To maintain sustainability, agencies must adopt a more intentional approach to structuring, pricing, and scaling their operations, as limited tenant affordability continues to hinder expansion.
South African property professionals should look at other means of growing their businesses, such as developing and refining a managed rental service offering.
This is even as rent growth stabilises, says PayProp.
With rental growth briefly cooling in the last quarter of last year before stabilising and then recovering in the first quarter of this year(PayProp Rental Index), the market seems to have reached a balance between what rent increases landlords are setting and what tenants can afford.
The industry is said to seem happy too: PayProp’s latest State of the Rental Industry survey shows agency optimism is still riding high in 2026, with 87.7% of respondents expressing confidence in the future of the sector.
