Zakhele Myeza turned a single, cash-strapped student accommodation deal into a property portfolio spanning five cities by treating other people’s scepticism as a research problem to solve, not a reason to stop. He is the founder and director of investments at The Bus Stop Property Group, which converts and manages student accommodation and multi-let residential property in Durban, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town and Gqeberha.
Myeza did not start out with capital. He started with a laptop, an internet connection and, in his own words, his mouth. He talked a client into paying him for a small construction job, a driveway and retaining wall refurbishment, then used the proceeds to fund the deposit on his first property. That property, nicknamed The Bus Stop, became a multi-cultural student residence bought with none of his own money and later became the name of his company.
How did Zakhele Myeza get started in property investment?
Myeza holds a BSc (Eng) Electrical and an MSc (Eng) Industrial from the University of the Witwatersrand. Property investing began as a side interest, a way to fund travel while he was still in engineering, rather than a planned career change.
His mother worked as an estate agent, which gave him an early, informal grounding in how property deals are structured before he ever put money into one himself. He credits his first investment’s near 40% return with giving him the confidence to keep going rather than treat it as a lucky one-off.
Joining SA Property Investors Network gave him access to a room of experienced investors who could stress-test his thinking, and he later became a professional member after winning the network’s 2019 Investor of the Year award in the Beginner category. That recognition led to a formal partnership: Myeza teamed up with The Property Academy to build First Time Home Buyer, an online course aimed at helping new investors work through the fear and indecision that stop most people from closing their first deal.
What is the Bus Stop Property Group’s business model?
The Bus Stop Property Group specialises in converting existing residential stock into student accommodation and multi-let units, then holding and managing that stock rather than flipping it. Multi-lets, where a single property is let room by room to several unrelated tenants, generate materially higher rental yield per square metre than a standard single-tenant lease, which is why the model scales well in university towns.
The group also runs a property management arm and an investor education offering, reflecting Myeza’s view that most new investors fail not from a lack of capital but from a lack of a working strategy they understand well enough to repeat.
How did COVID-19 change the way Bus Stop Properties finds and structures deals?
The 2020 hard lockdown stopped Myeza from physically inspecting the flats his company manages, which he says exposed how much he relied on walking a site himself, at different times of day, rather than trusting listings or virtual tours. That period pushed him to diversify beyond residential letting into industrial space, including taking on a factory unit he found while searching for warehouse capacity, on the view that local manufacturing would need more of it.
The broader lesson from that period still holds for any property investor working through a period of restricted access or uncertainty: use the downtime to model where demand is shifting, rather than waiting for conditions to fully normalise before making a decision.
What funding strategies work for a first property deal with no capital?
Myeza has been open that his first deal used none of his own money, funded instead through a combination of four strategies he only recognised as a coherent approach once a mentor reviewed his Investor of the Year application. The common thread across all of them is that the property itself, not the investor’s balance sheet, carried the deal: he structured the purchase so that the asset’s own rental income and the deal’s own margin did the financial heavy lifting.
This is the same principle behind vendor finance, joint ventures with capital partners, and buy-to-let structures where a bond is serviced from day-one rental income. None of these remove risk entirely, but they lower the personal capital bar to entry, which is precisely why property remains one of the more accessible asset classes for a first-time entrepreneur without savings.
What are Myeza’s top strategies for new property investors?
Three pieces of advice recur across his public interviews and remain relevant regardless of where interest rates or the property cycle sit in a given year.
First, invest in your own education before your first deal and commit to one strategy, whether that is multi-lets, buy-to-let, or short-term rental, and learn it properly rather than spreading effort across several unproven approaches at once.
Second, get an experienced investor or coach to walk through your first one or two transactions with you. People learn deal structuring at very different speeds, and a second set of eyes on a contract or a valuation catches mistakes that are expensive to make alone.
Third, treat “there is no better time to start” as a genuine strategy rather than a slogan. Waiting for the perfect interest rate, the perfect suburb or the perfect amount of saved capital usually means waiting indefinitely; the skills from strategy one and the support from strategy two matter more than timing the market.
Where can South African entrepreneurs find a property investors’ network?
Investor networks exist specifically to shortcut the years Myeza spent learning by trial and error. SA Property Investors Network and similar member organisations run regular meetups, mentorship structures and annual awards that connect new investors with people who have already closed multiple deals, which is precisely the room Myeza credits with accelerating his own progress once he joined as a professional member.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need my own capital to start investing in property in South Africa?
Not necessarily. Structures such as vendor finance, joint ventures and bond finance serviced by rental income can fund a deal where the property’s own numbers, rather than the investor’s savings, support the purchase. These structures still require a strong, well-negotiated deal and a lender or partner willing to back it.
What is a multi-let and why is it popular with student accommodation investors?
A multi-let is a single property rented out room by room to multiple unrelated tenants rather than to one household on a single lease. It typically generates higher total rental income per property than a single-tenant let, which is why it is a common model in university towns with strong student demand.
How do I find a mentor for my first property deal?
Property investor networks, including SA Property Investors Network, run mentorship programmes and regular events specifically aimed at connecting new investors with experienced ones. Property education providers also run structured courses for first-time buyers.
Is property investment a good side business alongside a full-time job?
Many South African property investors, including Myeza, started while employed elsewhere and treated their first deals as a part-time side interest before it became a full business. The main requirements are enough capital or funding structure for a deposit, time to research the deal properly, and a plan for who manages the property day to day.
What qualifications do I need to become a property investor?
None are legally required to invest in property personally, as distinct from working as a registered estate agent, which does require registration with the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority (PPRA). What matters more in practice is financial literacy, a clear strategy and, ideally, a mentor or network to test your thinking against before you commit capital.
Further reading:
Originally published in June 2020. Updated September 2026 to reflect Zakhele Myeza’s continued role at The Bus Stop Property Group and to expand the funding-strategy detail behind his first, self-funded deal. Confirm current course offerings and network membership details directly with SA Property Investors Network and The Property Academy before signing up.
