How to price your house in South Africa

It is easy to anchor to the portal. You look at three similar homes in your suburb listed at R2 400 000 and conclude yours is worth R2 400 000. But a listing price is a seller's opening position, and the homes still listed are, by definition, the ones that have not sold at that number.

What you need is the sold price: what a buyer actually paid, and when. Transfers are registered at the Deeds Office, and Property24 says its property values pages draw on publicly available Deeds Office data. The next sections show the routes to those records.

Four different numbers get called a home's value. They answer different questions and they rarely match. None of them is a sale price, which is what a buyer actually paid. The next section finds those.

The municipal value is the one every owner already has, and the easiest to mistake for a price. It exists to work out rates. The Municipal Property Rates Act values each property as at a date of valuation and keeps the roll in force for a fixed number of financial years. As amended in 2014, that is no more than four for a metropolitan municipality and five for a local municipality, with longer periods possible after a provincial intervention or in exceptional circumstances (section 32). It also gives any person a window to object when a roll is published (section 50). We read the other sections cited here in the 2004 text. The 2014 Act does not amend them, and we have not checked for other amendments. A roll is a rates matter and does not change what you can ask for your house.

A sale price starts at the Deeds Office. Section 7(1) of the Deeds Registries Act, as amended by the Deeds Registries Amendment Act 20 of 2024 (in operation from its publication on 10 December 2024), has each registrar, on prescribed conditions and on payment of the prescribed fees, permit any person to inspect the public registers and other public records in the registry, other than the index to them. The Act does not itself say what a search shows about a sale. Property24 says its property values pages draw on publicly available Deeds Office data, and Lightstone's sample reports list the purchase price against each transfer. Which details a Deeds Office search returns, and the fee, are for the Deeds Office to say, so ask it or your conveyancing attorney before you rely on a search.

The same records reach owners through a report or a lookup. The routes we found are below. The table sets out what Privately's three sample Lightstone reports contain. The sample Lightstone seller valuation report is the one to open first, and the same page has the other two. A live report depends on what Lightstone holds for that property: a newly registered development may have no automated valuation, comparable sales or transfer history yet, and Privately's report pages say so when that applies.

• A property portal's address lookup. It shows transfers and, where it has them, an automated estimate and comparable sales. Property24's property values pages, read on 20 October 2026, offer the full report through a Buy Report button and state no price. They say Property24 makes no representation about the accuracy of the data and that it is not a substitute for independent professional advice.
• A Lightstone report. On Privately, a listing page can show a Lightstone automated valuation when one is available, and the property, seller valuation and suburb reports are available on the site.
• Your municipality's valuation roll. It gives the municipal value, not a sold price. The Act as gazetted has each municipality keep a register that includes its current roll, open for public inspection in office hours and shown on its website if it has one (section 23(4)). Which municipality values your property matters beyond the roll: the municipality issues the rates clearance certificate that a transfer needs.

The steps below turn sold prices into a range. They give no rand adjustment for a pool or an extra bedroom, because we found no source for what any feature is worth. Ask anyone who gives you an adjustment to show the sales it comes from.

The table works the arithmetic on three made-up sales. They are example inputs, not real sales.

• Collect the sales. Gather registered sales of similar homes on your street and nearby, newest first. The market moves, so a recent sale tells you more than an old one. A data provider's list may mix kinds of row: the comparable table in Privately's sample seller report has a column headed OTP, marked REG on four rows and OTP on one, and we could not find a key to it in the sample. Ask the provider before you treat a row you cannot place as a registered sale.
• Keep like with like. Same type (freehold or sectional title), similar size, similar condition. Position counts too, because the same house on a main road and in a quiet cul-de-sac is not the same asset.
• Put the sales on one scale. Price per square metre lets homes of different sizes be compared. Privately's sample seller valuation report shows it, headed R/m², beside each comparable sale, next to the plot size and the area under the roof. It ignores the plot, so it compares fairly only between similar homes on similar plots.
• Adjust only for differences you can name. A pool, an extra bedroom, a main road. If you cannot show where an adjustment comes from, leave it out.
• Take the range, not a single number. The lowest and highest price per square metre, applied to your floor area, give a range. If it is very wide, the sales are probably not alike.
• Treat a thin range as weak evidence. If you cannot find several sales of similar homes, a range built from one or two says little. A registered valuer's written report, the third row of the four-numbers table, is the fallback.
• Check the price against who can reach it. The buyer table in the next section shows what a price asks of a buyer.
• Record a floor and a review date. Sellers who settle their lowest acceptable offer and a review date before listing have a fixed reference when offers arrive. Where in the range to ask is the seller's decision; the evidence stops at the range.

A price is also a list of what a buyer must have. The table shows it for three example asking prices, using the working assumptions behind every affordability figure on this site: prime of 10.75% from 25 September 2026, a 20-year bond, a 10% deposit and a repayment of at most 30% of gross monthly income. The 30% is a common rule of thumb that we have not tied to one lender, and the rest are our assumptions, not any lender's terms. Banks price each person individually and weigh debts, expenses and their own valuation, so read the last column as an indication of income, not a bank's decision.

The deposit and transfer duty columns leave out attorney's fees and bond costs. Transfer duty is charged on the slice above R1 210 000, at 3% on the first band, so there is no cliff: a buyer at that price pays none, and at R1 250 000 pays R1 200. Transfer duty and transfer costs lists every band.

The repo rate is 7.25% from 25 September 2026, so prime, which is the repo rate plus 3.5 points, is 10.75%, up from 10.5%. A buyer who pays the same monthly repayment can borrow about 1.7% less than before. The prime rate guide has the history.

How much a buyer must earn is the question the first-time buyer guide answers from the buyer's side. This table shows only what your price asks of them.

Many buyers need a bond. SA Home Loans says formal approval comes only after the buyer signs an offer to purchase, and that it then has the specific property valued, as our bond pre-approval guide records. Other lenders may differ. In our reading, a valuation below your price can mean a smaller loan against that property than the buyer expected, which leaves the buyer to find the difference in cash or to ask you to change the price. We found no lender page saying how it treats a low valuation, and the lending mechanics are for a bond originator to explain.

If the offer is 'subject to bond approval', whether a smaller bond than the clause names meets the condition depends on the words of the clause. The suspensive conditions guide sets out what such a clause can pin down. For a seller, the point is that where a lender values after the offer is signed, your price is not the last number in the sale: the valuation comes after it.

The Property Valuers Profession Act, as gazetted in 2000, has the Council determine and publish guideline professional fees each year (section 35(2)). The only guideline scale we found is the Council's Board Notice 138 of 2010, effective 1 October 2010. It sets an ad valorem tariff banded by property value, plus hourly charges for time, with VAT excluded. It dates from 2010 and we found no later one, so we cannot say whether it is still the Council's guideline, and we quote no fee from it. This guide therefore gives no price range. The notice we found in the Gazette of 15 May 2026 (Notice 7467) sets the Council's own application, registration, examination and annual fees for valuers. It is not a fee a valuer charges you.

Fees differ by property and by what the report must cover, so ask two or three registered valuers for a written quote that says what it includes: an inspection, the report, and the date it speaks to. The Act has the Council keep a register of registered persons (section 11(c)) and reserves the titles Professional Valuer, Professional Associated Valuer and Candidate Valuer to registered people (sections 22 and 27(3)). A Candidate Valuer works only under a professional's supervision (section 19(3)). The Council's site has a Registered Persons search where you can check a name. It also registers Single Residential Property Assessors, so ask which category the person holds.

One way to set a review is to decide before you list what would make you look at the price again, and to write down the date. We give no number of weeks, because we found no source for one. These are reasons that rest on evidence:

• New registered sales on your street or in your suburb.
• A change in prime, which changes what the same repayment borrows.
• A bank valuation that comes in below an offer.
• The offers you do and do not get, set against the range you worked out.

A price is not what you keep. Every cost a seller pays lists commission, transfer costs and certificates, and the what you keep when you sell calculator puts your price through them. It is the same habit the guide to selling your house privately asks for at every step: evidence over hope.

When you are ready, you can list your property on Privately, starting with a draft.