South Africa: R9,462 Rent, R6,500 Income, the Maths That Doesn't Add Up

The PayProp Rental Index puts South Africa's average monthly rent at R9,462, based on formal rental transactions nationally.

In Khayelitsha, one of the country's biggest townships, almost 60% of households earn less than R6,500 a month, before rent.

The average monthly rent in South Africa is R9,462, according to the PayProp Rental Index, which tracks formal rental payments processed nationally in the last quarter of 2025. In Khayelitsha, one of South Africa's largest townships in Cape Town, almost 60% of households earn less than R6,500 a month, before paying for anything at all, according to research by property data firm Lightstone.

That income figure is already below the national average rent on its own, before food, transport or electricity are paid for.

By contrast, Lightstone's data shows more than 70% of households in Johannesburg, taken as a whole city, earn over R13,000 a month. Soweto sits in between, with just over 20% of households earning above R13,000 and a similar share below R6,500.

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There's a reason this comparison is hard to make properly: there is no publicly available, verified average rent figure specifically for Khayelitsha, Soweto, Umlazi or Mamelodi. National indices like PayProp's track the formal rental market as a whole, and Stats SA's household survey records whether people rent or own, but not township-level rent amounts. What's left is individual property listings, asking prices that range from around R4,000 for a small room or unit in Khayelitsha to R10,000 or more for a full house, useful as a snapshot, but not a verified average.

That gap matters. When "the average South African renter pays R9,462 a month" becomes a headline number, it describes a rental market weighted toward people who can afford it, not the millions of South Africans for whom that figure is out of reach.