Gatvol AI’s story starts with the 85-year-old grandmother of co-founder Jordin Borer, whose affairs the self-described finance nerd looks after. “I was amazed [looking] at her rates bill and I couldn’t reconcile why it was so expensive, and why she was paying so much for a property in Joburg that, you know, seemingly couldn’t sell for the value that the municipality had pegged,” he tells Currency.
No kidding. Two years ago, the City of Joburg’s general valuation roll set off a blizzard of complaints from its residents, with the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse accusing the city of “steamrollering” ahead with “unreasonable” property valuations — an average increase of 37% since 2018, by its estimate.
The reason municipal valuations matter is because your rates are set against the value of your property. And while no-one likes higher rates, if your city is on the up, your services are being delivered, and the property market is buoyant, then okay. But when the opposite is happening – as in Joburg – most homeowners end up being doubly worse off: they pay higher rates, receive fewer services, and can’t sell their properties at the value the municipality tells them their house is worth, which then fails to recoup any costs racked up over the years.
In Joburg, the valuation roll firestorm had little effect; not only were many residents entirely unaware that there was a three-month objection period, but the process of pulling together an objection was hardly what you’d call simple. (I know: I tried, no luck.)
Enter Gatvol AI, the online brainchild that Borer and two friends – a computer science graduate and an aeronautical engineer – have created.
Borer had begun a deep dive into how valuations are compiled, and why they’re so often radically at odds with what your property might actually fetch. He then talked Elan Novick and Michael Metlitzky through his granny’s challenge and what, possibly, could be done using technology to solve it.
“Previously if you wanted to object to a municipal value, you needed to get a professional evaluator or a lawyer or someone to help determine what the process is and how you can justify the valuation that you wish to achieve,” says Borer.
Instead, using AI, “we can emulate that at a significantly lower cost with the same level of robustness that a professional evaluator would do because of the available data that’s out there today”, he says.
The details
So how does it work for you and me? First, it costs R2,000 for the Gatvol AI valuation and objection process. According to the site, the company’s AI tools extract your valuation details directly from the municipal roll. You then give extra information about your property, and Gatvol compiles the objection and submits it to the municipality on your behalf, handling all the upfront paperwork.
Without marketing, Borer says they’ve had about 100 queries and have so far submitted eight objections, many of them from the Knysna and Plettenberg Bay area, where the roll is open for objections now.
Of course, early adopters are taking a chance on a start-up with zero track record. Asked about this, Borer says: “The way we’ve reasoned with that is twofold. The one is, if we do nothing but create awareness for people that the valuation roll is open we’ve achieved, to some degree, a civic objective.
“And, second, if you know the municipality has started a valuation roll, the downside is that you pay a small fee for the [objection] process, but your valuation remains the same. The upside is that you get it reduced.”
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