Renting in South Africa

[Robert P.]

Hi guys, I'm kinda losing my mind over here. I'm from South Africa, and I want to get into property, namely buy-to-rent. The things is, no matter how I mess with the numbers, I always seem to get a worse return than I'd get if I just put my money in a basic savings account, let alone a market-related account. 

I've made a spreadsheet which combines data from these sources:

https://www.rawson.co.za/transfer-cost-calculator

http://www.sars.gov.za/Tax-Rates/Income-Tax/Pages/...

http://www.sars.gov.za/TaxTypes/PIT/Pages/Tax-on-r...

http://www.sars.gov.za/TaxTypes/PIT/Pages/Examples...

http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Africa/South-Af...

http://www.standardbank.co.za/standardbank/Persona...

Rental income is added to any existing income you have, and any expenses incurred in trying to get that rental income are deductible, including the interest portion of the bond, excluding the costs of transfers and setting up the bond.

I'm hoping I'm not calculating something correctly! Here's the spreadsheet, play around with it and see what you think. Keep in mind I'm definitely missing out on some other monthly expenses, which just makes it worse!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/611mo3675tfkuj8/Affordab...