Link: http://www.property24.com

Most property sellers have to drop their asking prices to achieve a sale, a property group said on Tuesday.

"And the average drop is around 12 percent, which means that most sellers are quite seriously out of step with what buyers are actually willing or able to pay," the Chas Everitt International property group said in a statement.

Berry Everitt, CEO said such sellers usually argued that prospective buyers were quite at liberty to make lower offers.

"The fact is that serious buyers will usually not make any offer at all on a home they consider to be overpriced, especially if there are many properties on the market for them to choose from."

Everitt said others would shy away from making a lower offer because they did not want to offend the seller, even if they really liked the property.

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Link: http://www.property24.com

Property investors are making use of deposit guarantees as an alternative to cash deposits.

In a statement on Tuesday, Lombard Insurance said property investors were understandably loath to liquidate their investments merely to finance the deposit on a property purchase.

This had resulted in alternatives and interim finance mechanisms such as deposit guarantees which replaced the cash deposit required between signing a sale agreement and the payment of a purchase price of a property.

According to Antony Solomon of Lombard Insurance, one of the benefits of deposit guarantees was the ability they afforded residential buyers to purchase homes immediately after the sale of existing properties.

"Buyers don't have to wait for the proceeds of the sales before they can put down deposits on their new properties."

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Link: http://www.property24.com

Although the growth in SA house prices is not stellar, it has exhibited some recovery signs since 2009 and affordability is on a good path again.

But it is still a lot cheaper to buy an existing house than build a new one.

Based on the outlook for nominal house price growth and a projected average consumer price inflation rate of about 5% in 2010, real price growth of between 5% and 5,5% is forecast for this year and 10,5% in nominal terms.

So says Jacques du Toit, property strategist at Absa, who adds that this will occur after house prices dropped by a real 6,9% in 2009 and declined by 6,3% in real terms in 2008.

“House price growth has improved markedly in the first half of 2010, based on the better economic conditions since the second half of 2009, low interest rates, banks’ less tight lending criteria as well as base effects.”

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Link: http://www.property24.com

One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of having a new home is the ability to personalise it.

Your home should be a reflection of your individual style, whatever that may be.

The latest overall trend today is individuality and moreover, personalisation. Nowadays we have the ability and technology to customise anything, whether it is a new pair of sneakers, the colour of our hair and even the sex of an unborn child.

Yet few people concentrate on personalising their most prized possession: their home! This space is often neglected as most homeowners get stuck on the question of “how can I personalise my space and put an individual imprint on it?” and would rather follow other trends.

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Link: http://www.property24.com

Residential landlords who want to keep their tenants may have to forego any further rental increases this year as the new Eskom electricity tariffs start to eat into disposable incomes.

That’s the word from RentalsDOTCom, the rental property management division of Harcourts Africa, which notes that the average electricity is price in most areas has now risen from around 33c/kWh to 41,5c/kWh.

“But on the other hand, the tariff hikes are going to make it more difficult for many people to qualify for home loans because the banks take household expenditure into account when evaluating affordability. This means they will have to stay in rental accommodation, which is positive for landlords from the demand perspective,” says CEO Martin Schultheiss.

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