The City of Cape Town has opened its 2018 General Valuation Roll for public inspection.

This roll will update the current municipal property values and will form the basis for calculating the new property rates that property owners will be charged from July 2019.

The resulting municipal values will also replace those currently in use which were last calculated in 2015.

In an accompanying statement, the city said that an analysis of the property growth trends across South Africa has shown that residential property prices in Cape Town have grown considerably above the national trend since the 2015 General Valuation roll.

This trend is even greater for certain sectional title schemes and residential vacant land, it said.

“The five modelling categories that are based on market data and sales and that are used by the City’s Valuation Office show that the value of residential properties in Cape Town increased by an average of 34% in the three years between the GV2015 and GV2018 cycles.”

“The growth in sectional title properties, especially residential estates and vacant land, is an indication of the enabling environment that this administration has established over the years to unlock investment and to make Cape Town a top destination in which to work, play, live and do business,” it said.

Rate changes

The city said that the percentage growth in property value will not determine the percentage of rates increases.

“The city looks at what budget is required for the 2019/20 financial year and then the cent-in-the-rand is determined by Council,” said the city’s mayoral committee member for Finance, Ian Neilson.

“Rates income is used to fund shared public services such as roads, street lights, parks, beaches, area cleansing, libraries, clinics, law enforcement and fire services.

“A calculation is also done to determine what rebates should be given to the more vulnerable in our society.”

He added that an indication of the rates payable, based on the GV2018 valuation and the rating category, will be available on the city’s website in April 2019.

This will be after the new rate-in-the-rand is determined by council and this is subject to the City’s budget requirements for the 2019/20 financial year, he said.

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