South Africa has a strong programme of subsidized housing, with millions of opportunities provided across the country in past decades. Nevertheless, when trying to use property as an asset and sell it in the formal market, low income owners are faced with processes and financial costs that are often incompatible with their realities.
With the advent of new technologies, new opportunities come into play for the creation of more efficient and cost-effective processes to facilitate formal property transactions.
In Episode 14 of the podcast Talking Transformation, Kecia Rust (CAHF) and Illana Melzer (71Point4)* talk about the housing market in South Africa and present how the Transaction Support Centre (TSC) is assisting lower income property owners with title deed and other property-related problems. The TSC has received support from Cities Alliance Innovation Programme to assist more households and document its experience.
What we want to demonstrate through the Transaction Support Centre (TSC) is that formal transactions, besides being good in the long term, should be easy in the short term. It should be the default mechanism, the easy way to transact. (…) What the TSC is trying to achieve, is to make (formal transaction) so easy that it becomes the normal way.
Happy listening!
*The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) is a not-for-profit company with a vision for an enabled affordable housing finance system in countries throughout Africa, where governments, business, and advocates work together to provide a wide range of housing options accessible to all. 71point4 is a Cape Town based strategic research consultancy specialising in consumer-focused, data-driven research across the African continent.
