I had an interesting run-in with an estate agent. A couple of months ago, a property was up for sale in Cape Town. She did her job as a true estate agent does, tells you the great property investment the apartment she was selling was and that “you will not find anything better than this on the market”.

I was sold and started getting the financing of the purchase of this apartment in place. The agent would phone every single day checking up on if the deposit is ready, is the mortgage been approved etc.

So i was taking my time and was in no real rush as i was still scouting the market. She then comes back saying, “If have a lot of offers for this property so you better act quickly before i sell it to someone else.”

 So i sat back and said okay fine, if you have someone else then go ahead and sell.

Now today, 6 months later and more importantly after the National Credit Act (NCA) came into play, she calls me again (now i had totally forgotten about her) and she tells me that the same property was still available! So i say to myself, “here is a lady who told me that, there are many people interested in this property and now 6 months down the line none of those ‘many people’ have bought the property.”

Quite clearly this means that getting the mortgage to purchase property now in South Africa has become tough due to the NCA? The consumer is suffering because they can not purchase a house anymore. Estate agents are struggling as no one can buy what they are selling (as is evident in my experience). What can we do or what should be done to balance out the situation?

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