A report for the buyer’s everyday life
HomeBuyer helps South African homebuyers investigate the ongoing costs and local context of a property. The report combines your assumptions with clearly attributed public information. It is independent of property advertising.
An example report is an illustration of the workflow. Its address, price, bills, approximate map pin, photography and architectural model are not a verified listing or survey.
What the ownership budget calculates
Monthly bond repayments use a standard amortisation formula: principal × monthly interest rate ÷ (1 − (1 + monthly interest rate) raised to the negative number of months). At zero interest, principal is divided by the number of months.
We add your rates, levies, utilities, home insurance, maintenance reserve and commute allowance. The default annual interest rate of 10.75% is an editable assumption, not a live prime-rate feed or lender quote.
- Principal is your purchase price less your deposit.
- The commute allowance is one-way kilometres × 2 × workdays × your cost per kilometre.
- The initial maintenance reserve uses an illustrative 1% of the purchase price per year. After that, it is your editable monthly amount.
- Income share divides the monthly estimate by the take-home income you enter. It is not a lending or affordability recommendation.
- Transfer duty, conveyancing, bond registration and other once-off purchase costs are outside the monthly estimate.
- The rate scenarios add one and two percentage points to your annual rate, keeping other monthly expenses constant. Each assumes that rate for the whole term; total interest and repayments exclude fees and extra repayments.
Addresses, maps and nearby places
Live address search uses Photon’s OpenStreetMap index. Maps use OpenStreetMap tiles. New addresses request named schools, health services, shops, parks and railway stations through the public Overpass service. Coverage and third-party availability vary. A school map pin does not confirm admission, catchment or quality. Live place results record a retrieval date; older example places have no recorded retrieval date.
Example reports contain an attributed snapshot of named places. Nearby distances are calculated from coordinates and are approximate straight-line distances, not walking routes or traffic estimates. Always check the property pin and actual route.
Municipal evidence has a date
National Treasury Municipal Money provides audit history and seven financial indicators for all eight metropolitan municipalities. The latest audit in this snapshot is financial year 2023/24. Retrieved 2026-10-13; the publisher supplies a quarter update notice, not an exact publication date. Each indicator retains its own reporting year, source unit and missing values.
Financial indicators cover cash balance, cash coverage, the current ratio, revenue collection, operating and capital budget variance, and repairs and maintenance. Negative budget variance means underspending. Source values outside an expected range remain visible with a verification note. Treasury says its latest data is being verified for completeness and integrity. The figures are not property bills or service forecasts.
City labels are matched exactly to known metro names and aliases. This is an indication from the geocoder, not a verified municipal boundary. Confirm the municipality from the seller’s account; ambiguous suburbs and unmatched cities remain unresolved.
An audit opinion is evidence about financial governance for a reporting period. It does not guarantee service delivery, infrastructure condition, tariffs or future municipal performance. A verified audit snapshot is not available for every municipality in this MVP.
A separate purchase-tax estimate
The budget tab estimates transfer duty separately from monthly ownership costs using the SARS table effective 2026-04-01, updated 2026-02-25 and retrieved 2026-10-13. The assumed taxable value is the entered purchase price, before any deposit deduction. SARS states that the April 2026 table is unchanged from April 2025.
Use the acquisition agreement date. This snapshot supports dates from 1 April 2026 through today. The estimate is withheld for unsupported dates, possible exemptions or VAT transactions, and when the source has not been checked for more than 90 days. Confirm taxable value, any exemption and the applicable rates with your conveyancer.
Add written quotes for conveyancing and transfer, bond registration and lender fees, moving, immediate repairs and other upfront costs. Enter totals including VAT where charged and avoid counting duty twice. Unknown quotes stay blank; zero means you confirmed no cost applies. The known subtotal stays incomplete until all quotes and duty are resolved. Allow for additional costs identified by your advisers.
Police records describe a precinct
The Observatory example uses Woodstock SAPS. Cape Town Data says that station covers Woodstock, Salt River, Observatory and Walmer Estate. Its residential break-in series, and the seven recorded categories for the latest July–June year, are a secondary aggregation of SAPS records, retrieved 2026-10-13, with release date 2026-08-28. Reporting periods run July–June.
The primary SAPS download was unavailable during retrieval. The report makes that verification limit visible and links to both the aggregation and official SAPS statistics.
Parkview SAPS is the named station near the Parkhurst example, and Brooklyn SAPS in Pretoria near the Menlo Park example, using OpenStreetMap locations. No verified time series is stored for those stations. Umhlanga is left without a station until the boundary is confirmed.
Precinct counts do not measure the safety of an individual street or property. We do not assign an address-level safety score. Compare the same crime category and reporting period, verify the precinct, visit at different times and speak to neighbours and the local community policing forum.
What needs another source or a professional check
This MVP does not provide a licensed valuation, historic deeds transactions, legal-title verification, a building survey or exact address-level crime prediction. Those questions need additional data or an appropriate professional.
Use recent municipal accounts, levy statements, an insurance quote, a lender quote and an independent inspection when reviewing a purchase. No report can substitute for all of these checks.
Pricing and your browser’s data
The intended future report range is R99–R299. The current MVP offers free early access: payment processing is not connected and no action charges you.
Saved comparisons, budgets and checklists stay in this browser’s local storage. New saves capture the calculated costs, scenarios, tax table, municipal source data, available crime series and checklist at that time. A saved PDF uses this evidence even after a later source update; it is a dated record, not a fresh assessment. Older saves have no historical evidence and their exports say they use current sources. Updating a save replaces its previous snapshot.
Choose two or three saved homes to compare costs, source periods and remaining checks. Export the comparison PDF to share it with someone you trust. There is no account, cloud sync, public report link or cloud report storage. Removing a saved home deletes that copy from this browser; downloaded files need to be deleted separately.
Address search sends your query to Photon. Nearby-place requests send coordinates to Overpass. Map requests go to OpenStreetMap. These public services apply their own privacy and usage policies.
The report workspace is marked noindex. That is a discovery setting, not access control. Public robots and AI guide files contain product documentation only, never saved reports or personal financial inputs.
Follow the sources
Check the period, definitions and coverage before using a number to make a decision.