The cheapest and most expensive provinces to rent in South Africa

Provinces like the Eastern Cape and the North West have the most affordable properties in South Africa, while the Western Cape remains the most expensive province for rentals.

This was revealed in PayProp’s 2024 Annual Market Report, which measured the country’s rental market in the final quarter of 2024.

According to the report, the average rent increased to R9,051 in the fourth quarter of 2024, the first time that South Africa’s average rent surpassed R9,000.

Compared to the same period last year, rent increased by R453 – the highest rental growth rate since 2017.

The country also experienced 5.2% year-on-year rental growth during the quarter, signalling a more confident market despite economic uncertainties.

Tenant affordability remains a critical factor in South Africa, with tenants spending 28.7% of their income on rent and 44.1% on debt repayments.

Both of these percentages were higher than a year before but trended down in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Despite rental growth outpacing inflation, national tenant arrears remained near record lows, with only 17.1% of tenants behind on rent in the last quarter.

This shows that while rental prices are rising, most tenants are managing to keep up with payments.

PayProp’s head of sales, André van Rooyen, noted that the data shows landlords and agents are regaining confidence, which could lead to more significant rental increases while tenant affordability remains healthy.

“The gap between rental growth and inflation widened throughout Q4, providing landlords with better real-terms returns,” Van Rooyen said.

However, economic uncertainty continues to play a role in the rental landscape.

While more interest rate cuts are expected to improve affordability even further, other factors, such as rising electricity costs and potential global trade tensions, could influence market conditions in 2025.

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The least expensive provinces to rent in South Africa

The report noted that the stronger rental growth in 2024 has shifted more tenants into higher price brackets.

The largest group of tenants still pay between R5,000 and R7,500 a month, although this share has decreased from 31.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 28.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Meanwhile, all the higher rental brackets have grown over the past year, with 51.4% of tenants paying R7,500 or more in the final quarter of 2024, compared to 47.6% a year before.

Although the percentage of rental properties in each price bracket follows the national average quite closely in some provinces, such as Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and Limpopo, other provinces have some notable differences.

According to the report, tenants in the Eastern Cape are most likely to find affordable homes.

In this province, 11.1% of properties rent for R1,000 to R2,500, compared to the 2.8% national average.

In the Eastern Cape, 21.6% of rental properties are priced between R2,500 and R5,000, and 27.9% of properties are available for R5,000 to R7,500.

This means that rental properties up to R7,500 make up 60.6% of the rental market in the Eastern Cape, compared to the national 46.6%.

However, rental property in the North West is also mostly concentrated on the affordable side, with 43.7% of properties falling within the R2,500 to R5,000 price bracket.

This makes it the only province where this is the largest price bracket, and it is largely a result of the high number of student rentals available in the province.

In the North West, the share of properties priced R7,500 or below made up 71.5% of rental properties in the province.

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The most expensive province to rent in South Africa

On the other end of the spectrum, properties in the Western Cape are the most expensive in the country.

“The Western Cape has South Africa’s highest average rent, and that’s clearly reflected in its rental distribution,” the report said.

“High rental growth in 2024 increased the share of high-priced properties in the province. There are now more homes renting for more than R15,000 than for R5,000 to R7,500 due to a fall of over 5% in the cheaper bracket.”

In 2023, 32.6% of rental properties in the province were priced up to R7,500. In 2024, this number decreased to 26.3%.

Conversely, properties being rented for over R15,000 increased from 15.6% to 20.3% during the same period.

Despite the fact that this is the most expensive province to rent property, it still had the second-fastest rental growth for the quarter, at 10.1%, coming in behind Limpopo, which recorded the strongest rental growth, at 11.1%.

For years, South Africans from other parts of the country have been semigrating to the Western Cape in search of well-run cities, good schools, and good lifestyles.

At the same time, wealthy foreign nationals and digital nomads have also been making their way to the province, driving up the prices of properties in the process.

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