Rental Yield & Returns in South Africa
What a property will actually earn you, from the first yield calculation to what it looks like five years in. Four calculators, real city data, no guesswork.
Quick Answer
Anything above 8% gross, at today's prime rate of 10.50%, gets you close to cash-flow neutral. Below 6%, expect to top the bond up from your own pocket most months. Run your own numbers below, then check them against what real properties are earning by city further down.
Ask ten property investors what yield they're getting and you'll get ten different answers to ten different questions. One means gross rent over price. Another's already factored in vacancy and a managing agent's cut. A third is really talking about total return once the bond's in the picture. None of them are wrong — they're just answering different things.
That's the problem with treating "yield" as one number. A real decision needs four: what the property earns today, what it actually returns once financing is in, what happens to that return as rent climbs over the next five years, and whether a student let changes the maths entirely. Below is each one, explained plainly, with the tool to run your own figures and what real properties in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban are yielding right now.
What Yield Actually Means for Your Bottom Line
Gross yield is the easy one: annual rent divided by what you paid. A R1.5 million flat renting at R12,000 a month works out to 9.6% gross — which looks great until you subtract the 5–8% you'll lose to vacancy over a year, the 8–10% a managing agent takes, plus rates, insurance and maintenance. Net yield accounts for all of that, and it usually lands 2–4 percentage points below the gross figure. Compare net yield when you're weighing up two properties, not gross — gross yield hides exactly the costs that decide whether a deal actually works.
Work out both figures on your own numbers in under a minute.
Rental Yield Calculator →The Number That Matters Once There's a Bond Involved
Yield alone doesn't tell you what you're earning on your own money. Put down a R300,000 deposit and finance the rest, and your real return is measured against that R300,000 — not the full purchase price. Net the bond repayment, rates and maintenance off the rent coming in, and the picture can look very different from the gross yield you started with. A property yielding a modest 6% gross can still deliver a strong return if it's financed well. One yielding 9% can lose you money every month if the repayment outpaces the rent.
See the return on your actual cash in the deal, not just the purchase price.
Property ROI Calculator →What That Return Looks Like Five Years From Now
A yield calculation is a snapshot of today. Rent typically escalates 6–8% a year in most SA leases, and your costs climb too — rates, levies, insurance, maintenance, all of it. Run the numbers forward and a property with a mediocre first-year yield can outperform a stronger starting point within three or four years, purely because escalations compound. The reverse holds just as well: a strong year-one number means nothing if costs are climbing faster than the rent you're able to charge. We've broken down exactly what drives those rising costs in Real Costs of Rental Property.
Model your return over a 3–10 year hold, not just year one.
Rental Escalation Calculator →Student and Shared Lets Don't Play by the Same Rules
A student property can show an excellent headline yield and still underperform a family home, because the maths behind it is different. Higher turnover. A vacancy gap between academic years that a standard calculator won't account for. Rooms let individually rather than one lease covering the whole unit. The Student Yield Calculator builds all of that in instead of assuming a normal 12-month tenancy — worth running before you compare a student block against anything else on this page.
Adjusted for academic-year vacancy and per-room letting, not a standard lease.
Student Yield Calculator →What Yield Actually Looks Like, City by City
None of the calculators above tell you what's realistic for a given city — that's where actual market data earns its place. The ranges below come from Global Property Guide's H1 2026 figures, and the spread within a single city is often wider than the gap between cities.
| Metro | Gross Yield | Net Yield (indicative) |
|---|---|---|
| Cape Town | 4–7% | 3–5.5% |
| Johannesburg | 5.5–13% (varies sharply by suburb — Sandton ~5.5%, East Rand up to 13%) | 4–10% |
| Durban | 10–14% (inner suburbs) | 7–10% |
| National average (H1 2026) | ≈11.53% gross | — |
Durban's inner suburbs currently out-yield Cape Town by close to double. Johannesburg's own range — 5.5% in Sandton against 13% on the East Rand — is wider than the gap between any two cities on this table. Suburb, not city, is usually the number that decides whether a deal works. The full suburb-level breakdown is in our Rental Yields by City guide, and if you're planning further ahead than this year's buy, our 2027 yield outlook covers where that's heading.
Source: Global Property Guide, H1 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Four tools: the Rental Yield Calculator for a quick gross-and-net figure, the Property ROI Calculator for the fuller return including financing costs, the Rental Escalation Calculator to model how rent growth changes your return over a multi-year hold, and the Student Yield Calculator, which adjusts for the different vacancy and turnover patterns of student and shared accommodation.
Gross yield is annual rent divided by purchase price. Net yield deducts vacancy (typically 5–8%), management fees (8–10%), rates, insurance and maintenance — usually reducing gross yield by 2–4 percentage points depending on the suburb. Always compare net yield when weighing up two properties, since gross yield alone hides how much day-to-day cost a specific building or area carries.
At the current prime lending rate of 10.50%, a gross yield above 8% is generally needed to approach cash-flow neutrality on an 80–90% bonded property. Below 6% gross, the property will typically need a monthly subsidy from your own income. 6–8% is the common middle ground most SA buy-to-let properties sit in, with the shortfall offset by capital growth over time.
Enormously. Within Johannesburg alone, yields range from around 5.5% in Sandton to 13% in the East Rand — a wider spread than the difference between Cape Town's and Johannesburg's city-wide averages. Suburb-level data matters far more than city-level averages when evaluating a specific investment.
A single yield snapshot only reflects year one. The Rental Escalation Calculator models how compounding rent increases (and rising costs) change your return over a 3–10 year hold, which matters more the longer you plan to keep the property — a modest first-year yield can still produce a strong multi-year return if escalations outpace your costs.