A whopping 47% of first time buyers and 36% of all owners of property registered at the Deeds Office in SA are black - an increase of 63,4% in the past 10 years.

But, says Kura Chihota, excutive director of the Leapfrog Property Group, this might be giving the wrong impression of transformation
within the property industry as many of the deals are formalisations of township leases and activity in rural poor areas, often of an RDP nature.

According to the figures released by Lightstone Risk Management's tracking services, which uses a comprehensive property data base compiled by the deeds office, the Surveyor General and other sources to generate data - as opposed to the banks which use mortgage lending as the source - the overwhelming percentage of property activity by black buyers is in townships and the poorest areas.

Interestingly, however, over 10% of black homeowners have bought in estates, about 2 to 4% in wealthy areas while the remainder have bought in what its research team calls "comfortable" areas.

Chihota says Lightstone's data also shows very low repeat buyer profiles since 1997 when the first black buyers came into the market. Only 27% of black consumers have gone on to further property activity compared with 46% of coloured, Asian and white consumers who are clearly multiple buyers.

He also believes the Reserve Bank's decision earlier this month not to increase interest rates further could be a sign that the tide is turning in the affordability stakes for home owners.

"We believe that with wage negotiations settling at the 10% level and the economy starting to get a handle on inflation, there is rising demand in the affordable sub-R750 000 segments and increasing confidence at the upper levels.