Seven out of ten of South Africa’s 6.7 million property owners will only ever own one home – and understandably, it’s the wealthier among them** who will have owned more than one house, with those aged 50-65 being the most active.
While there are any number of reasons behind the statistic – from affordability and credit constraints to high transaction costs, taxes and low residential mobility – we took a closer look at age and value to see what patterns might emerge.
Age isn’t the defining characteristic
If we look at the current age of property owners, the proportion within each band of those who have owned one, two, three, four or more properties in their lifetime isn’t what might be expected: the share who have owned only one property starts high for the youngest owners as expected (81% of those under 35), falls through midlife to 66–68%, but then climbs back up to 76% among over-65s.
Home ownership per age band
That reversal is counter-intuitive in that one might assume older people would have the lowest one-only share of all, but a big share of ownership among older South Africans sits in that entry-level, subsidised-housing band, which pulls the "by age" picture for the oldest group back towards one-only ownership.
Value tells a better story
Assessing ownership through a value lens rather than age tells a different story, and the pattern is almost a straight line. Among owners whose highest-ever property value sat under R300 000, 96% have only ever owned that one property.
That number drops to 66% when you get to the R750 000 – R1.5 million price band. By the time you reach owners whose highest property investment exceeded R3 million, only 19% stopped at one, while 59% have owned three or more in their lifetime.
Home ownership by value band
Value and age tell us even more
Value, on its own, is a far cleaner predictor of how many properties someone will own, although the focus becomes even sharper if you hold value constant and look at age within it.
We have focused on the two groups whose property-owning years have run the furthest, 50–65-year-olds and over-65s and looked at how many properties they've owned by value band.
The pattern is strikingly consistent between the two groups. In the lower three value bands, the median number of properties ever owned doesn't move at all: it’s one, for both age groups, all the way up to R1.5 million (although the percentage of those who have owned just one property does drop to around 60% in the R750 000 - R1.5 million band). It's only in the top two bands, though, that the median number of properties ever owned climbs: to two in the R1.5 million - R3 million band, and to three above R3 million, for over-65s and 50–65-year olds alike.
50 years and older: % who have owned more than one property
The proportion who ever owned only one property for these age groups can be seen in the graph above, and within those top value bands, it's the 50–65-year-olds who have owned most properties. Only 13% of 50–65-year-olds in the above-R3 million band stopped at one property, against 18% of over-65s; in the R1.5 million - R3 million band it's 25% versus 34%.
The 50–65 age range appears to represent the peak property-buying years, plausibly tied to the economic cycles people lived through in their prime earning years before ownership counts plateau or even consolidate into retirement.
50 years and older: % who have owned more than one property ever
It’s less about age than prosperity.
The age pattern highlighted above becomes even clearer when property value is brought into the picture. Among 50-65-year-olds, 97% of owners in the under-R300 000 value band own just one property, compared with 18% of over-65s in the R3 million-plus band (see graph, 50 years and older: % who have only ever owned one property).
In other words, this was never really a story about getting older, but about wealth – and, for those with it, the trajectory towards owning multiple properties during their lifetime is already visible well before retirement.
How far did people move from their starting point?
To see this more precisely, we compared each owner's first property value (where they owned more than one property) to the highest-value property they ever owned (everything measured in current values) and grouped the size of that jump into four bands: little to no movement (0–25%), a modest step up (25–50%), a real move (50– 150%) and a major leap (150%+).
The data in the table above tells two different stories:
First, when evaluating the columns, we see that the overwhelming majority of homeowners, in both age bands, who first bought a property in the lowest value band (under R300 000) did not move much past that value – 82% of those aged 50-65, and 86% of those aged over 65, showed little or no movement. In the priciest band, most owners did. Second, when the same value band is read across the table, age indicates whether that growth has already happened or is still happening.
Among owners of properties valued above R3 million, 45% of those aged 50–65 subsequently transacted at a property value of more than 150% higher than their first property transaction, compared with 26% of those aged over 65. The same pattern is evident, although on a smaller scale, across the lower value bands, with 50 to 65- year-olds consistently showing greater growth in the value of their subsequent property transactions than those over 65.
Put the two together and the picture is this: money determines whether someone's property journey involves real upward movement – and by 65, for most people, the big moves are behind them.
** Methodology: Joint owners are each counted in their own right (if spouses buy a home jointly, each receives their own ownership history), and we have classified owners by the highest-value property they've ever owned; otherwise, a retiree who downsized from a R10 million house into a R2 million retirement flat would be miscounted as a low-value owner. It's a proxy for relative wealth, not a current address.
