BUSINESS INSIGHTS: The Joburg home funding the Cape Town lifestyle

Despite what many Capetonians may believe, it is Joburgers, not foreign digital nomads, who have made up a large share of new arrivals to the city over the past six years, as semigration has continued long after the work-from-home shift that helped accelerate it during the pandemic.

But while Joburgers have flocked to the Mother City in droves, a growing number are leaving something significant behind: their family home, which they’re choosing to keep while renting in Cape Town.

When you look at what’s been happening in both property markets, this logic makes sense.

Gauteng has spent years delivering relatively underwhelming house price growth compared with the Western Cape. For a homeowner with a large property in a sought-after Joburg suburb, putting it up for sale in the current market can feel like a waste – you’re not going to get what you feel it’s worth.

And if you can rent it out and use that income to help cover your accommodation costs in Cape Town until the inland market strengthens, why would you sell?

Why sell if the numbers say wait?

Keeping the Joburg property becomes even easier to justify when you look at the rental market against house price inflation.

Rental demand in the city has strengthened over the past 18 months, with recent industry data putting average yields on A-grade apartment blocks at 8.1% in Johannesburg compared with 7.3% in Cape Town.

When it comes to larger family homes, the shortage of properties available for sale is creating increased demand for rentals. Financial Mail found that across nine sought-after suburbs, the number of houses advertised for sale reportedly fell from 127 in December 2025 to just 68 by July this year. Yet prices have not responded in the way basic supply-and-demand economics would suggest.

Stats SA data shows Johannesburg house prices were rising about 4% year-on-year in early 2026, compared with double-digit growth in Cape Town. That’s a strong argument for waiting it out until the property market rebalances and sellers have the upper hand.

From family home to income-producing asset

Thus, the Joburg home no longer becomes a burden weighed down by a stagnant market. Instead, it can become an income-producing property that helps fund the owner’s new life 1 400 kilometres away.

And as we all know, that income is necessary – because living in Cape Town does not come cheap.

In the CBD, a two-bedroom apartment is approaching an average monthly rental of R33 500 – roughly double what it would have cost six years ago. Make that a family home in the City Bowl, Southern Suburbs or Atlantic Seaboard and R35k per month looks like a bargain.

So for a household that can generate meaningful rental income from a paid-off or low-bond Joburg property, holding onto it may effectively subsidise the Cape Town premium.

But don’t confuse rental income with free money

There is, however, a very big difference between the rent you charge and the amount that actually lands in your pocket.

Landlords still need to account for letting-agent fees, rates, levies (where applicable), insurance, repairs, maintenance, and periods when the property sits empty. Managing a property from another province can also make an agent or reliable property manager less of a nice-to-have and more of a necessity, particularly when something goes wrong unexpectedly.

And the strategy becomes particularly uncomfortable if you are renting an expensive Cape Town home while simultaneously covering a Joburg bond during a vacancy.

Before deciding to hold onto the property, I would run the numbers against the alternative: selling it, releasing the equity and using that capital to reduce your Cape Town housing costs.

Emotion should not make that decision for you. Neither should the belief that your Joburg house is “worth” a certain amount simply because you do not like the offers currently being made.

Maybe the real shift is that moving cities no longer requires making a clean break with the property market you leave behind. For some Joburg homeowners, the smartest move may be to let one city pay for the other. That only works if the numbers genuinely stack up, but in the current market, selling up is no longer the obvious next step.