Property Ownership: The Ultimate Girl Math

There’s a particular kind of pride that comes with holding the keys to a home that is legally and unquestionably yours. I felt that at 27, standing in an empty lounge that had just become my own property. No co-signer and no husband’s name on the title deed, just mine. At the time, it felt like a personal milestone. Looking back now, especially as South Africa marks Women’s Month, I realise it was something bigger; a quiet exercise of a right that women in this country were denied for most of our history.

It is easy to take for granted that a woman can walk into a bank, qualify for a bond, and register a property in her own name, but this has not always been the legal reality in South Africa. For generations, a woman’s property was controlled first by her father, and then by her husband once she married. Under common law, husbands held “marital power” over their wives, meaning a married woman could not independently own, buy, sell, or even take out credit finance on property without her husband’s consent. In the eyes of the law, she was treated as though she was still a minor.

The legal position has shifted significantly since then. Since 1984, the law abolished marital power for civil marriages, giving women married in community of property equal say over joint assets.[1] However, women married under customary laws waited even longer, only gaining full legal status and the right to own property in their own name in 1998.[2] So, when I signed my bond application, I wasn’t simply ticking off another “adulting” milestone; I was exercising a right that generations of South African women fought for.

As for me, buying a property at 27 was about making sure that whatever happened in my life – whether it be relationships, career changes, or economic shifts – I had a fixed point of security which belonged to me. There’s a reason property is often called the foundation of generational wealth. It’s not just a place to live; it provides a safety net, offers flexibility through investment opportunities, and serves as a shield against inflation over the long term. It’s one of the few assets that can grow in value while you sleep in it.

For women specifically, owning property independently means something more; it removes a layer of financial vulnerability. A woman who owns her own home isn’t dependent on a partner’s income, goodwill, or continued presence to have a roof over her head. That matters in good relationships, and perhaps even more in bad ones. Financial independence changes the nature of every decision, future goal, and risk a woman makes.

But here’s the part that nobody quite prepares you for. Buying a property is almost like a full-time job that you need to fit around your actual full-time job. There were days when I was drafting emails to the bond originator and estate agent between meetings or trying to read a deed of sale during my lunch break. What surprised me the most was that even with a legal background, the process was still confusing at times. Property law has its own language, its own timelines, its own quiet anxieties and waiting on bond approval is its own special kind of stress. It is the kind of stress that has you refreshing your inbox constantly, half-convinced that no news is bad news. Then there’s the deed of sale, which you read repeatedly, looking for the clause you might have missed, followed by questions you feel slightly embarrassed to keep asking, even though every single one of them matters.

Then registration and transfer eventually took place, the way these things do; quietly, on a day that felt strangely anticlimactic after three months of waiting. But that wasn’t the finish line I expected it to be. It was just the start of the next project, which was turning a house that was legally mine into a home that felt like mine. I’ve spent evenings comparing paint swatches, going down rabbit holes about flooring materials, and rearranging the same room in my head a dozen times before the vision finally came together. There’s a particular joy in bringing your own vision to life, but it can also be stressful. I’ve had to learn to consider budgets, timelines, contractors, and the constant negotiation between what I want and what is practical.

This whole process – from the anxious wait for bond approval, to the unglamorous admin of signing a deed of sale, to the emotional experience of choosing your own flooring and arguing with yourself over curtain rails – is what I’ve started jokingly calling “premium adulting.” It’s adulting because it’s the kind of admin that nobody teaches you at school and its premium because underneath all the paperwork and uncertainty, sits a sense of real, hard-earned independence.

This Women’s Month, my hope is that more women see property ownership not as a distant milestone reserved for “someday,” but rather as an achievable, powerful form of independence. One that is available to us now in a way it wasn’t for our mothers and grandmothers. The paperwork is tedious, the waiting is stressful, and the renovations are chaotic and may never truly end. But the independence beneath it all is worth every stressful moment, every signature and every paint swatch.

That, to me, is the ultimate girl math.

By Robyn Siljeur

Associate

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