Uniting South Africa ’ s
residential value chain :
The Residential Investment & Development Conference & celebrating women leadership
The Residential Investment and Development Conference & Awards held recently in Johannesburg has created waves in the South African residential sector for knowledge sharing , collaboration , and business opportunities . The inaugural event hosted by SmartXchange with REI as official event partners is currently SA ’ s only annual forum focused on multi-sector residential investment and development .
Key focus areas of the conference were on social , affordable , student accommodation , multi-family , co-living , and the retirement sectors in South Africa . Topics centred around enabling and incentivizing private players to achieve hosing for all , slashing development costs , capacitating the state for faster project approvals , innovative financing structures for affordable housing , how to monetise and get maximum returns from affordable , student , multi-family , and retirement sectors , semigration and residential trends , pricing , and positioning properties correctly and getting affordable retirement stock to market .
We know that SA has a massive housing shortage and has one of the highest urbanisation rates ( 63 %) amongst emerging economies across the world – in fact higher than that of Nigeria and China ( countries with much larger populations ). There are 3309 informal settlements in the country . Social and Affordable Housing must be galvanised to produce massive amounts of housing to alleviate the shortages . The conference unpacked the importance , availability , and role of First Home Finance and how banks can accelerate affordable housing .