The plans are approved. The homes aren’t getting built.

BetterBond’s October Property Brief landed this week, and on the surface it reads like a story of calm. Home loan applications rose 2.4% in the third quarter, monthly applications for the year are running level with 2025, and the average house price has reached R1.7 million, beating inflation by a healthy margin. Steady. Unremarkable.

Two numbers in the report are anything but. The first is about money: banks now want a deposit 21.7% bigger than a year ago. The second is about bricks: the share of approved building plans that actually become finished homes fell 12% in a year. Put those side by side and you have the story of the next two years in the northern suburbs.

Money got harder in September

The Reserve Bank started reversing the rate-cutting cycle in May and went further in September, taking prime from 10.5% to 10.75%. The banks reacted fast. Since September 2025 lenders have changed their deposit requirements twelve times, down seven times and up five, and the quarter closed with the average deposit for all buyers 21.7% higher than a year ago. First-time buyers were largely spared, at 5.6%.

BetterBond’s economist, Dr Roelof Botha, doesn’t mince his words. With inflation being pushed up by fuel rather than by demand, and a labour market going nowhere, he argues the tighter policy “may be doing more harm than good”. He expects inflation to drop sharply once global fuel shipping normalises, and rates to follow it down.

The number that matters: homes finished

Here is the part almost nobody will write about. Plans are being passed: their value is up 8.4% on last year, and plans for flats and townhouses are up 21%. Construction is genuinely recovering, with 95,000 more people employed in the sector than a year ago. But completions are going the other way. The ratio of finished homes to approved plans fell 12%, and Gauteng completed only about R6 billion of new homes in the first seven months of 2026. Dr Botha’s own conclusion is that a housing shortfall “seems unavoidable”.

Approved plans are intentions. Finished homes are supply. And supply is what sets prices.

The average house is not our market

R1.7 million is a national average, and it tells you very little about Hyde Park or River Club. The more revealing line in the report is by age. Buyers aged 51 to 60 paid an average of R2.2 million over the past year, with real growth of 11.4%, far ahead of inflation at 4.4%. These are equity-rich buyers, often selling a family home to buy the next one, and they are exactly the buyers who fill the northern suburbs. A deposit that is 21.7% higher stings a first-time buyer. It barely registers for someone walking in with the proceeds of a sale.

Incomes tell the same story. The average homebuyer now earns R74,000 a month, and buyer incomes have grown 4.7% a year in real terms over five years, against 1.2% for the economy as a whole. The money got dearer, but the buyers got stronger.

What I’m seeing on the ground

The completion gap is not a statistic to me; it is a council clearance, a services connection or a building inspection on every project we sell. And it explains where buyers are going: to homes they can actually stand in. At Aurora in Hurlingham, the remaining homes are ready to move into now, and every two-bedroom home in Phase 2 has sold. At Sandown Quarter, the townhouses in the photograph above are taking shape for handover in March 2027, the same townhouse format the report shows developers turning to.

What it means for you

If you’re buying: get your bond approved before you fall in love with a house. Deposit requirements have moved twelve times in a year, and a bank’s answer today can change next month. Our finance partners at BetterBond can give you a firm number; start with our bond and transfer cost calculators. Then favour homes that are finished or close to it, because new stock is arriving more slowly than the plans suggest.

If you’re selling: fewer finished new homes means your existing home competes with less new stock. That is a real advantage, but only for a home priced on today’s sales, not last year’s hopes.

If you own land: the 21% jump in plans for townhouses and flats tells you where developers see value: density. If you own a large stand in the northern suburbs, its real value may lie in what it could become. That is what Landowner’s Edge is for.

If you want new and can’t find it: build it. Built for You takes you from the stand to the keys, with the architect, the builder and the project management in one place.

The longer view

Rates are up, deposits are up, and the headlines will call it pressure. But the buyers in our market are stronger than they have been in years, the economist expects rates to come back down, and new homes are not being finished fast enough to meet the demand. That combination does not lead to cheaper property. When supply lags, buy what is already standing.

Thinking about a move in the northern suburbs? Browse our current listings, see what we’re building, or tell me what you’re looking for. Every viewing is handled personally.

Figures from the BetterBond Property Brief, October 2026.