|
 FROM
BERRY EVERITT
Two really good pieces of news for SA homeowners and homebuyers have come to light this month and should really help to bolster our nascent market recovery, despite the volatile state of the global economy. The first of these is that SA has moved up four places in the international competitiveness rating compiled annually by the World Economic Forum, to number 50 out of 142 countries surveyed.
This makes it the second-highest ranked - after China - of the Brics group of developing countries, which also includes Brazil, Russia and India, and the WEF report said the health of the country's financial sector was particularly impressive. This indicated, it said, that there was "high confidence in SA's financial markets at a time when trust is returning only slowly in many other parts of the world." The second item of good news is, of course, the significant drop in the rate of most violent crimes in SA. While still high, the number of murders declined by 6,5% in the past year, and the number of attempted murders by 12,2%. The incidence of serious assaults and armed robberies also dropped, as did house robberies, bank robberies, cash-in-transit robberies and truck hijackings. This will no doubt improve confidence among homebuyers and as it is, there are many in our industry who are already achieving outstanding results for their clients in current market conditions. This was very evident at the recent national Property Professional of the Year awards, and we are pleased to say that Annette Rautenbach of our Krugersdorp office was among the top 13 contenders for this title. We are also extremely proud of Francois du Pisani of our Ruimsig franchise, who won the Property Association's inaugural Rookie of the Year award; Zakes and Phiwe Myeza of our Midrand franchise who took home a Young Lions award, and Andre de Villiers, our national marketing manager, who was named as an industry Mover & Shaker. Thus just proves that we have both depth and breadth in our organisation, and are well on the way to achieving our goal of becoming "First in Loyalty." | 
