Where the numbers come from.
Erfie is built on free, public, authoritative data. Here's every source we use, what it means, and the gap between the data and a true valuation.
National price index
The long-run chart on the homepage uses the Real Residential Property Prices for South Africa and the corresponding nominal series from the Bank for International Settlements, distributed via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Quarterly data back to 1966. We show both nominal and real (CPI-deflated) so you can see what's appreciation vs. inflation.
Provincial and metro indices
Province and metro y/y changes come from the Stats SA Residential Property Price Index (P0160), compiled in partnership with the South African Reserve Bank and the IMF using a rolling-window time-dummy hedonic regression on Deeds Office transactions. Published quarterly. Data lags by ~3 months.
FNB Property Barometer
Monthly publication by FNB. Includes the FNB House Price Index (repeat-sales methodology, similar to Case-Shiller) and a Valuers' Market Strength Index built from FNB's internal valuation data.
Absa Homeowner Sentiment Index
Quarterly gauge of consumer confidence in the property market, used as a leading indicator for buying intention. Available from MyProperty.
Municipal valuations
Every SA municipality publishes a General Valuation Roll (GVR) every 3-5 years. These are the values the municipality uses to calculate your rates bill. Erfie integrates suburb-level summaries from the eThekwini GV 2026 portal (effective 1 July 2026) and the City of Cape Town Open Data Portal (GV 2018 and 2022). For per-property valuations, we link to the official portal on every suburb page.
Property mix and category aggregation
Not all "suburb value" summaries compare like with like. The two metros we cover report at different levels of property-type granularity, and that difference matters when you read the numbers.
| Metro | Source | Category scope | Implication for the suburb cards |
|---|---|---|---|
| eThekwini | EDGE 2022 Valuation Roll | All rateable categories (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, state-subsidised) | The "mean value" and "mean land extent" are means across everything in the suburb, not just homes. A R20 million warehouse counts the same as a R1.5 million house. The figure is honest for mostly-residential suburbs where homes dominate the count, and misleading wherever commercial or industrial holdings are significant. |
| Cape Town | CCT Valuations Suburbs | Residential only (column literally NUM_RES_PROP) | The "median" is the middle of just the residential subset. There's no commercial or industrial mixing, so the figure is a clean "typical home" value. |
Concrete example. Bluff in eThekwini shows 124 properties at a mean value of roughly R11.8m. The high mean isn't because Bluff homes are R11.8m on average — it's that the count is filtered (state-subsidised housing is excluded from the public summary) and a handful of large commercial or mixed-use properties pull the remaining mean upward. To see per-property values by category for any eThekwini suburb, use the official eThekwini GV 2026 portal (the link is on every eThekwini suburb page too).
On the suburbs index, eThekwini rows show "see suburb →" in place of a value, because the headline mean would mislead at a glance. Cape Town rows show the median directly, because the data is residential-only.
What we're doing about it. We have prepared a request for eThekwini (under PAIA, to be sent June 2026) for residential-only suburb statistics and a category breakdown. If they provide it, every eThekwini suburb card will move to the same definition as Cape Town: residential-only, with a visible property-mix tag. Until then, the banner on every eThekwini suburb page and the "see suburb" link in the index are the most honest way to publish what we have.
Median vs Mean
Erfie's suburb cards report the statistic that the source dataset publishes. The two metros use different statistics, by design.
| Metro | Source | Statistic | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| eThekwini | EDGE 2022 Valuation Roll | Mean | EDGE reports suburb totals + counts, so mean = total ÷ count. |
| Cape Town | CCT Valuations Suburbs | Median | CCT reports suburb medians directly. Median is robust to a few very large estates. |
Both are valid. Mean = sum of property values ÷ count of properties in the suburb. Median = the middle property when you sort all properties in the suburb by value, low to high. In suburbs with a few very large estates (a R50m house among 100 R2m homes), the mean is pulled upward; the median stays put. That's why the median is often a more honest "typical" value.
Don't compare a Cape Town suburb card directly to an eThekwini suburb card. The "Total" and "Est. total" figures on every card are derived (median × count, or mean × count) and are directly comparable across metros — the per-property cards are not.
What Erfie does not do
- Live listings aggregation. Property24, Private Property and similar portals do not offer public APIs and prohibit automated access in their terms. We won't scrape them.
- Automated Valuation Models (AVMs). True property valuation requires proprietary transaction-level data (Lightstone, AfriGIS). Erfie shows the data and the context; for a true "what is this property worth" estimate, consult a registered valuer or use a paid service.
- Sold-price data (free). Sold prices are recorded by the Deeds Office and can be looked up via DeedsWEB for R18 per property. That is the legal, authoritative source.
License and attribution
All data we publish is either from public-domain government sources or published under licenses that allow reuse. When you cite Erfie, please also cite the underlying source — see the link on each chart.