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Conveyancers

The correspondence you send on every transfer, a timeline to run against, and a FICA checklist — built around the actual mechanics of a South African property transfer.

Transfer process timeline

  1. Sale agreement (OTP) signed — check suspensive conditions (bond approval, sale of another property) and their deadlines.
  2. Instructing transferring, bond and (if applicable) cancellation attorneys.
  3. FICA/compliance: identity, proof of residence, and source-of-funds verification for buyer and seller.
  4. Guarantee: bond attorneys issue a guarantee for the purchase price (or balance after deposit), payable against registration.
  5. Rates clearance certificate: municipality confirms rates paid for the preceding two years (Municipal Systems Act s 118) — this is a hard prerequisite for lodgement.
  6. Certificate of balance / bond cancellation figures obtained from the seller's existing bondholder, if any.
  7. Transfer duty: SARS transfer duty receipt or exemption certificate obtained before lodgement (Transfer Duty Act 40 of 1949) — VAT-vendor sales are typically exempt from transfer duty but attract VAT instead.
  8. Documents lodged simultaneously at the Deeds Office (transfer, bond registration, bond cancellation — the 'batch').
  9. Registration takes place; risk and ownership pass on registration, not on signature of the sale agreement.
  10. Post-registration: rates accounts, levies (if sectional title) and insurance updated in the new owner's name.

FICA / compliance checklist

  • Certified copy of ID/passport for each natural person party (or company/CC/trust registration documents for juristic entities)
  • Proof of residential address, not older than 3 months
  • Proof of source of funds for the purchase price, where required by the firm's risk assessment
  • For trusts: trust deed, letters of authority, and resolution authorising the transaction
  • For companies/CCs: CIPC registration documents and a resolution authorising the signatory
  • Marital status and, where married in community of property, the spouse's consent/signature

Authority: Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001, as amended — verify your firm’s current risk-based FICA policy, since the specifics depend on your accountable-institution obligations and risk assessment, not a fixed universal list.

Transfer duty — how it works

Transfer duty (Transfer Duty Act 40 of 1949) is charged on a progressive scale against the purchase price or property value, for natural persons above a tax-free threshold, with higher flat rates for companies, CCs and trusts. The exact thresholds and percentages are set in the annual Budget Speech and change most years — rather than quote a figure here that could be a year or two stale by the time you read this, use SARS’s own transfer duty calculator for the current scale. Sales by a VAT-vendor in the course of their enterprise are typically zero-rated for transfer duty and attract VAT instead (s 9(15) Transfer Duty Act) — check which regime applies before quoting a client a figure.