Residential Real Estate Transfers in Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi, South Africa

Transfers of residential property between white, Indian, black and institutional buyers and sellers in Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi over a four-month period in 1997 give a picture of changes in real estate ownership in a post-apartheid South African city. Data shows a shift of ownership from white to other groups, with the size of the shift varying between suburbs and housing submarkets. Apart from the city centre and one suburb bordering the major area of peripheral black townships, there has been only limited penetration of the formal real estate market by blacks. Similarly and again with the exception of the city centre, the data suggests only limited buying in formerly white-only areas by people of Indian origin. To 1997, informal housing within the old borough was largely restricted to the sections of the city formerly reserved for Indian and coloured people.