Most expensive province to rent a house in South Africa

In Q1 2025, the Northern Cape remained the cheapest province to rent in South Africa, while the Western Cape retained its position as the most expensive.

This was revealed in Payprop’s Q1 2025 Rental Index, which tracks quarterly rental trends across South Africa.

During the first quarter of 2025, average rent across South Africa increased to R9,132. This represents a year-on-year increase of R478 and a quarterly increase of R478.

All provinces experienced positive rental growth in Q1. However, there is still a notable discrepancy between the cost of renting across different provinces.

The Northern Cape remained the cheapest province to rent in South Africa, with an average price of R7,153 per month.

Positively, the North West had the fastest rental growth in the country, at 13.5%. While it still has the lowest rent, this is a “massive” R852 increase compared to the same time in 2024 when rent was R6,301 per month.

If this trend continues, it could soon overtake the Eastern Cape, which is the second cheapest province in the country with an average rent of R7,330.

The North West has also made progress in terms of the number of tenants in arrears. In Q1 2024, 25.7% of renters were in arrears. Two quarters ago, the province had the second-highest rate of arrears in the country at 22.9%.

In Q4 2024, it was the second lowest in the country at 15.5%. In the first quarter of 2025, it middled to 18.6%.

The average arrears percentage has also fallen to 67.4% in Q1 2025, the second lowest in the country. “Volatility is the name of the game here too: a year earlier, it was a nation-leading 102.5%,” Payprop noted.

South Africa’s most expensive province

Unsurprisingly, the Western Cape remained South Africa’s most expensive province, with an average monthly rent of R11,285 in Q1 2025.

This is a R985 increase compared to Q1 2024’s R10,300. As of Q1 2025, the Western Cape’s average rent is R1,704 more expensive than the national average.

What should also be kept in mind, though, is that these measurements do not consider the size of the rental property.

This means that the average size of a Western Cape apartment could be smaller than the rest of the country, for thousands more every month.

This is particularly the case for in-demand areas in the Western Cape, where developers can charge a premium price for studio and one-bedroom apartments.

According to Numbeo, the average suburban property price in Cape Town is R23,025/m², more than twice that of Joburg’s R11,977/m².

These are the average rents in Cape Town’s City Bowl and elsewhere, according to Numbeo data:

In Q4 2024, the Western Cape had the highest rent in the country, but it only had an average rental growth of 4.3%, mirroring the national average. This has been a trend for the last several years.

However, this changed during Q2, when the Western Cape achieved the highest rental growth in the country. This trend continued in Q3, and in the final quarter of 2024, the province hit double-digit rental growth.

Although the growth rate has fallen slightly in Q1 2025, it still achieved an impressive 9.6% growth. This is notable since many reports have indicated a growing reverse migration trend, with people moving from the Western Cape to Gauteng.

While there are factors contributing to this, such as companies reversing their work-from-home policies, the Western Cape’s property market remains resilient.

Despite how high rental prices are in the province, it appears that tenants are able to afford these prices. Although arrears increased by a marginal 0.5% during the quarter, it still had the country’s lowest arrears rate, at only 13.7%.

In comparison, Gauteng had the second-lowest rate of arrears, 15.6%, and the Free State had the highest rate, 20.8%.

The rate of arrears also decreased from 14.2% in Q1 2024. Tenants in arrears owed 60.2% of the national average rent. This was also the lowest in South Africa and a 0.7% decrease from the previous quarter.