The concept of owning your dream home without going through the red tape route of commercial banks with their high mortgage bonds, loans and interest has taken the property market by storm.

And one the role players in this growing multibillion-rand sector of property business is the Durban-based oGatsheni Property Lifestyle Stokvel.

The business was founded in 2017 by oGatsheni Architectural Engineering, a property developer and construction wing of oGatsheni group.

The stokvel provides members with a means to own a share in a larger property portfolio in order to do away with the high interest 20-year home loan. The group buying power is applied as a means to either buy property by paying for it cash or paying it off in a much shorter space of time than the typical 20-year term.

oGatsheni MD Mhlekazi Ndhlovu said the stokvel operates the same way as the old concept of stokvels, whereby money is contributed by members and collected from people with the common goal of investing in property.

"Our main goal is to give members the opportunity to own property after 10 years of contributing. We divide members into groups, for instance groups of eight in order for their investments to be manageable," explains Ndhlovu, who is also the principal administrator of the property stokvel.

"The person who joins first will be first in line to get a house and the last to be enlisted will get a house last but the houses will not be transferred to members until all eight members get their properties, to avoid a situation whereby a member withdraws after a house has been erected for them."

Ndhlovu said they strive to group together people with similar spending power and interest, thereby leveraging their ability to buy things they would not normally be able to afford.

"There are different vetting processes, there are different categories of where one can fall in, starting from R3,500 to R15,000 contributions a month. It depends on what you can afford," he said.

"The cluster or group is made up of eight people over a 10-year period. The purpose of this stokvel is to empower each member to own a property in 10 year's time from joining."

Ndhlovu said title deeds are issued when all eight properties belonging to members in the group have been erected.

He said they had a membership of over 500 people across the country working together to contribute almost R20m a year in building and investing in property.