Colette van Dyk, Chief Marketing Officer, BetterHome Group asks – Your customer has changed, has your brand? Below, she expands on how homebuyers of 2026 look different from the buyers many brands built their strategies around a decade ago.
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A few months ago, one of our consultants processed an application from a woman in her late twenties. She was buying a one-bedroom flat in a suburb she had no plan to live in. She was staying exactly where she was, renting, close to work and close to the life she had already built. The flat was chosen for one reason: steady rental demand at a price she could carry on her own. When the consultant asked why, she called it her starting point, the first step toward the home she actually wanted, further down the line.
Fifteen years ago, an application like that might have looked unusual. Today it looks like a plan, and it is one of the clearest signs we have that South African homebuyers have moved on from the assumptions our industry was built around.
Brands rarely lose relevance because customers disappear. They lose it when customers change and the brand does not keep pace. At BetterBond, we have spent more than 25 years watching buyers evolve and shaping our business around what we learn from them. Our recent brand refresh is simply the newest chapter in that habit, a response to a market that keeps teaching us something new.
What the data shows us
The homebuyer of 2026 looks different from the buyer many brands built their strategies around a decade ago. She is younger, and far more likely to be a woman. She also expects more visibility and control over the process than her predecessor did.
Consider the numbers. Women now account for 52% of properties registered to single owners in South Africa, rising to close to 70% once joint ownership is included. At BetterBond, women only transactions made up 42% of our application activity this year, up from 36% a decade ago. That is our own data, and it points to a structural shift rather than a passing trend.
The latest Absa Homeowner Sentiment Index tells a similar story. Women now contribute just over 51% of buying activity and their role as investors is growing even faster. The share of women who own three or more properties has increased over the past two years, driven in large part by women between the ages of 25 and 34, who now make up almost 52% of the investor market.
For a growing number of these buyers, a property is the first significant asset they will own outright, in their own name. It represents independence and security, and something that can be passed on. It tends to be bought earlier, and more deliberately, than the industry’s older models assume.
Women are the clearest example of this shift, though they are not the only one. Younger buyers more broadly are choosing flexibility over the traditional order of buying a home. Joint ownership between friends or siblings has become more common, and rentvesting, buying at a lower entry point in an area with steady rental demand while renting where you actually want to live, has moved from niche idea to genuine strategy.
None of this is happening in easy conditions. Recent rate cuts have brought some relief, yet affordability pressure and global uncertainty remain real for most households. Even so, the market has held up well. Home loans granted by BetterBond rose 4.1% year on year in July and were up 28% compared with July 2024. Buyers have grown more careful and more deliberate about how and when they commit, even while conditions stay difficult.
A changing market needs a brand that keeps up
This is the backdrop for our refreshed positioning, A Better Way to Your Dream Home. After more than 25 years in the home loan market, we know that circumstances shift from one generation to the next, and our role has to shift with them. Our real differentiator has always been navigation, guiding people through the process from first application to final approval. The promise behind the name is simple. We want the home loan journey to feel manageable and guided, whatever stage a buyer happens to be at.
In practice, this means recognising that lenders assess every buyer differently. We work closely with the major banks and understand how each weighs individual circumstances, which allows us to submit one application to multiple banks and negotiate on the buyer’s behalf. On average, this delivers real savings of 0.65% off the interest rate our clients would otherwise pay. That figure comes from a track record built over a quarter of a century of applications, and it remains the clearest proof we have that the model works.
Buyers also increasingly want to manage this process on their own terms, which is why we built BetterBond Online, a fully digital application journey secured by biometrics.
Convenience matters, but guidance remains the real value behind it. A consultant is on hand from the first application through to final approval, and buyers can reach a real person whenever the process gets complicated or the decision feels heavy. It is that guidance, more than technology, that turns a stressful application into a manageable one.
There is a broader lesson here for financial services generally. Making something digital does not remove the need for a person on the other end. Buying a home remains one of the largest decisions most people will make and technology should reduce friction, not remove guidance at the moment it matters most.
The dream has not changed, only the route to it
The homebuyer of 2026 wants something familiar underneath all this change. She still wants a dream home. She has simply stopped assuming it has to be the first purchase she makes.
For the woman renting near work while she builds equity elsewhere, that one bedroom flat marks the opening move in a longer plan, one that leads, eventually, to the home she actually pictures for herself. Home ownership, in the end, is rarely only about the property. It carries freedom and something worth leaving behind, which is why we call it the dream.
Relevance comes from an ongoing discipline, listening closely to who your customer has become, then having the confidence to adjust the business alongside the message, to meet her where she actually is. For BetterBond, that means one commitment above all. Wherever a buyer starts, whether with a small flat or years of careful saving, we intend to stay close, right through to the day they reach the dream home they set out for in the first place.
