Founders of E-Deed say their model can unlock about R3-trillion in equity in properties in townships and the former homelands.

Owners of RDP houses and other township properties have a new way to leverage the equity in their homes thanks to a digital platform that harnesses a range of tech solutions from AI to satellite imagery and blockchain to certify their value.

Lance Chalwin-Milton, founder of E-Deed, told Business Times that the platform enables insurers to determine the “insurable interest” of rural and township homes, giving the owners a true valuation of their assets. He estimates the total value of the market at R3-trillion.

“When Covid hit, I was looking to create as [much] broad-based wealth as I could, and that wealth sits in people’s homes, and it should be recognised … by all the institutions and all of the insurers and everyone,” he said.

This would allow these long-marginalised homeowners, when they approach banks for loans or insurers for coverage, to be treated “the same way as you and I are, and they are not at the moment.”

E-Deed’s valuation process should also help homeowners get a fair price if they want to sell their property, Chalwin-Milton said.

Just over one in 10 homes in South Africa — 11.5% — are mortaged, and even fewer have insurance cover.

They’re aware of the size of the market, they’re aware of what’s going on in these communities, but they’ve not managed to actually get in there
—  Lance Chalwin-Milton

“I think that it’s criminal that our institutions and insurers don’t actually go into these areas and see what [the value is]. They’re aware of it. They’re aware of the size of the market, they’re aware of what’s going on in these communities, but they’ve not managed to actually get in there.”

Chalwin-Milton said E-Deed was 98% accurate in its valuations. Once a valuation had been arrived at, the platform minted a non-fungible token (NFT) that acted as a title for the property.

GG Alcock, founder of the Kasinomics consultancy and co-founder of E-Deed, said homeowners in township areas invested in their homes through stokvels and lay-by purchases, but until now there had been no way to capture this enhanced value.

“We have a large number of township houses, you know, the original amafour-room [matchbox] houses that were built by the government in the apartheid days… You received a township certificate, and you rented those houses. In the early 1990s, most of the houses were owned by the people, and those, to a large extent, became family homes,“ Alcock said.

“And what we see is that, despite the fact that they don’t have title, there’s been massive investment into those homes by homeowners. So the amafour-room is now amadouble-storey, amabig-house, and so on, and people have extended. And because they don’t have [a] title deed, they have not been able to get loans on that property.”

Alcock said that in the rural areas of the former homelands, there were more houses worth upwards of R1.5m in building materials alone than there were in the Cape Town metro, Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek combined.

“We have this extraordinary thing that South Africans have been doing with no form of title deed, no form of formal finance, no form of home insurance, and they, in essence, can’t access this despite the fact that they have continued to invest, that they’re illustrating ownership, that they’re illustrating extraordinary financial resilience.”
The residential property price index (RPPI) report for August 2025 released by StatsSA said annual national residential property price inflation was 5.8% that month, up from 5.6% the previous month.

The fastest property price inflation was recorded in the Western Cape (8.6%) and Gauteng (3.7%), the report said. Year on year, the index for all metropolitan areas rose 5.5% in August 2025.

“The main contributors … were the City of Cape Town with 8.5% and contributing 3.1 percentage points, Ekurhuleni with 5.9% and contributing 0.6 of a percentage point, and the City of Johannesburg with 3.1% and contributing 0.6 of a percentage point.”

Source & Credit: Sunday Times