John Loos, Senior Economist at FNB Commercial Property Finance, dissects the 3rd Quarter 2024 Property Sales Activity Survey. He says that brokers point to higher business confidence, possibly in anticipation of better things to come on the back of a seemingly business-friendly election outcome, along with expected interest rate cuts. But they don’t perceive a meaningful rise in sales activity just yet.
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In terms of methodology, the FNB Commercial Property Broker Survey assesses a sample of commercial property brokers in and around the six major metros of South Africa, namely, City of Joburg and Ekurhuleni (Greater Johannesburg), Tshwane, eThekwini, City of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay.
Given FNB Commercial Property Finance’s strong focus on the “Owner-Serviced” market, a pre-requisite in selecting broker respondents is that they at least deal in owner-serviced properties, but a portion will also have dealings in the developer or investor markets as well as in the listed sector.
Loos says: “In this report we focus on the part of the survey where we ask respondents to rate their perception of the buying/selling market’s (i.e. not rental market) activity levels on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the strongest activity level rating.”
Confidence boost
Broker business confidence has increased in the 3rd quarter of 2024. Loos adds, “Before we survey activity level perceptions, we ask all respondents to tell us whether they find business conditions ‘satisfactory’ or not in the form of a simple ‘yes or no’’ answer.”
“In the 3rd quarter of 2024, the percentage of respondents experiencing conditions as satisfactory was significantly higher than the previous quarter, rising from the prior quarter’s 30% to 44%.”
Read the FNB Commercial Property Broker Survey here.
