Property Transfer FAQ

A clean bonded residential transfer in Pretoria typically registers in 8 to 12 weeks from the date the Offer to Purchase becomes unconditional. A clean cash transfer — no bond, no complications — is faster at 6 to 8 weeks. Complicated matters (deceased estates, sectional title schemes with arrears, non-resident sellers, agricultural land) routinely push out to 12 to 16 weeks or beyond. The critical path is rarely the Deeds Office itself; it is the municipal rates clearance, the bond grant and the transfer duty turnaround sitting upstream.

By long-standing South African practice, the seller appoints the transferring attorney and records the appointment in the Offer to Purchase. The estate agent very often recommends a firm, and a buyer may ask for a particular firm to be appointed, but the decision is legally the seller’s. The buyer pays the transferring attorney’s fees irrespective of who made the appointment, so the seller has no cost incentive to favour one firm over another — the tariff is the tariff. The bond registration attorney and the bond cancellation attorney are separately appointed by the relevant banks.

A bonded residential transfer is a three-way exercise. The transferring attorney, nominated by the seller, drafts the deed of transfer. The bond registration attorney, appointed by the buyer’s bank, drafts the new mortgage bond. The bond cancellation attorney, appointed by the seller’s existing bank, prepares the cancellation of the seller’s old bond.

All three firms lodge their deeds at the Deeds Office on the same day so that at the stroke of the Registrar’s pen the transfer, the new bond and the cancellation all register together, with no moment at which anyone is exposed. On a cash purchase only the transferring attorney is involved.

Partly. What you control: assemble your FICA pack before you instruct the conveyancer, pay your costs and transfer duty within 24 hours of the invoice, sign every document the moment it reaches you, and make sure your spouse and any co-owner are reachable and cooperative. What you do not control: municipal rates clearance turnaround, body-corporate levy figures, bond approval, SARS’s transfer duty queue, and Deeds Office examiner throughput. The highest-leverage single thing a buyer or seller can do is close off their FICA and marital-status paperwork before the OTP is signed — that alone commonly saves one to two weeks.

Once the transfer pack is complete, the conveyancer physically lodges the deed at the Pretoria Deeds Office. Every lodged deed is then examined on three levels: a junior examiner checks the basics (names, ID numbers, property description, duty and clearance); a senior examiner scrutinises marital regimes, trust authority and bond linkages; an assistant registrar or the Registrar signs off on any corrections. On the morning the deed is through examination, the conveyancer attends the “prep” session at about 09h30 and the Registrar signs the deed into the register at approximately 10h00. From that moment the buyer is the registered owner.

The buyer’s transfer costs typically come to 8–10% of the purchase price on a bonded purchase and 3–5% on a cash purchase. The main lines are transfer duty (zero up to R1.21 million, progressive above that), the transferring attorney’s fee (LSSA tariff guideline), the bond attorney’s fee (on a bonded deal), Deeds Office lodgement fees (gazetted), FICA/post/sundries, and the bank’s initiation fee capped under NCA Regulation 42. The seller typically pays the bond cancellation fee, the estate agent’s commission, any arrear rates or levies, and — above the primary residence exclusion — capital gains tax.

The buyer (the acquirer) pays transfer duty to SARS. Under section 3 of the Transfer Duty Act 40 of 1949, the duty is legally owed by the person who acquires the property. The conveyancer pays it on the buyer’s behalf out of funds deposited into the attorney’s trust account before lodgement, and SARS issues a transfer duty receipt that is lodged with the transfer. No duty receipt, no registration. There is no version of a South African property transfer in which the seller carries the duty.

Yes. Since 23 February 2011 the transfer duty table has been fully unified — natural persons, companies, close corporations and trusts all use the same progressive table with the same zero-rated threshold (currently R1,210,000). Before 2011 there was a substantially higher flat rate for non-natural-person buyers, but that regime is gone. Whether you buy in your own name, through a Pty Ltd, through a family trust or through a close corporation, the transfer duty liability is identical at every purchase price point. For the current brackets see our spoke on transfer duty.

The LSSA (Law Society of South Africa) conveyancing tariff is a guideline, not a regulated tariff. It publishes a suggested fee for every purchase price, and most conveyancers charge close to it because it reflects the amount of work an average transfer takes. Nothing in law compels a client to pay the guideline, however — the Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014 gives clients the freedom to negotiate fees, and a conveyancer is perfectly free to offer a discount (within the profession’s reserved-work rules and the rules against undercutting). You can and should ask for a pro-forma quote before appointing.

Yes. Deeds Office lodgement fees are gazetted nationally under the Deeds Registries Act and the same tariff applies at every one of the nine Deeds Registries — Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg, King William’s Town, Mthatha and Vryburg. The fees are published as a scale that increases in bands with the purchase price. The current fee schedule, effective from 1 April 2026, is set out in our spoke on transfer costs; the amounts are modest next to transfer duty and the conveyancer’s fee but must be paid before lodgement.

Yes — and the bank chooses the bond attorney, not you. If you are taking out a mortgage bond to finance the purchase, your bank will appoint its own bond registration attorney to draft the bond and register it at the Deeds Office simultaneously with the transfer. You cannot appoint your own lawyer to this role; the bank’s panel arrangement is non-negotiable in South African practice. The bond attorney’s fee, which also follows the LSSA tariff guideline, is paid by the buyer in addition to the transferring attorney’s fee.

Yes, but under section 125 of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 you must give the bank 90 days’ written notice of intention to cancel. If you do not, the bank is entitled to charge penalty interest equal to three months’ worth of interest on the outstanding balance at the time of cancellation — a non-trivial sum on a large bond.

In practice, a seller who lists a property and accepts an offer more than 90 days before the anticipated registration date avoids the penalty entirely; a seller whose sale moves faster than expected will pay something on cancellation. The cancellation attorney collects the notice from the bank, issues settlement figures to the conveyancer, and the bond is cancelled on registration day.

Final bond approval typically takes 5 to 10 working days from the point at which the bank has every document it needs — your payslips, bank statements, the OTP, the property valuation report, and your FICA pack. If you apply through a bond originator, final grant can be a few days longer because the originator queues your application with several banks at once. What can stretch the timeline beyond 10 days: a valuation query, a credit-bureau blip, fresh employment, retrenchment risk, or an intricate affordability assessment for a self-employed buyer. Pre-approval before you start house-hunting is worth its weight in gold.

Yes. Every bank charges a bond initiation fee for setting up the bond — it covers the bank’s administrative and valuation costs. The fee is capped under Regulation 42 of the National Credit Act, and banks typically charge close to the cap. The initiation fee is separate from the bond attorney’s fee and the Deeds Office registration fee; it goes straight to the bank. Most buyers capitalise it into the bond rather than paying it upfront, which is allowed under the NCA’s cost-of-credit rules.

Most South African banks do not port bonds. You cancel the bond on the old property at the Deeds Office on the day the sale registers, and register a fresh bond on the new property when you buy it — usually through a different conveyancer and with a fresh set of initiation and registration fees. A few banks offer a “switch” product that re-uses the underlying credit approval to shortcut the new application, and some offer a partial rebate of the initiation fee if you re-finance within the same bank — but the formal registration of the new bond is still a new registration. Budget for both sides.

No. Once both parties have signed the Offer to Purchase and any suspensive conditions have been fulfilled, the contract is a binding sale of immovable property. The seller cannot walk away on a change of heart. If the seller refuses to proceed, the buyer has a full menu of civil remedies: specific performance (an order compelling the seller to transfer), cancellation with damages (recovering wasted costs and consequential loss), or — rarely — a claim for the profit the buyer would have realised. South African courts are comfortable ordering specific performance of a property sale; the remedy is granted as a matter of course unless it would be impossible or seriously inequitable.

Voetstoots is Afrikaans for “pushed with the foot” — it is the clause in most OTPs that says the property is sold “as it stands”, with all patent and latent defects at the buyer’s risk. The clause does not, however, protect a seller who fraudulently concealed a known defect; that much is settled South African law. And where the seller sells in the ordinary course of business — a developer or a flipping investor — the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 imposes an implied warranty of quality that overrides voetstoots. The clause is narrower than it looks. Our dedicated spoke on voetstoots and defect disclosure unpacks the limits.

Only in writing and only with both parties signing. Section 2(1) of the Alienation of Land Act 68 of 1981 requires every sale of immovable property — and every amendment to one — to be in writing and signed by both parties or their duly authorised agents. A verbal side-agreement, a WhatsApp message, an email exchange without signatures — none of these amend the OTP. A handwritten change on the printed OTP is effective only if both parties initial it; an addendum on a separate sheet is effective only if both parties sign it. The rule sometimes catches out parties who think they have agreed a price reduction or an extension of a deadline.

The sale falls away automatically. A suspensive condition is exactly that — a condition the contract hangs on — and if it is not fulfilled by its deadline, the contract evaporates by operation of law. The buyer recovers the deposit, the seller is free to re-list, neither has a claim against the other, and neither owes transfer duty because there was never a taxable acquisition. Parties can agree in writing to extend the deadline before it expires, but once a deadline has passed unmet the contract is gone. A common pitfall is the buyer who is “close to approval” on the deadline and does nothing; the sale lapses regardless.

Only on small-value residential purchases. Section 29A of the Alienation of Land Act gives a purchaser of residential property a five-day cooling-off right — but only if the purchase price is R250,000 or less. That threshold has not moved in decades and is in practical terms below the price of almost any Pretoria property. For the overwhelming majority of modern transactions there is no statutory cooling-off right once the OTP is signed: the deal is binding, subject only to any suspensive conditions the parties wrote in. If you want a right to withdraw, the time to negotiate it is before you sign — not after.

Yes. There is no prohibition on foreigners owning residential property in South Africa; the same transfer rules apply whether you are a citizen, a permanent resident or a non-resident. A non-resident will, however, need South African Reserve Bank exchange-control approval for the inward transfer of the funds and — on eventual resale — for the outward transfer of the proceeds. In practice the non-resident opens a Non-Resident Rand Account at a South African bank, the funds arrive through the proper BoP reporting channel, and the conveyancer’s file reflects the chain. See our spoke on non-resident buyers for the full sequence.

Sometimes — but almost never for tax savings. Since 23 February 2011 the transfer duty table has been the same for natural persons, companies, CCs and trusts, so the old “buy through a trust to save duty” argument is dead. What remains valid is asset protection and estate planning: a properly administered family trust can insulate the property from a beneficiary’s personal creditors and from estate duty on death, and a company can be a useful ownership vehicle for a property that is part of a broader business structure.

The trade-off is ongoing cost and complexity — trust accounting, public officer filings, beneficial ownership returns — and much tighter FICA on every acquisition. Our spoke on buying through a trust or company sets out when each vehicle earns its keep.

No special first-time-buyer exemption exists in South Africa. Everyone — first-time buyer, second home buyer, investor — uses the same progressive transfer duty table, with the same zero-rated threshold currently at R1,210,000. A first-time buyer whose purchase price is below R1.21m pays no transfer duty, but so does every other buyer below R1.21m. The only first-time-buyer-specific benefit in the South African system is the First Home Finance (FLISP) subsidy administered by the National Housing Finance Corporation — a deposit subsidy for qualifying lower-income first-time buyers, with household income thresholds and property-value caps that must be verified at the time of application.

It depends on the matrimonial regime. Spouses married out of community of property — with or without accrual — each buy property in their own name freely, subject only to the ordinary FICA on each spouse. Spouses married in community of property share a single joint estate, and section 15 of the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 requires each spouse to consent in writing to any alienation or hypothecation of immovable property forming part of the joint estate. In practice, the non-signing spouse also FICAs, confirms the regime, and co-signs the OTP. See joint ownership — marriages and co-owners.

FLISP — now branded First Home Finance — is the government-backed subsidy for first-time buyers administered by the National Housing Finance Corporation. It pays a once-off deposit subsidy (the amount scales with household income) to qualifying first-time buyers with a bond grant from a registered credit provider, up to an upper household-income threshold and up to a maximum property purchase price. Both the income thresholds and the property-price cap are revised periodically and must be verified on the NHFC website at the time of application. The subsidy is paid to the buyer’s bank to reduce the bond balance, not to the conveyancer.

Transfer duty is payable within six months of the date of acquisition. Critically, the “date of acquisition” under the Transfer Duty Act is the date the last party signs the OTP — not the date any suspensive condition is eventually met. So a bond-subject OTP signed on 1 March triggers a 6-month clock on 1 March, not on the date the bond is finally granted. For most transfers the six months is more than enough; for long-running complex matters it can become a pressure point and the conveyancer will push to get the declaration filed well before it expires.

Late payment attracts interest at 10% per annum per completed month under section 4(1A) of the Transfer Duty Act — so each additional month the duty is outstanding adds roughly 0.83% to the liability. Separately, SARS may raise an understatement penalty of up to 200% of the duty under Chapter 16 of the Tax Administration Act if the late payment is attributable to conduct ranging from “reasonable care not taken” to “intentional tax evasion”.

In practice, late-payment interest on a ticking clock will eat any cash benefit from delay; nobody benefits from slow-paying transfer duty. The conveyancer’s trust account is the mechanism that avoids this — duty is paid out of trust the moment it is due.

Natural-person sellers of a primary residence enjoy an exclusion of the first R3,000,000 of the capital gain, effective 1 March 2026 (up from R2 million previously). Only the portion of the gain above R3 million is included in taxable income, and only 40% of that inclusion is taxed for natural persons. At the 45% marginal rate the effective CGT rate tops out at 18%. An annual personal CGT exclusion of R50,000 also applies. Companies and trusts do not enjoy the primary residence exclusion and are taxed at much higher effective rates — a key reason the “buy in a trust” strategy rarely pays back on a home you live in.

They are mutually exclusive. If the seller is a VAT vendor selling the property in the course or furtherance of an enterprise — most commonly a property developer or a commercial landlord — the sale attracts VAT at 15% and no transfer duty is payable. In every other case (an ordinary resale between private individuals, most trust and company sales of residential property, and so on), the sale attracts transfer duty and no VAT. The OTP must record clearly which regime applies; if it is silent the price is presumed to be VAT-inclusive at 15% where the seller is a vendor, which can be an expensive surprise for the seller.

Yes, if the cancellation is true and complete. Under section 190 of the Tax Administration Act, a buyer who has paid transfer duty on a sale that is subsequently cancelled is entitled to a refund from SARS, provided the claim is lodged within five years of the date of payment. “True and complete” means that the sale is genuinely off — not re-constituted at a different price, not replaced by a second OTP between the same parties — and that SARS is satisfied no transfer ever took place. The refund application is made by the conveyancer on the buyer’s behalf and SARS typically pays it out within a few months once the file is accepted.