ABOUT VDH
Built for the People Shaping the Built Environment
The Valuation Discussion Hour brings together valuers, property professionals, planners, municipal officials, asset managers, developers, financiers, academics and candidate professionals to discuss the issues that shape valuation and property decision-making.
“Not adding value is the same as taking it away.”
— Seth Godin · the philosophy behind everything VDH does
WHY VDH EXISTS
A Place for Practical Conversation in the Built Environment
VDH was founded on a simple observation: valuation plays a central role in the built environment, and there is great value in creating more opportunities for practical discussion between valuation professionals and the wider property industry that relies on their work.
Most people who work with property — developers, bankers, asset managers, attorneys — don’t fully understand what a valuer does, or why independent assessment matters so profoundly to the industry’s key decisions.
For real estate professionals, VDH offers an opportunity to engage with peers, exchange experience, discuss practical challenges and learn from different sectors, markets and jurisdictions.
VDH is not intended to replace any existing professional body, institution or formal structure. It exists to complement them — by creating an open, practical and accessible forum for conversation, learning and connection across the built environment.
Across Professions
Valuers, candidates, property brokers, planners, developers, financiers and academics engaging in structured discussion — not in silos.
Across Borders
Property markets across Africa are deeply connected. VDH brings practitioners from 20+ countries together as peers — sharing standards, methods and insight that travel across every border.
Practical
The next generation of property professionals learns best from those currently practising. VDH creates that channel deliberately.
Independent
A valuation is not an opinion — it is a professional conclusion. Understanding that distinction is what VDH is here to advance.
OUR PURPOSE
The Purpose
The Valuation Discussion Hour exists to raise the standard of property valuation and property decision-making across Africa — by making the evidence easy to reach, and by teaching the discipline through which it is read.
Most of what the market needs already exists in public. It is simply scattered — across municipal websites, gazettes, announcements, judgments and annual reports — and finding it is the tax the profession pays in hours. Our first task is to gather that material, organise it, and make it easy to reach.
Our second task is to examine it openly. We show evidence in order to demonstrate how it is interrogated, so that the method by which a defensible opinion is formed is shared rather than guarded. We supply the material and the method; the judgement remains the practitioner’s own.
VDH was built by valuers, but it is not for valuers alone. Agents, developers, bankers, attorneys, investors, students and analysts all rely on the same evidence and the same reasoning.
HOW WE DECIDE
The Seven Principles
Every decision we take about what to publish, what to charge for and what to decline is tested against these seven principles.
Access
Most of what the market needs is already public, but scattered. Our work is to gather it and make it easy to reach. Where something is not published here, the reason is a specific one — a statutory restriction, binding terms, a court order — never a general reluctance.
Citation
We make evidence findable; we are never the authority for it. VDH may not be cited as the source of evidence in a valuation. Everything we publish carries its origin, its date and a route back to the primary record, so that what we make easy to find remains something you have verified yourself.
Teaching
The method is the product. We show evidence in order to demonstrate how it is interrogated, not to hand anyone a conclusion. A figure without the reasoning behind it teaches nothing.
Independence
No vendor, no agenda, no owner. That includes the founder’s own practice: VDH is not a marketing channel for Meto Properties, nor for any bank, agency or data provider. Nothing we publish would be selected differently if a commercial party had paid for it.
Reach
Across professions and across borders. We write for anyone whose decisions turn on property value, anywhere on the continent — and where our data is narrower than our audience, we say so on the page.
Integrity of source
Fact is kept separate from opinion, and the limits of a source are stated as plainly as its contents. We do not overstate compliance with any standard, and we flag where independent verification is needed.
Confidentiality
We never publish what was not ours to publish. No sensitive, personal or undisclosed information about any person, firm or property — our Contributing Members, our members and our session participants included.
FOUNDED BY A PROFESSIONAL VALUER AND TOWN PLANNER
VDH is Led by a Registered Professional Valuer
With 20 years of real estate experience across Southern Africa and the United Kingdom
Philip Niesing
PROFESSIONAL VALUER · FOUNDER
SACPVP Registered · AssocRICS · No Restrictions · MSc Real Estate · B Art et Science Town Planning
Philip’s professional valuation practice, Meto Properties, focuses on premium and specialised instructions including court work, shopping centre valuations, airports, and private hospitals. He is also actively involved in the preparation of General Valuation Rolls.
Philip Niesing is a Professional Valuer registered with SACPVP (without restrictions) and an Associate member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (AssocRICS). He holds an MSc in Real Estate from the University of Pretoria, where he also served as a part-time lecturer and external examiner in property valuation.
With 13 years of property valuation experience — and a further 7 years as a professional Town and Regional Planner in the United Kingdom — Philip brings an unusually broad perspective to property analysis. He has not only been involved in the valuation of major real estate assets across Southern Africa, including international airports, super-regional shopping centres, private hospitals, and large listed and unlisted property portfolios, but also experience in the valuation of air-rights, servitudes, student housing and social housing. He has also acted as an Expert Witness in various legal disputes.
Philip’s commitment to professional development runs throughout his career. He has taught across three continents, lectured and examined at university level, and has consistently invested in the growth of candidate valuers and young property professionals. That commitment is the foundation on which VDH was built.
The Valuation Discussion Hour is the natural extension of a career spent adding value — to clients, to students, and to the profession itself. Philip’s view is simple: if you are not actively adding value, you are taking it away. VDH exists to make adding value the standard, not the exception.
Academic & Training
Former part-time lecturer and external examiner at the University of Pretoria. Committed to the development of candidate valuers and property professionals entering the real estate market.
Valuation Purposes Covered
Financial Reporting · Insurance Valuations · Acquisitions & Disposals · Feasibility Studies · Bulk Service Contributions · Fixed Asset Registers · Highest & Best Use · Rental Determinations · Legal Disputes · Land Audits · Valuation Critiques · Municipal Objections · Court Work
What VDH Stands For
Adding value is not optional — it is the minimum standard of professional engagement. VDH was built on the belief that every interaction, every discussion, every tool, every session should leave its participants better informed, better equipped, and more capable of serving their clients and their profession with integrity.
Honest debate
No corporate agenda. Practitioners discussing what actually happens in the market.
Practical tools
Calculators and resources built for real instructions, not textbook scenarios.
Pan-African reach
South Africa is the foundation. The African continent is the vision.
Professional growth
Every member leaves knowing more than when they arrived.
Join the Conversation
Whether you are a registered valuer, a candidate, or a property professional who works alongside valuers — there is a place for you at VDH.