Agents must apply to display

For the second year running, Cape Town's estate agents and auctioneers must register individually with the municipality for permission to display property marketing boards and directional signage on city council property.

The City of Cape Town announced in a statement on Tuesday that agents and auctioneers will be expected to register from July 1, with all applications due in by July 20.

The city said in its statement that each agent would be required to pay an annual registration fee of R551 and a display fee of R659. Any agent who had not contravened the regulations over the past year would only have to pay the registration fee and R10 for six permit stickers, it said.

Six permit stickers will be issued per agent for 2008/09, which will limit the number of directional signs allowed on council-owned property.During the past year, the city has removed directional boards found with photocopied or counterfeit permit stickers.

Municipal by-laws allow the city to withdraw offending agents' permits, and the city has warned that it would prosecute any agent or auctioneer who used fraudulent stickers.

This perhaps illustrates how other local authorities are applying more restrictive condtions for property advertising and similar rules could soon be seen here too.

The Outlook for the SA Property Market

A war of words has broken out between estate agents and bond originators as news of a pending property crash gathers force, with price drops from 10 percent to 40 percent predicted.

While some agents insist homeowners should not be swept up in the panic, others are frank that the property market is in serious trouble.

On Monday, the Cape Argus received an e-mail marked "urgent" from ooba, formerly Mortgage SA, which charged that "recent alarmist forecasts by property market commentators" had caused homeowners "undue concern". Homeowners, they urged, should not be swept up in the "scaremongering" because the current weakness was only a "short-term situation".

The fracas started with a letter from Lew Geffen, head of Sotheby's International Realty South Africa, to his franchise owners in which he predicted the pending crash at a 40 percent decrease, adding that there were 60 percent fewer buyers in the market now than at the same time last year.

These stirrings in the property industry are indicative of the problems now faced. With individual sales and transactions, Mc Naught and Company have the experience and expertise to help with each property sale and re-introduce certainty and reliability with each transaction being handled by our offices. We also offer guidance to estate agents' on customised clauses to help strengthen a sale agreement.