The cheapest province to rent property in South Africa

Rental prices in South Africa vary greatly from province to province, with a new report showing that the average rental price in the country’s cheapest province has grown by R1 since the end of 2025.

Over the same period, South Africa’s most expensive province for renters has surpassed a record high, with properties now going for over R12,000 per month.

This was revealed in PayProp’s Q1 2026 Rental Index, which outlines trends in the South African residential rental market and is compiled from PayProp’s transactional data.

The index revealed that after three quarters of deceleration, rental growth finally picked up again in the first quarter of 2026, rising 4.7%.

Average rent increased to R9,582, up R450 from the same quarter in 2025. However, Payprop cautioned that this growth could be short-lived.

Rising inflation, persistently high tenant debt, and interest rate hikes are likely to continue to eat into the rental market’s performance in the year ahead.

There are already some early warning signs, according to the index. In Q1 2026, two provinces recorded rental growth below 1%, while another recorded a double-digit increase for the first time in three years.

Positively, PayProp’s Q1 2026 tenant arrears rate fell to a new record low of 16.7%. The average arrears percentage was also historically low, although it remained relatively high at 74,3%.

According to PayProp, this reflects that diligent rental agencies and recovery systems are succeeding at keeping the rent flowing, despite rising debt levels.

“In Q1 2025, things looked a little more positive,” PayProp said. “Average spending on debt dipped slightly to 45.7% of income, compared to 46.1% a year ago.”

In the first quarter of 2025, rent-to-income ratios also stayed flat at 28.8%. However, this picked up to 28.9% in Q1 2026.

“That gave tenants a modest increase in disposable income, from 25.1% in Q1 2025 to 25.4% in Q1 2026,” PayProp said.

South Africa’s cheapest and most expensive provinces

PayProp reported that, in the first quarter of 2026, the Free State was the cheapest province in South Africa, with an average rent of R7,501.

Year-on-year, the province’s rental growth crashed to 0.6%, making it South Africa’s second-slowest growing province, after Mpumalanga.

Compared with Q1 2025, the average rental price in the Free State increased by only R48. Compared to Q4 2025, it only increased by R1.

According to PayProp, this suggests that growth could remain sluggish well into 2026. Other metrics weren’t very positive either.

The percentage of tenants in arrears fell from 21.5% in Q4 2025 to 20.8%. “That’s trending in the right direction,” PayProp said.

“But stronger improvements in other provinces mean the Free State now has the highest proportion of tenants in arrears in South Africa.”

On top of this, the average tenant in arrears in the Free State now owes more than one month’s rent, on average, at 102.6%.

However, on the other side of the spectrum, other provinces reported a much better rental market performance, both in terms of price growth and arrears rates.

This includes South Africa’s most expensive province, the Western Cape, which has now surpassed an average rent of R12,000 per month.

After four quarters of slowing growth, the Western Cape saw its year-on-year growth climb to 7.4%. This brought the average rental up to R12,125. This is R840 higher than Q1 2025 and R231 higher than Q4 2025.

This makes the Western Cape R1,304 more expensive than South Africa’s second-highest rental market, the Northern Cape.

Notably, this also means that, on average, it costs R4,624 more to rent a property in the Western Cape than in the Free State.

While the Western Cape saw its percentage of tenants in arrears rise slightly, it remained the country’s lowest at 13.7%. Similarly, its average arrears percentage remained the lowest in South Africa at 56.4%.