ABSA released its December 2011 house prices on 12 Jan, and 2011 SA house price growth has now been confirmed at a pedestrian 2.19%.

House prices just managed to creep up in 2011 despite all the economic challenges. However don’t forget that this growth is actually behind CPI inflation (currently running at 6.1% in November 2011) so property owners have actually experienced a decline in real values to the value of -2.6% to November 2011. In fact, SA property has now experienced three years of real house price declines in four years.

2008: -6.74%

2009: -6.92%

2010: 2.35%

2011: -2.6% (as at Nov 2011)

On some happier news, congratulations to the winners of the House Price South Africa 2011 Prediction challenge! The prize was shared by Warren and SJB who both predicted 3% growth in 2011 (v actual at 2.19%). 

With the outlook for property in South Africa looking no better in 2012, the focus for now must be about optimising cash flow and with that in mind, they have both won a limited edition London Olympics 2012 50p coin courtesy of House Price South Africa. Please both send your postal addresses to admin@housepricesouthafrica.com so it can be posted to you.

Thank you ALL for your continuing contributions. Here are some of the other forecasts that came in for 2011 nominal house price growth:

 -10%: Jim

-5%: CJ

-4.5%: M. Croukamp

-2%: Abrie

-0.9%: Dieter Deppisch

0%: Bernard Wiese

Given these predictions were all negative, we can we happy that the year did not turn out as bad as what was first predicted.

So what is the outlook for 2012? HPSA will be opening up the predictions discussion for 2012 soon.