How semigration keeps reshaping SA’s rental markets

Tenants and homebuyers are on the move, and it’s reshaping rental markets in the Western Cape and elsewhere in South Africa.

A new report from Wise Move shows that the Western Cape received more net migration than any other province in 2024. A massive 32.4% of all interprovincial movers headed there, increasing demand for housing.

Gauteng had the highest net emigration of any province. 22.7% of 2024 movers were leaving the province, while just 12.7% moved there from elsewhere. That’s a reversal of the trend from a couple of years, when Gauteng was a big beneficiary of semigration.

One of the big factors pointed to by analysts is a decline in working from home. Movers are mostly heading to cities with strong employment markets including Cape Town and Johannesburg. Career opportunities were the most common reason given for why people moved, reported by 22.9% of movers.

Rental market effects

Wise Move’s report didn’t look at tenants specifically, but 2024’s semigration patterns are reflected in PayProp’s rental market statistics.

The Western Cape had the fastest rental growth in South Africa in two quarters of 2024, and experienced double-digit rental growth in Q4 despite already having the highest rents in the country. Meanwhile, Gauteng experienced below-average growth in every quarter of 2024.

But internal migration doesn’t tell the full story. Limpopo’s incoming and outgoing migration balanced each other out over the same period, and yet rental growth in the province boomed in 2024.

Whatever additional factors affect local supply, demand and pricing, it remains to be seen if the same migration trends will continue in 2025. Meanwhile, rental growth in the Western Cape slowed from 10.1% in Q4 2024 to 9.6% in Q1 2025, and preliminary PayProp Rental Index figures for Q2 show it has fallen further.

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