Grant Smee — Entrepreneur, Business Advisor, Property Investor

Once again, it is What's Involved, and this edition of What's Involved proudly brought to you by Epic South Africa. If you'd like to find out more about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, epicsoutafrica.com is the place to go. I am joined by the founder of Epic South Africa, Grant Smee. How are you, Grant? Very well in South. Fantastic, thank you. We're going into a new year, and although we still have this dreaded pandemic and lockdown level three that we're at at the moment, I've got a good feeling about this year, and I think this is going to be a year of opportunity. Speaking of which, in terms of Epic, you guys have been sponsoring the show. You're all about entrepreneurship and helping entrepreneurs. What exactly does Epic do? Yes, Epic was established as a property investor networking forum, and they quickly expanded into training and support business for property investors beyond the networking. And then I quite quickly realized that as an entrepreneur myself and a property entrepreneur, that entrepreneurship really plays a big role in terms of your outlook and the support you need when you're running a property investment business or looking to get into property investment.

But it also applies across other industries. So the learnings we have or I have as a property entrepreneur really apply in other businesses as well. So we've expanded that offering into support for entrepreneurs, both startup and experience entrepreneurs, to try and assist and help the guys through particularly tough times at the moment, but also as a signing board for ideas and maybe expansion plans and helping scale and systemize businesses as well. All right, and then I suppose property is always a good idea if you can get into property in some way, shape or form, maybe not as your core business, but certainly in terms of annuity income. So I thought this time we'd focus a little bit more on some other aspects of your businesses. You've also got Only Realty, which is a property company. Talk to me a bit about Only Realty, because I think we're going to focus on property in this particular show. Yes, I mean, I suppose it's important to say that my background, initially in accounting, but then very much around property as a property investor invested in property since 2004. And I sort of realized quite quickly that what I required as a property investor wasn't necessarily out there in the market from a services point of view.

So when I was living in London, I established a property management company there to meet my investors' needs. And with coming back to South Africa in 2010, we sort of followed that sort of journey and have taken Only Realty to a space where we specialize in looking after rental properties. We're a property management company. That's our focus, and that's our core, and that's our expertise. We then, once we were comfortable establishing ourselves as a property management company, we've been expanding to sales. We do have a sales arm, or all of our franchisees have sales arms now. So we've got 24 offices around the country in all the major cities and towns. And our teams are, like I say, entirely focused on looking after rental properties and making their investments efficient and maximizing their profit for them, but also providing a good almost seamless sales service on the back end as well, if you look to sell or want to buy a property as well. Fantastic stuff, because there's been massive, massive changes. I want to talk a little bit about this, because interest rates are low in terms of properties. I believe, first-time property buyers, that there's an increase there. Give me some stats quickly, if you would, as to where we are in terms of properties, property buying, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, I mean, look, there's been substantial drop in property investors buying properties, and substantial. You're probably looking at a 40% to 50% drop in people buying investment properties, and there's several reasons around that, which I'll get into now. On the first-time buyer, there's been a massive increase, and I know the bond originators, Uber as well as better bond, and also the banks, are talking about massive amounts of increase in first-time buyers. And I think it's important to clarify that first-time buyers aren't 19, 20, 21, 22-year-olds who are getting their first jobs. First-time buyers can be people who are 35, who have been renting for years, and now, because of the low interest rates, are getting onto the property market so much later. And I know the average age of property buyers now has substantially decreased from close on sort of 36, 37 years towards a 32-year-old range, which means that there's a lot of people coming to market, a lot of the youth coming to market, which previously wasn't the case because of costs of buying high interest rates. And, you know, the banks were offering really preferential deals to first-time buyers, giving them 100%, 100% bonds, sometimes even 100 and 200, 3% bonds to cover some of the costs to buy, as well as the fact that there's a lot of stock on the market for these first-time buyers to come into and buy, particularly from a sectional title stock perspective.

There's a lot of sectional title units and complexes out there from developers that are available at relatively decent prices because, again, there's a relative oversupply of property at the moment. No, it's interesting because I do a podcast for a property developer as well. And they gave me very, very similar stats, and that's what they are focusing on now, is these sort of complexes, et cetera, et cetera. Their price range should have 1.5 million up. What is the upper level there? Would it be around 3 million? Yeah, 2.5 million is probably where you're getting to the next level. And, again, it actually depends. You know, people talk about the property market on a national basis. It's really difficult to do that because you're actually including parts of the Northern Cape into the statistics of Central Stanton. So, really, when you're talking about the property market, you need to talk about much more geographic areas. So, when we talk about Job at North, we talk about those areas that it does differ substantially. So, if we then look at the first time buy a home in Job Earth, you're probably talking between the 600 to 1.2 million remark, whereas if you go and sit in Cape Town in the Western seaboard, you're looking at 1.2 to 1.8 million.

But the upper level does generally get from that 2.5 million upwards, and then your high end is the 5 million plus. OK, now, another interesting thing to me is that with COVID and with the trends and so many people being forced to work from home and now in this current time encouraged to work from home, what I've found is a lot of people have gone, but hang on, I'm more productive working from home and employers are starting to see the benefits as well. Is this a trend that's going to impact on working from home and those kind of things? Yeah, look, I think there's probably two schools of thought here that people working from home is more efficient. They are able to spend more time at their working versus commuting. They probably have more energy because they're not sitting in traffic for a period of time. There's possibly a lot of evidence that says that people are more productive. I think on the flip side, there's a lot of companies that are experiencing real inefficiencies and teams being infected because they're not in the same space, not using each other's sounding boards. You know, you're not overhearing conversations that other people are having on the phone. So I think there are a space here where there's probably two sides to the story.

The reality is, though, that on the commercial property side, big commercial offices are going to really struggle going forward. I don't see big companies renting out entire buildings anymore. I think there's going to be a lot of rotational working from home in terms of teams, so teams will take turns working office and working from home. So I think you're going to really get into this hybrid space, which then presents a potential opportunity going forward in two spaces. The first one is in smaller commercial office spaces that allow more flexible working. And the second one is in properties that have that space for people to work. Because, you know, it's great working from home, but working from your kitchen counter. But you can only do that for so long. So I do see that where there was quite a hard level of demand, for example, for two-bed properties for a couple with a child, you're going to probably see that there will be a demand for three-bedroom flats for that same couple going forward and smaller homes with gardens and extra space for a study. So space, properties that have got that extra space to allow for work from home, living is going to become more popular. OK, that definitely makes sense.

This is What's Involved. It's proudly brought to you by Epic South Africa. My special guest is Gran Smee. When we come back, I want to ask you if there's another trend, but that can wait. We'll be back in just a bit. This is What's Involved. And we're back, What's Involved. It is proudly brought to you by Epic South Africa, the platform. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or an entrepreneur and you're looking for some coaching, some advice, that is the place to go. With me is Gran Smee. Gran, one of the things that I seem to have noticed, and I don't know if it's even a trend, but because of this need for more space, this working from home and not wanting to work, as you said, at your kitchen counter and maybe having a bit of a better view, people seem to be moving away from these high density areas and looking to move to more outlying areas. Is that just me or is that a thing? That's absolutely a thing. You know, there's a big movement in terms of cost emigration, so movement away from your big economic hub, Jobo, Pretoria families moving down more coastal regions. It was a trend for a good four, five, six years, sort of company directors, entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, moving either to Belita and Schlanger or moving to Cape Town.

But I think what we see now is there's more movement of your, not necessarily your company director, company owners, but even high level staff that are moving their families for lifestyle reasons and the ability now to work from home. They can live in places like George Mossel Bay, where there's a big boom in the property market there over the last few months. But also people moving away from real high density hubs, like you say, into sort of more outlying areas where there's more space, maybe a garden, bigger properties, cheaper rental, because they no longer have to worry about sitting in traffic for hours because that's a less frequent event, whereas it was generally protecting Jobo, the trend to move to spaces where you were much closer to the office and that then created spaces like your low end hills of the world, pause hall four ways, where real high density living because it puts you much closer to the employment hubs. - I'm very fortunate. I mean, I've never been one for traffic. It's just my road rage comes out in a very big way. And I will do anything I can to avoid having to go anywhere at rush hour of in any way, shape or form. But yeah, we're based on a plot in Pretoria East.

So it's around about 10 hectares of unspoilt African bush. So the view from our office is absolutely spectacular. And literally it's a very short commute for me to get to the office in the morning. So, yeah, that's one of the ways I've always been. And I just love it. It absolutely works for me. And as I said, I've noticed more and more people that are doing that. So it's definitely, as you say, a trend, but now the question, 'cause you guys do the commercial side of things as well. So what you said that interested me is there's a lot of these big commercial developments. They probably not going to be filled up. I mean, developers are not going to be able to go, "Well, there's an entire office block for you to rent." What are these guys doing about that? Are they doing anything? Are they changing the way they develop property these days? - So I think what we're seeing and it's particularly interesting. I'm in Joburg at the moment and we're staying in a really interesting hotel called Black Brick Hotel in Sandton. And I think we're going to see a trend towards that where there's going to be a taking of large office blocks, for example, that were created for offices and converting it into these multi-use spaces.

So the example of Black Brick Hotel, which again is actually, I mean, I've got no vested interest there. It's an incredible space. It's a really trendy, really good accommodation. They've got co-working space. They've got two little restaurants. They've got a gym. They've got a whole lot of stuff going on within that space that really makes it a community where you can actually live, work, play in this building. And I think you're going to see a big trend towards that over the next few years where these now white elephant office blocks are going to be converted into spaces where people can live, can work, can enjoy entertainment, can have leisure time, everything else, and have a really good lifestyle within this contained space. There are some really good developers doing a lot of that type of thing in Sandton. And I think it's quite exciting. That's going to then expand out from Sandton. Once pricing makes sense in other areas, it'll happen more and more. So I'm sure in the medium term, you're going to see a lot more of it happening in Cape Town CBD. I think, in fact, we are seeing it with the guys from neighborhood. They're doing some stuff in Cape Quarter. The Black Brick Group are also doing stuff in Cape Town already.

So I think we're going to see a big trend towards that, taking these large office blocks, turning them into multi-use spaces, but not multi-use in the old traditional sense of residential up top and retail at the bottom, real integrated multi-use spaces where you can literally live in one space, walk down the corridor, go to your shared office space, go upstairs, go to the gym, go to the swimming pool, go to the restaurant downstairs, all in one space. So I think anything's quite exciting. There's some really good guys doing some such interesting stuff at the moment. - Yeah, 'cause I see one of the things that you'd mentioned is one of the companies, the property companies, reached a billion rand in sales in 45 days. That was at a development incentive. - Yeah, so I mean, there's this again, this micro-living space. So I think we've spoken about it before, or one of the other podcasts, we talk about the micro-living. I think again, micro-living, which is living in smaller spaces and eliminating all the excess space that you have in a home, which gets rid of cost, makes it much more efficient living. And these guys are selling, I mean, you can buy a property from Black Brick, for example, in Cape Town for 800,000, we can buy an apartment to 850,000 in Cape Town CBD.

That's unheard of. And I think again, that's the type of thing that we're gonna see a lot more of is, and again, that's where these guys sold their billion rand with property in such a short period of time. It's again, that multi-use, multi-faceted buildings that provide small living accommodation, but meet all your needs, but then has that multi-use sort of aspect to it as well. - Yeah, but now the question I wanna ask is, is what are the guys doing, the big property guys that have now got office buildings that are standing and are not at peak occupancy? Because I know, you know, before it was a case of those, those places got premium rentals and they were full all the time. You know, you couldn't just get one. What are they doing? Are they kind of waking up and going, whoa, we have to take X office block now and we have to reconfigure it? - Yes, I really hope so. I think a lot of the big property owners are also a lot of the big REITs. So you've got a lot of South African money invested into these things, so I really hope they are being a bit more forward thinking and forward looking than they have been in the past. There are some really exciting REITs out there and I think they are quite aware that the market's changed substantially.

The interesting thing is you've had particularly pre-COVID, you had a lot of these shared office space companies starting and popping up. You had Garza spaces and you had Regis and they were starting to go into these office blocks already. So this isn't a big, the decline of a big office block isn't solely because of COVID. I think it was just a trend that was happening anyway and those companies had seen it coming. So they started putting in shared workspace, flexible workspace, flexible leases, much more flexible lease terms. But I think the big thing is they're going to have to start realizing that they can't rent out 2,000, 2,000 square meters to one business. It's gonna have to be to much smaller, more flexible companies as there's startups and allow people more flexible terms from their lease perspective. So I do think that they are investing in their spaces to make them again into this multi-use space. And then they're aligning, I mean, the example is in case I'm the guys that are aligned with neighborhood, they've gone to the experts in that multi-use property and they're getting the experts to come and invest and create the spaces for them. So I do think they're aware and they are changing their model to try and counter what's happening in the market, but they are gonna struggle because they are carrying a lot of stock, a lot of properties.

So it is gonna take time. All right, we are chatting to Grant Smee from Epic South Africa. Today we're talking properties. This is what's involved when we come back. Some more from Grant, we'll be finding out about, is this a buyer's market? Good time to look, where should we invest? Should we invest? All of that and more when we come back. And we're back with Grant Smee from Epic South Africa. We're talking property today. We've already discussed that a lot of first time home buyers are now being able to buy because of the interest rates. They've been able to buy properties. We've talked about this co-living and micro-living, which I find fascinating to sort of pare down and simplify. Definitely seems to be one of the trends, as you said, that people are moving towards. Grant, these lifestyle estates, is that part of this whole downscaling kind of thing or does that fit in somewhere else? - No, no, I think interesting Cosmopolitan developers out in sort of Jobig North at Ledzera area have just created a lifestyle estate, but focus more on the mid-market. And again, I think that's something we're gonna see a trend towards because again, the nature of working from home, people would like to live in a space where they feel secure, but they also have options in terms of, again, leisure and working in an environment, not necessarily in home, but maybe near to home.

So we definitely gonna see a trend in lifestyle estates and lifestyle estates focused on your more middle-class versus it only being high-end properties. So definitely gonna be a trend. It'll be interesting to see, for example, the Cosmopolitan development, the quality of the build, how much space is gonna be to make that viable development. But again, these guys have been around for such a long time, they know exactly where they're going. So it's definitely a trend that's gonna happen more and more. And also, particularly with a lot of people moving from Jobig to outlying areas, there's that expectation that they live in security environments. So when you move out to an area, for example, move from Jobig to Muscle Bay, the potential that there would be an increase in sort of lifestyle estate living there because of the expectations around security in particular. - It's interesting you mentioned Muscle Bay, because sure, a year, two years ago, somebody was talking about wanting to move there. And I was like, what on earth would you wanna go to Muscle Bay for? Nothing happens there and it happens very slowly. And yet now you're saying places like Muscle Bay are the places to go. Also, interestingly enough, a little while ago, I got to go and see an estate just outside of Pretoria.

And these guys have literally almost created like a little inland sea-stroke dam place with a beach and all of those amenities. There's a shopping center inside, there's a gym, there's a movie theater, all access controlled, there's business facilities, meeting rooms, and literally hundreds upon hundreds of units. And I think if you're into that kind of living and in that kind of space, that might be a great idea for you. I know when I had a look at it, I was like, ah, nope, too many people for me. It's all good and well having a beachy type place, but when it's just as crowded as other beaches, you don't necessarily want to go there if you as sort of introverted as I can be. But yeah, it definitely is one of those things. Now, Grant, if somebody's listening and they've been on the fence in terms of I have been renting, but if I do the math now, my rental is almost the same as if I'd actually owned this property. Now I'm paying off somebody else's property. Is this a good time to look at becoming a buyer? That's the first question. - So it's an interesting time to become a buyer is sort of the easiest answer. And the reason I say that, from the affordability point of view in terms of interest rates only, it's certainly more affordable than rental in general to buy a property now.

The problem with the difference between ownership and renting, however, is that there's a few other aspects. So from an ownership point of view, you take on the responsibility and ownership of their property. You take liability in terms of their property, but you also take on any maintenance that work that needs to be done there, as well as the rates in taxes and levies that are associated to the ownership of the property. So you can't only look at, only in straight terms, look at what are the levies on the property? What are the potential maintenance costs? What are the rates and taxes on the property? And account for all of that in terms of making the decision from a rent to buy scenario. You also need to consider your lifestyle. Are you gonna be in that area for years and years to come? Rental escalations are at an all-time low according to TPN. I mean, there's very few rental escalations happening at the moment because of the nature of the market we're in. So you know you're gonna sit in a space where your rent's gonna be pretty much the same for the next two, three years, whereas interest rates will have to start increasing. We're at an all-time low from the interest rate point of view.

And the next two, three years, they're almost certainly going to have to start increasing as inflation starts increasing when the markets or when the economy starts sort of hopefully getting going again. So you need to be aware now, you buy now, but in three years' time, interest rates are gonna go up. It's gonna make it more expensive. But you've gotta balance that off with the opportunity you're looking at. If there are properties in the market now that are discounted now, then two, three years' time will certainly increase in price, will be more valuable. And you then gotta look at the capital return that you make on that property versus the potential increase in costs later on. So it's not a simple rent or buy sort of question. It's more that you've gotta understand what are you looking for? How long are you gonna be there? What sort of flexibility do you need? Are you a married couple with our children now and you intend to having children and you need to expand, you need to grow? What are the things that make relevance to your lifestyle and your life going forward and that you need to take into account before you decide to buy? - Now, you see, that's the thing that you don't think about.

The other thing that crossed my mind is many, many, many, many years ago, when I bought my first property, we bought the property, interest rates were incredibly low. We looked at it and we were like, yep, we can do this. And then there was that surge in interest rates in this country that they went up to like stupid levels. And suddenly a home that was initially very, very affordable was happening no longer so. That's something that you need to think about as well. I know nobody has a crystal ball, but it's something you need to take into account.

- Yeah, I mean, you need to spend time investigating the market and really understanding better what you're getting yourself into, where you're going, and nobody has a ball. But if you're gonna buy a property and I mean, on the property investment side, you need to understand the market you're buying into the space, the area, the side of the street. You need to understand that so well that you can make a relatively decent go from the property perspective in spite of what happens in the economy. You've got to worry about things you can control, not things you can't control. - Now, would somebody like only realty, like you guys, only realty. If I came to you and said, listen, I'm looking to buy, but I need some advice. Is that something that you guys do? Would you say, hang on, you need to think about A, B, C, and D? - It's funny. It's definitely something that we've tried to focus on in terms of guiding people to where they need to go. We don't have all the properties in the market for sale. I'd love to say we do, but we don't have everything for sale that might meet your needs. But it's always something that I've always spoken to the guys a lot saying, we need to provide people with the right level of advice that suits their situation and works for them and is gonna put them in the best scenario going forward.

And lastly, we released a property investment series, which is free from an early realty perspective to just six hours of guidance and advice and information around investing in property, whether you're a home buyer or investor, just to sort of give you things to start thinking about when you want to actually get on the property ladder. So yeah, so it's definitely something we do. We train our guys to understand property investment as well as home buying. And I got, generally speaking, our team all have the same sort of values and approach to the market and our clients and understanding that we just need to help people first and foremost. And then we can do business later once there's sort of real trust in that relationship. - Which I think is fantastic because again, sometimes you get the feeling that the estate agent wants to just make the sale and all they can see is the dollar signs. Grant, we're gonna be wrapping up shortly. One question before we go to a break though, if you are a property investor or maybe you just have a second home that you've been renting out, talk to me about good tenants. And before we get there, let me just tell you this, I've had to sort of move my living space away from the plot and we now stay in a secure complex.

I need to look after my mom and my sister. We signed up last year when we moved in and the initial lease was for six months. And at the beginning of this year now, we got this letter where they were saying, "Okay, your rental's going up." And it was going up about, I don't know, call it one and a half thousand rent a month. And I looked at this and I thought, that's a bit cheeky. So I just mailed them back and I said, "Listen, we actually have a good tenants. We paid you, we paid you more than you wanted for the deposit, we pay you on time, every time. If you're not going to make it that extra one and a half thousand rent a month, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to meet my obligations there. Would you guys be prepared to sort of not escalate the rental?" And without hesitation, they came back and they went, "Yeah, okay, no problem. We'll keep it like that for now." So I think it was a bit cheeky that they asked in the first place, but I suppose nothing ventured, nothing gained. But how important is a good tenant? - Yeah, look, I mean, the most expensive single-line item in property investment is an empty property. Because that property, whether it's empty or whether it's got a tenant is incurring costs, be it your bond, be it your maintenance costs, levy rates and taxes.

There's costs associated to holding a property. So the minute you're not getting an income, whether it's vacant or you've got a non-paying tenant in there, that's the most expensive thing for any property investor. So a good tenant is worth their weight, worth multiples of their weight in gold, because once you've got a good tenant, you really don't want to be escalating the rental to a space where they now want to look at other options. You really want somebody in there that's paying regularly to make sure that you're having your costs at least from that perspective. So yeah, I mean, good tenants are really, really important. I think part of the problem on this is people get desperate. So when they go into the property and buy a property, they don't understand the costs of owning a property firstly. Secondly, they don't put aside reserves to see themselves through the lean months, the months where there's no rental coming in or there's no tenant property. So they get desperate and then they just would tend to accept anybody that is willing to apply that looks half decent. And although might not meet all your criteria, meet the criteria that they're willing to pay at least first month's rent, because in the short term, that's what you need covered.

And you end up sitting with a really bad tenant or non-paying tenant. So not rushing into a tenancy is important, making sure you do your vetting well, 'cause prevention is better than cure, making sure that this tenant who's coming in from what you can see all the best evidence available is going to make payment, is able to make payment and has always made payments in their past. It gives you the best chance of securing the best tenant. Part two problem here is that we've gone through an environment where a lot of people have defaulted on credit cards or everything else. So credit rating might not look as good as it has before. And we see loads of people who have got much worse credit rating than in the past, but that's just the nature of the environment. You can't, although it's always ideal to get the person with the best credit rating, that's not always gonna be the person with the best or the person that's the best tenant, because your credit rating isn't directly affected by your non-payment of rental, that it's the non-payment of loans, of credit cards, all those other things that affect your credit rating, whereas being a non-paying tenant doesn't directly affect your credit rating.

So you wouldn't necessarily see that in a credit check. So don't place all your eggs into the fact that they're an A-rated tenant from credit rating perspective.

You might find the guy who gets a B or C is actually potentially a better tenant because of this situation, but it has something to happen in the past that has affected their rating. So yeah, I mean, good tenants is paramount in terms of investing in property. And it's important that you take your time when you're getting somebody into your property. - And also I would say, 'cause I've seen this now in the complex that I'm currently living in, make sure that the person who signs the lease is at the very least the person who's going to be living in the property and that they're not signing a lease on behalf of 17 of their closest friends. Just something I've noticed as well. It is what's involved, probably brought to you by Epic South Africa. If you wanna find out more about property, property investment, entrepreneurship in general, epicsouthafrica.com is the place to go. We'll be wrapping it up with Grant Smee when we come back. And we're back. This is what's involved, proudly brought to you by Epic South Africa. Go to epicsouthafrica.com. My special guest, Grant Smee. Grant, we've spoken about a lot of things on this particular program. One of the things though, that if you are of an entrepreneurial mindset or maybe you're interested in investing in property, this year of 2021, distressed properties, auctions of properties, is that happening?

Is this a good time to buy in terms of that? - Yes, I mean, there is going to be quite a lot of distressed property coming up to the market. There'll be the auctions prior to reposition

and then you have your reposition auctions later on. So there are gonna be properties that are coming in the market where people have approached the banks and said, listen, I'm in trouble. And now they may need to sell their property and they're working with the bank to sell. So, yeah, there's definitely gonna be that space becoming more and more active quite soon. And there's certain opportunities there. You just need to be careful that you're not buying from somebody who's put in position that they have to sell, but they don't necessarily want to move. So that is one of the risks in terms of buying those properties with people who are in financial trouble and are having to sell because of their situation.

- So you're going to explain to me what that means though, because it's like they, you just mentioned there, they have to sell it, but don't want to move. What sort of impact would you have on you then? - Yeah, so I mean, when you get into an auction environment where the owner is still living in the property, but it's being forced to sell their property because of their situation, it's usually a court order that's making them sell and that's where it gets to auction. And then there's a situation where the property gets sold at auction, but they as a homeowner and obviously are either in disagreement with the bank or disagreement with the fact that they need to move or they're in a situation, then they don't want to move. So you get yourself into a place where you bought a property potentially, where you don't have to, we don't have access to the property because the guards are not willing to move. So it is a risk and you would then have to go through an eviction process, which can be quite honest because you could be potentially evicting the homeowners is a very, very emotive space. And it's not for everybody and it can be quite difficult to do because you're dealing with the emotions of somebody who's effectively losing their home.

Unfortunately, the nature of the economy right now means that this is gonna become more prevalent, people are gonna lose their homes and it is an opportunity for property investors, but it is a space where you need to be quite considerate of the fact that people are losing their homes.

- Would this be something where that if somebody joined Epic South Africa, for example, and said, look, we've got some cash for whatever reason, and we're looking to invest, would this be the platform epic.africa.com where we could talk about things like this with like-minded people like yourself? - Yeah, so we've got investors who have looked into that space and in fact, one of my business partners was actively involved in that environment for good number of years. So from an expertise perspective, absolutely can come into Epic South Africa, ask questions, get guidance, get information in terms of going down that road. We don't obviously attend the auctions, everything else, but we do provide sort of insight into what could be the pitfalls of going there, where the opportunities are and what you should be careful of when going to these auctions for these type of properties. And then we do have Epic South Africa's got fortunately, or unfortunately, some of the best eviction attorneys in the country, we do partner with them. So we can point you in the right direction should you have that need as well. - Wonderful stuff. Now, so to wrap it up, as I understand it, if your income is secure, you have been a renter and you're now looking to get onto that property ladder, this could be a good time.

If you are looking to sort of, what did you call it? Semigrate, this also could be a good time to do that. Although investors, where are investors? Is it a case of investors proceed cautiously?

Your returns are not gonna be great. I'm assuming this time of the year.

- Returns by nature of property aren't amazing anyway. So I mean, if you look at buying the assets you're gonna buy is either a business that does cashflow, you get much higher return buying a business potentially than you would in property. But obviously in terms of property, buying bricks and mortar, it's generally lower risk. So therefore the returns are lower. So investors, I think are looking at opportunities with anything, the devil's in the detail. So it's not like they're jumping head or feet first into the space and just going first or jumping head first. And it's sort of dipping their toe in the water, analyzing the deals, taking a look at the numbers, watching the economy, looking at the area, looking at the tenant base, 'cause your tenants differ in areas and in terms of properties and just going down a road of making really prudent decisions. I think be careful of running into a space

where you're following the harps, massive, and I think this story is not massive harp around student accommodation and everyone's considering accommodation, you make such amazing money. And then the pandemic came and a lot of the students just went home and were paying rent. And those guys who invested heavily into student accommodation were then burnt because there just wasn't any money coming in. So be quite careful of the economic environment. Be quite careful of jumping head first into properties. We think there might be a massive opportunity without running your numbers and understanding what you're in for. So yeah, so the investors are investing definitely, but they are being quite cautious. - Fantastic stuff. And with that, we now come to the end of this particular episode of "What's Involved?" Grant, thank you so much. If people are wanting to find out a little bit more, get a little bit more detail, they can just go to the Epic South Africa website.

Oh, well, it looks like we've lost Grant. So thank you, Grant, and we do appreciate that. So check it out, epics.africa.com. You can also email Grant directly, Grant. (indistinct)

Or if they want to chat to me directly, my email address is [email protected].