Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Property intervention on the cards

The government is mulling over intervening in the property market in an attempt to bring property costs down while also delivering on SA’s housing need. Here’s what the ANC may be planning.

Bruce Whitfield:
I always get a bit nervous when government talks about interfering into the supply and demand side of the economy and many of us are very pleased at the increasing value of our homes but it is not good news if you are a first-time buyer, somebody trying to get onto the property ladder.

The ANC’s policy conference starts next week and already its members have been telling the party’s top officials that they want the issue of property valuation to be discussed and also building costs and some kind of intervention in the housing market.

Now the Public Works Minister Thoko Didiza has been talking about this issue today wearing her ANC National Executive Committee hat and she says it is obviously a complicated situation but what might be worrying though is the spectre of government intervention in the property market. This is what she had to say.

Thoko Didiza:
What I would say emerges in the discussion as they have been undertaken in the province also looks at the construction industry as a whole as to where the pressures (are) that actually increases costs. Issues of suppliers in terms of material supply, do you want to make an intervention there, what are the issues with regard to certain supplies such as you know the mining of cement is that where you may need to do an intervention? Where do these costs emanate from?

Is it a question of land in terms of your real estate in particular that has gone higher and that is why you have had even some of the proposals which relate to special purpose vehicles where maybe the state must be creative and look at acquisition of land which they need in their portfolio for housing delivery in those areas where they are.

You would recall that at some stage Minister Sisulu even made some passionate appeal to municipalities not to dispose land without looking at the housing delivery needs. So if you were to say is there a straight answer at the moment in terms of creative ways of curbing the land prices I would say no.

Bruce Whitfield:
Certainly worrying that government is even considering intervening in the first place, that is certainly my perspective on it but Thoko Didiza the Public Works Minister speaking today ahead of next week’s ANC Policy Conference. World at Six

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