We handle the property, the design, the renovations, and the soft landing, so your return is the homecoming it should be.
Returning isn't a transaction. It is the first morning you wake up to gulls, the smell of fynbos after a southeaster, your dog running on Grotto Beach, Sunday lunches that take five hours.
The home you have been carrying in your head for two decades, finally real.
After two decades abroad, the country you remember is not the country you are returning to. The property market has shifted. The right suburb in 2002 is not the right suburb today. The wrong renovation in a coastal climate becomes someone else's problem within five years.
Most returnees try to assemble an eight-million-rand decision from a fragmented network of estate agents, family, internet searches, and good intentions, all from ten thousand kilometres away. The mistakes are usually obvious in hindsight.
Repat Advisory exists to make sure those mistakes do not happen to you.
We begin with a structured engagement to understand the life you are actually returning to, not the one you left. The output is a Repat Liveability Brief: the right area, the right kind of house, the financial framework, and a target profile we both believe in. Four to six weeks, from R45,000.
We become your representative on the ground. Property search, virtual viewings, structured Liveability Reports on every serious shortlist, due diligence, offer strategy, conveyancing coordination. Fee-only, with no commission from the sell side and no dual-agent conflicts.
From accepted offer to first morning coffee. Renovation design and project management, contractor coordination, banking, medical aid, schools, vehicles, container logistics. The practical work of arrival, so the return is the homecoming it should be.
Repat Advisory is Cliff van Tonder and Brendon Perold. Between us we have built international careers across fintech, banking, executive search, and design. We have moved continents three times, most recently from Australia back to Hermanus, where we now live.
Cliff led senior fintech consulting and executive search practices across APAC, Europe, and Africa, including roles at BNP Paribas, Finastra, and Zafin. Brendon spent twenty-eight years in premier banking relationship management at HSBC and Standard Bank, and trained at the JJAADA Academy in London.
We learned what works, and what does not, by doing it ourselves, twice, with our dogs in tow. When we returned, the help we needed did not exist. So we built it.
Our practice is anchored in Hermanus and built around the Overberg coast. We also work selectively across the Cape Peninsula and Helderberg when clients are heading there.
The discipline of focus is what allows us to know the streets, the agents, the body corporates, and the contractors well enough to be genuinely useful. A practice that claims to cover everywhere covers nowhere well.
We are a property and relocation advisory practice for South Africans returning to the Cape coast. The work runs in three stages, and you can engage us at any of them as a standalone or combine them.
Discovery is a four to six week structured engagement that ends with a written Repat Liveability Brief: the right area for you, the right property profile, your financial framework, and a clear recommendation on how to proceed. You can take that brief, walk away, and use it however you like.
Acquisition is buyer representation on the ground. We do the searching, virtual viewings, side-by-side comparisons, due diligence, offer strategy, and conveyancing coordination. We act only for you. We never represent the seller.
Soft Landing is everything between "you have bought a house" and "you are settled". Renovation oversight, banking introductions, medical aid, schools, vehicles, container logistics. The unglamorous work that decides whether you actually feel at home in month three.
The work starts with a forty-five minute introductory call. No fee, no preparation, no obligation either way. From there, you choose what fits.
R45,000 flat, including everything below.
The brief covers area selection for your specific circumstances (children, work patterns, climate tolerance, healthcare needs), a target property profile with realistic price ranges, a financial framework that accounts for exchange rates and forex regulations, and a clear "do this, do not do that" recommendation.
The deliverable is a standalone document. You can take it, decide we are not the right fit for the next stage, and use the brief however you want. We are not chasing the next sale.
Typically four to six weeks from kickoff. Most of that is research and structured conversations with you; the writing itself is the last week.
R60,000 retainer paid up front, plus a 1.5% success fee on the purchase price, payable only on transfer.
The retainer covers our time regardless of outcome. The success fee triggers only if you actually buy. If you walk away from the search without purchasing, you pay only the retainer. If you buy an R8 million house, you pay R60,000 plus R120,000 on transfer.
Notably, no commission flows to us from the seller, the seller's agent, the bond originator, or anyone else in the chain. Our incentive is to find the right house at the right price, not to close any house.
No. Repat Advisory is below the R1 million annual turnover threshold for compulsory VAT registration in South Africa, and we have chosen not to register voluntarily. Every number you see is the all-in fee.
If we ever cross the threshold and have to register, existing engagements will be honoured at the original quoted price.
Six to fifteen months is the honest range, and it depends mostly on you, not on us.
Discovery is four to six weeks. Acquisition is typically two to six months from start of search to transfer, but the upper end stretches when you are particular about area, when the right property is not on the market yet, or when overseas paperwork is slow. Soft Landing runs concurrently with Acquisition and continues for two to six months after you arrive, depending on scope.
If you tell us "I have to be in Hermanus by Christmas", we will tell you honestly whether that is realistic for your budget and brief.
Yes, that is the typical pattern. Most of our clients are still abroad when they first engage us, and Discovery happens entirely remotely. We work in your time zone for live conversations and use written deliverables for everything else.
Acquisition works the same way. We do the physical viewings, record them properly (not phone-camera walk-throughs), and meet you on video to walk you through what we saw. By the time you are physically in South Africa, you are signing documents on a house you have effectively already chosen.
The system was built because we lived it. We made our own decisions on Hermanus from Brisbane and Sydney; we know which questions get missed when the buyer is twelve thousand kilometres away.
We are advisory on this, not the principal. Here is what we can do:
We do not arrange your bond, run your tax return, or act as your bookkeeper. We hand you to people who do, and we make sure they know your context.
Nothing. You have the brief, you have paid for it, and you walk away. We do not lock anyone into the next stage, and there is no penalty fee.
Some Discovery clients will use the brief to make decisions on their own or to engage someone else for acquisition. That is built into how we priced it. The brief is a standalone deliverable, not a marketing document for the next service tier.
Fee-only means every rand we earn comes from you, the buyer. No commission flows to Repat from sellers, sellers' agents, mortgage originators, conveyancers, or anyone else in the transaction chain.
The mainstream property industry runs on success commission from the seller's side, which means the agent earns more when the price is higher and earns nothing when the buyer walks away. That alignment is fine for the seller. It is not fine for the buyer.
When we tell you "this house is overpriced by R800,000, walk away", we are not paying ourselves to give that advice. That is the only structure under which the advice is worth listening to.
A practice that claims to cover everywhere covers nowhere well.
We know Hermanus and the Whale Coast (Pringle Bay through Gansbaai) at street level: which roads flood in winter, which suburbs have generators on the substation, which builders we would and would not let near a renovation. We have working knowledge of the Cape Peninsula, the Atlantic Seaboard, and the Helderberg, and we will take selective acquisition work in those areas where the brief fits.
We do not work the Garden Route until 2027, when we expect to bring on an associate. We do not work the West Coast. If your heart is in Paternoster, we will refer you on with a clean conscience rather than pretend.
Yes, especially if you are not in a hurry.
The earliest stage of returning is the one where the right conversations save the most money and pain. People who get in touch eighteen months out tend to make calmer decisions about area, budget, and timing than people who message us after the offer has been accepted on something they have not properly thought through.
The introductory call is forty-five minutes, no fee, no preparation, no obligation. The worst outcome is you spend an hour talking through the move with someone who has just done it themselves.
If you are seriously considering a return to the Cape coast within the next eighteen months, the right next step is a forty-five minute introductory call. There is no fee for the introduction and no obligation either way.