Residential Developments
Key Takeaways:
Residential developments involve creating housing projects for occupation or sale.
Factors like zoning, design, and community amenities influence their success.
Diligent planning, legal compliance, and market understanding are vital for a thriving residential development.
Conveyancing relates to the legal process that transfers ownership of the home from the seller to the buyer. The conveyancer (who is an attorney) is usually appointed by the seller, but paid for by the buyer (the fact that the fees are normally covered by the buyer is simply a rule of thumb.
It’s not something that is necessarily set in stone and a different arrangement can be negotiated in your agreement of sale).
What is Conveyancing?
Conveyancing is not only a complicated process, but a time consuming one as well. Particularly in transactions related to the subdivision or consolidation of properties, the registration of servitudes or transfers of both divorce or deceased estates.
Benaters are specialists in the field of property and conveyancing and are perfectly poised to assist their clients with all matters of property transfers. Get in touch with them today to see how they can assist you.
What does the transfer of property entail?
Once a seller has accepted an offer to purchase (meaning the transfer process has officially begun), the buyer must produce proof that their bond application has been successful.
Following that, the seller must then appoint a transfer attorney, (who is a conveyancing attorney) to handle the transfer process. Transferring attorneys are one of three attorneys who will play an important role in the home buying process. This team of attorneys includes
the transfer attorney, or the conveyancer who is responsible for registering the property in the new owner’s name,
the bond attorney (appointed by the bank) who is responsible for registering the bond in the home buyer’s name, and
the cancellation attorney (appointed by the bank) who is responsible for attending to the existing bond cancellation.
Once the transfer duty has been paid, all documents have been lodged at the Deeds Office and the transfer attorney has finalised their accounts and paid over all proceeds to the seller, commission to the agent and refunded any credit that is due to the seller (within 12 months), registration of the property (meaning the purchaser is now the new rightful owner of the home) should then occur.
What does a Conveyancer do?
Firstly, it must be noted that no property sale or transfer can be concluded without having a qualified conveyancer on board.
A conveyancer is a lawyer that has passed an additional conveyancing qualification exam and is a specialist in the field of property and conveyancing. They perform a vital function where completing a property transaction is concerned.
Conveyancers attend to the process of transferring legal ownership of fixed property from one person (or a company or trust) to another. In a nutshell, this process amongst other things, involves ensuring the deed of sale meets all the legal requirements, including requesting and collecting supporting information (such the mortgage bond, cancellation figures, title deeds from the seller’s bank, compliance certificates from the seller, and the amounts from the municipality for a rates clearance certificate).
The conveyancer is also tasked with drafting all the necessary documentation (such as a “power of attorney to pass transfer” for the seller to sign, a declaration in respect of marital status, ID Number as well as the bond registration documentation for the purchaser when registering the bond) that needs to be lodged with the deeds office to finalise the registration of the sale.
Commercial and residential developments
Simply put, a residential development refers to land, buildings or structures that are developed for residential use, such as sectional title units or residential estates such as Waterfall Country Estate (as a well-known example).
Whereas, a commercial development means any development on private land for commercial purposes that is not related to heavy industrial or residential use. Any office park or shopping centre that comes to mind will be a commercial development.
Why should you hire a Conveyancer to handle your development?
When it comes to either commercial or residential developments, there are so many varying legal aspects to consider, it can make your head spin. It is not as easy as purchasing land and developing it. Unfortunately. And the development process often involves a number of different tasks, duties or tick items that need to be done (especially from a legal aspect) and this can involve a number of different responsibilities which include
opening of townships or sectional title registers;
drafting of underlying sale agreements;
registration of notarial cessions and notarial “Tie Agreements” (an agreement executed by at least two parties where a condition is registered against the title deeds of two or more properties preventing the properties being sold, mortgaged, or independently dealt with);
the consolidation and/or subdivision of Land;
vetting of sale agreements;
drafting of joint venture agreements; and
attending to the transfer of various units
To name but a few.
A suitably qualified, trained and experienced Conveyancer (like those at Benaters) is therefore critical to manage this entire process from inception to completion.
Who wouldn’t want to ensure their development proceeded with little to no problem at all?
Why should you trust Benaters with your development?
We have coordinated both residential and commercial property developments (from inception to completion) across South Africa many times over the years.
From the very beginning, we take a proactive approach by not only assisting in determining the likely costs to be incurred (as well as ascertaining likely sales to be achieved) but we also liaise with and assist property developers in their dealings with authorities (including advice related to approvals, registrations of sub-divisions, and compliance with conditions of approval).
We also liaise with various banks and assist in expediting the granting and processing of transfers and bonds.
We are a one stop shop really where developments (be they commercial or residential) are concerned.
We are also so proud to be able to offer Conveyancing, a specialised niche service to you, our clients. We take our duties as Conveyancers very seriously (always keeping in mind the impact a property transfer can have on an individual or family) and therefore hold our work to very high standards. You can trust us with your property, because we treat the entire process as if we were going through it ourselves.
We are here to help you. In any way we can!
So please, get in touch and let us handle your property transfer in the best way we know how – professionally and with the utmost care.