An application for direct access to the Constitutional Court on behalf of some 200 people, objecting to the conduct of the nation’s largest banks and home loan providers in attaching and selling the homes of defaulting debtors at prices below market value, has been dismissed, says a Moneyweb report.

The application – filed in August – sought to bypass the Magistrate's Court, High Court and SCA on the basis that a case was being made on behalf of the country as a whole and as the case was being brought by ‘exceptionally poor’ people who have been made ‘even poorer by the unconstitutional action of banks’.

The Constitutional Court ‘concluded that the application should be dismissed with no order as to costs as it is not in the interests of justice to hear it at this stage’.

Moneyweb reported previously that institutions cited in the application – Nedbank, Absa, FirstRand, Standard Bank, Changing Tides 12 (a trustee of the SA Home Loans Guarantee Trust) and Investec – stood to face a R60bn class action suit related to the actions in attaching and selling properties at prices below market value.

This application – filed by Advocate Douglas Shaw – also sought to establish the constitutionality of sales in execution. The application argues the law allows properties to be sold for less than their market value ‘which is against the rights to property and housing’, as defined by the Constitution.

Full Moneyweb report