The Discovery Session

Ninety minutes that puts your decisions in the right order

Most families arriving in Johannesburg make four or five decisions in the first fortnight that shape the next three years. Which suburb. Which school. Rent or buy. What security setup is actually enough.

They make them on the advice of a Facebook group, a colleague who left in 2019 and whoever happens to answer the phone.

This is not a chat about how you are feeling about the move. It is a structured planning session, and you leave with a document.

Who this is for

You have a landing month. You may not have a suburb, a school place or a shortlist, and every search you run returns a hundred conflicting answers.

You want one person who has lived here long enough to tell you which of those answers are true.

It works whether you are 12 months out or six weeks out. Earlier is better, because more of the decisions are still open.

How it works

1. You book and pay.
2. You complete an intake form. Who is moving, your landing month, your housing budget in rand, the suburbs already on your radar, your children's school stage, and the three things you most need answered. I prepare against it before we speak, which is why the call goes straight to your situation rather than spending 20 minutes on background.
3. We spend 90 minutes on your family. Not on Johannesburg in general.
4. Your plan arrives, written up properly.

What the plan actually contains

This is not a summary of the call. It is a working document, built to your chosen focus, structured so that someone who knows nothing about your situation could pick it up and act on it.

A schools-focused plan, to take one example, runs to something like this:

• A profile of your child. Interests, academic picture, learning support needs, sport, what they need to thrive and what would be too much. So that every school gets measured against the same thing rather than against whichever one you saw most recently.
• A must, should and nice-to-have framework. So no school can dazzle you on one thing and quietly hide a gap on another.
• A question set to take into every school meeting. The questions that get you real answers rather than the marketing version.
• A shortlist, with the reasoning attached. Not a list of names. Why each one is on it and what to check.
• A week-by-week timeline from now to the term your child starts, so you always know the one or two things that matter this week.
• A draft itinerary for your look-and-see visit, ordered so your days on the ground are not wasted.

Choose a different focus and the shape changes, but the standard does not. Suburbs and housing, your first four weeks, your look-and-see trip, or leaving South Africa at the end of an assignment.

What we cover

Whichever of these matter most to you.

• Suburbs, and the commute you will actually be driving
• Schools, application windows and grade placement
• Safety, and what a sensible security setup costs to run
• Housing budget in rand, and whether to rent or buy first
• The first 90 days

What this is not

Why me

I moved to Johannesburg with my husband’s job, for an adventure. He was in the office day two. No local network, no idea which suburb was safe, no sense of who to trust. The relocation company handled the logistics. Nobody handled me.

Sixteen years later I still live here, I am a registered Property Practitioner with eXp Realty South Africa, and I make New in Town, the podcast for people arriving in Johannesburg.

The price

US$297. Paid at booking. Delivered on Zoom, anywhere in the world.

Common questions