According to Thozama Mochadibane, Head: Customer Delight at Nedbank Home Loans, the bank’s support of the Khaya Lam (my home) initiative is a demonstration of its commitment to delivering on its purpose to use its financial expertise to do good for individuals, families, businesses and communities.

“Property ownership is a vital cornerstone of personal wellbeing and wealth creation,” Mochadibane explains, “so by partnering with Khaya Lam to enable more South Africans to legally take ownership of homes they are renting from councils, Nedbank is effectively giving those new property owners the foundations they need to achieve a better future.”

The Khaya Lam project has the ultimate goal of transferring between five- and seven million title deeds from the councils that currently own rental properties to the individuals and families who are renting them. While many of these families have the right to request that their ownership status of these properties be upgraded to full freehold title, the process is typically very lengthy, complicated and often too expensive for most of the parties involved.

The Khaya Lam pilot project is targeting the transfer of 17 000 properties owned by the Ngwathe council in the Free State to tenants currently residing in those properties. The project has already resulted in the successful transfer of more than 1 400 of the homes, effectively removing the onerous usage restrictions these tenants have had to live under and significantly transforming their lives and futures as the new owners.

“The success already achieved with the pilot project offers proof of the viability of the Khaya Lam initiative as a way of facilitating large-scale transfers of title deeds,” Mochadibane says, “and Nedbank’s financial support of the project will help secure the transfer of at least another 100 title deeds, thereby ensuring that full ownership of these properties is handed over to their occupants early in 2019.”

“We fully support Khaya Lam’s vision to ‘normalise society’ by ensuring that every tenant in a council-owned property is afforded security of tenure through ownership,” she concludes, “and we believe that this logical, legal, and systematic approach to property ownership is a highly effective way of helping more South Africans leverage home ownership as a way of accessing the opportunities they deserve for a better future.”