index recorded a 9.8% year-on-year increase in the average house purchase price in July to 850,763 rand from 775,172 rand, while the average purchase price made by first-time buyers also showed a year-on-year increase of 8.5% to 591,643 rand.
The ratio of applications declined by one lender, but granted by another showed a continued improvement, up 9.7% year-on-year to 29.4% of all declined applications. This means that a nearly a third of all declines have the chance of being approved by another lender.
While the bank decline ratio for July did show a marginal year-on-year increase of 0.5%, this is a function of the volume of applications for 100% bonds in the current period, which have far lower approval rates than applications with deposits.
As the data for the comparative period last year excludes 100% loans, which were not generally available from banks at that time, there has in effect been a significant year on year improvement in the decline ratio.
The ooba statistics also revealed a 15.7% year-on-year increase in the average approved bond size to 685,503 rand, while the average deposit size showed a significant year-on-year decrease, down 17.8% to 165,260 rand.I-Net Bridge
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