About us

An advice office that keeps a research file.

The Tenure Support Centre was established in 2018 in Khayelitsha. It is an action-research project: the casework is the point, and so is what the casework teaches about the system the cases run through.

01 — The project

Who runs it, and where it sits.

The TSC is a joint initiative of the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) and 71point4, a data science consultancy. It began as a pilot with an office in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, set up to make the formal residential property market work for households in the affordable market — people buying and selling houses that the formal system was not reaching.

It was first called the Transaction Support Centre. The name changed to the Tenure Support Centre, and the letters stayed the same.

FNB made space available for the Centre to operate from in the FNB Khayelitsha Mall, which is where it works from today. Being inside the mall matters more than it sounds: the office is where people already go, rather than somewhere they have to be told about.

Action research, not only advice

Alongside responding to individual clients, the Centre runs projects aimed at the structural problems underneath the cases — the administrative steps that stall, the documents nobody can obtain, the transfers that were never completed at scale.

02 — Why it matters

The size of the problem, in numbers.

Figures published by CAHF for the position at the end of 2017, when the Centre was set up.

6.3m Formal residential properties on the deeds registry

60% Of them valued below R600,000

35% Entry-level properties valued below R300,000

1.8m Registered properties that are RDP houses, by CAHF's estimate

The property market at the affordable end is large and busy. What holds it back is not a lack of buyers or sellers. It is that the transactions run into the same four barriers, over and over.

Not being able to get a clean title deed
Formal transactions that take too long
The cost of selling formally, relative to selling informally
Very limited mortgage finance at this end of the market

Behind those barriers is a single idea, and it is the reason this project exists: housing is more than shelter. Its value depends on being able to use it — to sell it, to borrow against it, to pass it on.

A house without a title deed cannot do any of that. The household is secure in the sense that it has a roof; it is not secure in the sense that it has an asset.

03 — Support

Who has funded and supported the work.

The Centre is funded by donors and supported in kind.

From the start

Cities Support Programme & National Treasury

The Centre was launched in 2018 with funding and support from the Cities Support Programme and National Treasury.

Running costs

Oppenheimer Generations Fund

Operations are currently funded with support from the Oppenheimer Generations Fund.

In kind

FNB

FNB made space available for the Centre to operate from in the FNB Khayelitsha Mall.

Earlier funding

TUHF & uMastandi

The Trust for Urban Housing Finance and uMastandi have provided funding during the Centre's operation.

Documentation

Cities Alliance

Funding from the Cities Alliance supported documentation of the Centre's learnings and strategy in 2019 and 2020.

Delivery

Partner conveyancers

The legal work of lodgement and transfer is done with partner conveyancers, with the Centre coordinating the case.

04 — Publications

What the casework has produced.

Reports, toolkits and learning material written from the cases, published openly.

Primary Transfer Toolkit — Toolkit
A practical guide to transferring subsidy housing into the name of the household living in it, with a learning series built around it.
From Counting Houses to Making Houses Count — Report
On the gap between counting the houses that have been built and delivering the secure tenure that makes them assets.
Housing Accounting: Quantifying the Title Deeds Backlog in South Africa — Study
An attempt to establish how many houses are occupied but not registered.
Lessons from the Tenure Support Centre — five years on — Report
What five years of casework in Khayelitsha showed.
The TSC: Lessons Learned and a Way Forward — Report
The Centre's own account of the pilot, published in 2020, and what it proposed should happen next.
Formalising property market activity: an overview of the TSC — Briefing
An overview of what the Centre does.
Learning sessions: informal sales, and deceased estates — Learning
Written-up sessions on informal sales, and on deceased estates.
The Residential Resale Market in Delft, Western Cape — Study
A study of how the resale market works in Delft.
How to buy and sell property the right way — Guide
A brochure and an infographic setting out the steps required for buying or selling a house.

The documents themselves are held in the project library on CAHF's site: the Tenure Support Centre project page (on housingfinanceafrica.org, an external site).