The hijacking of houses in Johannesburg’s middle-and upper-class suburbs has cost the owners millions of rand and hit property prices in certain areas.
While Johannesburg is the worst affected, cities across SA are grappling with rogue tenants who sign leases they have little intention of honouring.
Lucky Sindane, spokesperson for the City of Johannesburg’s forensic and investigation services unit, which probes cases of abandoned or hijacked homes and buildings, said owners of hijacked properties often decided to cut their losses when outstanding municipal bills overtook the value of the property. He said many of these owners were based overseas.
Indluplace Properties CEO Carel de Wit said the hijacking of residential properties in Johannesburg’s inner city began 15 years ago and has now spread to the suburbs.
“The biggest affect on home prices is on those living next door to hijacked properties. It’s rare that people just move in and hijack a property, it usually happens when the property is for rent and the owners are not present,” he said.
In Dunkeld west, wastepickers have built a sprawling shack village in the garden of an abandoned multimillion-rand home. The house was left vacant when the owner moved to Italy in 2017.
The property would ordinarily fetch R10m-R12m, said Broll Auctions agent Ryan Ciapparelli, but with the squatters there, “you will get R2.5m-R4m if you are lucky”.
The squatters would also have to be relocated at the buyer’s expense.
Musa Cele, who bought a R6m property in Sixth Street, Parkmore, as an investment, says he is losing about R70,000 a month in potential rental income as he battles to evict about 15 squatters. The Parkmore Community Association says there are about 10 homes in the suburb that are empty.
In 2018, the executor of a deceased estate had to turn to the courts to have five people evicted from an abandoned home in Brooklyn, Pretoria. Black First Land First joined the fray and arranged legal representation for the occupants, but in May last year it abandoned this help, paving the way for the home to be reclaimed.
Patrick Atkinson, the opposition DA spokesperson for finance in Johannesburg, said the party had twice asked finance mayoral committee member Jolidee Matongo to provide a report on how much the city is losing in rates and services payments on hijacked buildings and other properties. No figures had yet been provided.
The Sunday Times also requested the figures, but Sindane said his unit can only trace queries on specific addresses.
He said 60 previously hijacked properties had been successfully returned to their lawful owners. But in some instances owners decided not to reclaim their properties as the costs outweighed the value.
“You will find that the property owes more in rates and taxes and municipal bills than the value of the property. It would be pointless then to pay for a bill of R5m when the property is worth R2m,” Sindane said.
“In such cases the Joburg Property Company releases them through a tender process for redevelopment.”
Professor François Viruly, a property economist at the University of Cape Town, said homeowners abandoned their properties for a variety of reasons.
“The gentrification of an area or conversion of a home to office use can result in a number of properties lying empty along certain suburbs and main roads.”
He said the Covid-19 pandemic, with its paralysing effect on the economy, had led to businesses vacating suburban houses that they had been using for office or commercial purposes.
Erwin Rode, MD of property consultancy Rode & Associates, said hijacked land was a bigger problem than building hijacking, as desperation for housing grows.
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