Only 5% of housing in Province ‘affordable’

THE COST of property in the Northern Cape is amongst the highest in the country.

Private Property recently released a list of areas across South Africa where buyers can expect to find the cheapest homes - and none of them are in the Northern Cape.

The data is based on house price information gathered by Private Property from April 1 2016 to March 31 2017.

In terms of the report, affordable housing is defined as a property with an asking price of no more than R600 000.

This includes apartments, flats, townhouses and free-standing residences with at least one bedroom.

The Northern Cape has the lowest percentage of affordable housing (5%), while the Eastern Cape is the province with the highest percentage of affordable housing.

The median asking price for all listings in the Northern Cape is R1.55 million, the second highest after the Western Cape at R1.995 million.

The most affordable province to buy property is the Free State, where the average cost is R1.03 million, followed by Mpumalanga.

In some suburbs in the Eastern Cape, including Mdantsane, Motherwell, Bethelsdorp and Algoa Park, low income earners could expect to pay an average of R365 000, R377 500, R415 000 and R578 750 respectively for housing.

In the Free State, where the median asking price for all listings is R1 030 000, suburbs such as Willows, Navalsig and the Bloemfontein CBD had a median asking price of R385 000, R480 000 and R499 000 respectively.

The average asking price for all listings in the North West province was R1 240 000, but low income earners could expect to pay around R460 000 for housing in the suburb of Boitekong and around R566 500 in Stilfontein.

While the Western Cape had the highest median asking price for all listings, at R1 995 000, low income earners could still buy affordable housing in areas such as Delft, Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Maitland, Macassar and Blue Downs with median asking prices at R310 000, R380 000, R509 000, R510 000, R549 500 and R580 000.

Although the Gauteng region ranks number four with its percentage of low cost listings in the past year, the province had the highest number of suburbs with affordable median asking prices, with 39 suburbs with a median asking price of R600 000 and under.

No suburbs in the Northern Cape were listed as having a median asking price of R600 000 and under.