Here's how much South Africans are paying to rent a home
Rentals between R3,000 and R4,500 increased from 3.72% to 3.81%, also below the national average.
Image: Freepik
As the cost of renting a home runs ahead of inflation, more South Africans are slipping behind on payments, with lower-income tenants hardest hit.
TPN Credit Bureau said in its latest report that non-payment climbed to 6.15% in the third quarter, from 6% in the previous three months. TPN called this “a warning sign as the market heads into the high-risk fourth quarter”.
Performance varies sharply across provinces. The Western Cape remains strongest with 87.82% of tenants in good standing, even after a slight decline. KwaZulu-Natal is the weakest at 76.81%.
Courts have granted civil judgments totalling R2.75 billion for rental debt since the start of 2015 to the end of August, said TPN. Historic data shows the final quarter is notorious for higher rental and debt defaults.
Waldo Marcus, director of Corporate Marketing at MRI Software, said that “this deceleration suggests that cracks are beginning to show in consumer household budgets amid depressed economic and employment growth”.
The average value of a rental civil judgment has soared by 182.67% over the past decade, from the first quarter of 2015 to the third quarter of 2025, said Marcus.
He added that “what is clear is that there is a complex interplay between continued rental growth, rental escalations and the stability of tenant payment behaviour”.
Rental escalations continue to outpace the Consumer Price Index. TPN said the national average rental rose from R9,308.68 in the second quarter to R9,446.43 in the third quarter of 2025.
Escalations increased from 4.62% to 4.76% across sectional and full-title units.
Lower-value rentals are rising fastest. Units costing less than R1,500 a month jumped from 6.33% to 7.86% in the third quarter, said Marcus.
Marcus said these increases reflect the lower escalations landlords applied in 2023.
Rentals between R1,500 and R3,000 a month are following the same pattern, but more slowly, rising from 4.33% to 4.49% — still below the national average.
At the higher end of the affordable category, rentals between R3,000 and R4,500 increased from 3.72% to 3.81%, also below the national average.
“CPI has been showing an upward trend since May 2025, which does not bode well for consumers who are highly indebted and have limited room for income growth in the immediate future,” said Marcus.
Although consumers are improving their repayment behaviour, higher reliance on personal debt persists, said Marcus.
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