October 16 2026 16:00
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Johannesburg property owners have just over six weeks to check whether the City has their property’s value right.
The City of Johannesburg has opened Supplementary Valuation Roll 4 (SVR4) for the 2026/2027 financial year for public inspection, from 14 October 2026 until 30 November 2026.
The objection window therefore runs through the 4 November 2026 municipal elections. Whichever party or coalition takes control of the city will inherit the objections that come in.
What a supplementary roll is
A supplementary roll is not a fresh revaluation of the whole city. The City’s general valuation roll sets the market value of every registered property. The valuation date stays fixed until a new general roll replaces the current one, while changes, such as newly created properties or newly declared townships, are added through supplementary rolls that follow the same process as a general roll.
That means owners who have built, extended, subdivided, rezoned or bought into a new development since the last roll should look closely at SVR4. So should anyone whose property category has changed, because the category determines the rate charged.
The stakes are significant. Under the City’s rates policy, business, commercial and industrial properties are rated at 2.5 times the residential rate, and vacant land at four times.
How to object
The roll can be viewed at Jorissen Place, 66 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein (East Wing, 1st Floor), or online under the GVR Online section of www.joburg.org.za.
Kgamanyane Maphologela, Director for Communications and Stakeholder Management in Group Finance, urged residents to inspect the roll and object to any entry they believe is wrong. He noted that, under the Municipal Property Rates Act, objections must relate to specific individual properties rather than the roll as a whole.
The City recommends using its online objection system, which automatically generates an acknowledgement letter that owners should keep as proof that they submitted an objection. Enquiries can go to valuationenquiries@joburg.org.za.
Owners who miss the deadline will find the City far less flexible later. When it dealt with objections to the main 2023 roll, the City said that only those who had objected during the objection period could appeal a municipal valuer’s decision. It also reminded owners that they must keep paying rates while objections are considered, and that the account will be adjusted if a valuation changes.
A contested history
Valuations remain a sore point in Johannesburg. When the City’s General Valuation Roll 2023 came out, it received 42,053 objections, about 4.5% of the 934,652 properties on the roll, and more than 30,000 of them were from households.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) cited Lightstone data at the time showing that Johannesburg property values had compounded at 8.8% a year while rates had compounded at 17%, and warned that this could push residents to semigrate.
Rates are rising again
The roll matters because valuations feed directly into monthly bills. The City’s 2026/2027 budget included a 3.6% property rates increase, introduced alongside a new 10% rebate for qualifying owners who pay their projected annual rates in full before the financial year starts.
As Nexia SAB&T tax director Bashier Adam noted in a guest article for Property Flash this week, property rates contribute R18.8bn to Johannesburg’s R97.1bn budget. That makes them one of the City’s three biggest revenue lines, together with electricity and water.
For owners, the message is simple: check your entry before 30 November. A valuation that is too high costs money every month, and the window to fix it closes quickly.
By Alistair Anderson
