The Conveyancing and Deeds Office Process


Conveyancing Advice

First of all the best advice I can offer you regarding Attorneys is that you MUST choose a Conveyancing Attorney and not just any old Attorney that is a general all rounder or you will be looking for some serious hold ups in your transfer.

The non Conveyancer Attorney will gladly accept your transfer and then send it to a Conveyancer, impacting on the time issue of your sale, as you would be going through a middleman.

A Conveyancer is an Attorney who is ADDITIONALLY LICENSED to SPECIALISE in the registration of transfers, this would be your quickest route to follow, the problem is the public don’t realise this.


Conveyancing Process

The Conveyancing Attorney receives the “Deed of Sale” from the estate agent, they must first of all confirm that the sale has become non suspensive, in other words, there are no financial conditions of the sale outstanding. E.g. bond approval or subject to the sale of another property.

Once the conditions have been fulfilled, the Conveyancer may continue with their work, “The Transfer”

  1. The bank is informed that there bond is going to be cancelled and the title deed is requested, the bank appoints there own Conveyancer for this purpose, the bond cancellation Attorney.
  2. Your Conveyancer then applies to the municipality for rates figures and a valuation certificate.
  3. The transfer documents are then drawn up and the purchaser and the seller have to go and sign the documentation at the Conveyancers office. If the Conveyancer was appointed to register the bond as well then, the purchaser will be able to sign the bond papers at the same time.
    While the purchaser are at the Attorneys office, they will call on them to pay their transfer and bond costs, also a pro-rata share of the rates and taxes. Also while the seller are at the Attorneys office, they call on them for an estimated amount of rates and taxes in advance, on behalf of the municipality, or they won't issue a rates clearance certificate to enable the sale to proceed.
  4. The Conveyancing Attorney must now wait for the municipality’s clearance certificate and S.A.R.S clearance certificate, which always seem to cause a hold up in the transferring of the property.
  5. The Attorneys must inform F.I.C.A., there must be satisfactory guarantees in place for the purchase price, it must be checked that the sale is F.I.C.A. compliant.
  6. On receipt of the transfer duty receipt, the rates clearance certificate, the S.A.R.S clearance certificate, the original title deeds, (arranged with the sellers bank, bond cancellation Attorney for simultaneous lodgement at the Deeds Office) and the signed transfer papers; the Conveyancing Attorneys would now be ready to lodge your transfer in the Deeds Office.
  7. The Deeds Office does have a tracking system in place and it is up and running, the normal time the paper work process takes from the day it’s handed in for examination, is approximately at the time of writing this 10-15 days. The deeds first appear in the ‘Prep Room’ and are then ‘up for Registration’, which allow the Conveyancer 5 working days to finalise anything that might be outstanding and hand in for final registration the next day in the ‘Execution Room’.
  8. Ownership then passes from the seller to the purchaser the final accounts are all then drawn up, by the transferring Attorneys, the seller are paid out the net proceeds less the beetle and electrical inspection accounts and the Agents Commission agreed.
  9. The purchaser also receive a final account, to balance their side of the figures.
 

Congratulations you are the owner of a home!


HOME LOAN ADVICE AND THE N.C.A.
TIPS ON PREPARING YOUR HOME TO SELL
THE SELLING AND PURCHASING PROCESS
CONVEYANCING & DEEDS OFFICE PROCESS

 

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'the rite way to go!’