Half-Share Transfers
Key Takeaways:
Half-share transfers involve the sale or transfer of a 50% ownership stake in a property.
Legal intricacies, valuation considerations, and co-owner agreements play pivotal roles.
Professional conveyancing assistance ensures smooth transactions, addressing complexities for both parties.
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 law 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.
What does the transferring of a half-share of property entail?
There are often times a need to change, cancel or undo the common practice of co-ownership or owning immovable property jointly (co-ownership and joint ownership mean the same thing and are used interchangeably).
And this need to change, often results in the need to transfer the former share of ownership to the other partner who will then become the full and sole owner of the whole property. Alternatively, both original co-owners may decide to sell and transfer each of their shares in the land to an independent third party.
Whatever the decision, transfer duty will be payable by the transferee/purchaser (unless otherwise exempted). This is because the acquisition of a share in the property is deemed to be an acquisition of ownership in immovable property. The transfer fee payable in a situation where one spouse is buying the other’s share in a jointly owned property (or where the half-share is sold to an independent third party) is calculated by taking into account the value of the property (as a whole) divided by the relevant percentage held.
The transfer (together with the various rates and taxes/levy clearance certificates as well as the Transfer Duty Receipt or Transfer Duty Exemption Receipts) will then be lodged at the Deeds Office. The Alienation of Land Act 68 of 1981 (as well as SARS) require a sale or a disposal agreement in writing, signed by both parties, without which, the disposal of the share in the property will be invalid.
What about the financing of the property?
A bond registered over a property held in the name of more than one party can be dealt with in one of two ways (subject to the bank’s credit approval) –
existing bond can be cancelled and a new bond registered in the name of the remaining sole owner. This can be quite a costly exercise as there will be a bond cancellation and a registration fee, or
The one owner can be substituted as the sole owner under the bond. This will be done in terms of an application to the Deeds Office to this effect in terms of Section 57 of the Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937. The bondholder will have to consent to this application and the costs of such application will be less than the aforementioned cancellation and registration.
Why should you hire a Conveyancer to handle a half-share transfer?
There are many legal aspects that need to be taken into consideration depending on whether the property will be transferred to the other spouse, how the spouses are married or whether the property will be transferred to an independent third party.
Therefore, before making any decisions on whether or not to transfer your property, it is crucial that you consult with a suitably qualified and reputable Conveyancer (like those at Benaters) who will be able to guide and advise you on how best to proceed depending on your specific circumstances (and desired outcome) and thereby ensure that the whole process proceeds smoothly and without unnecessary hitches.
Why should you trust Benaters to handle your half-share transfer?
We have successfully completed many half-share transfers of property across South Africa and are able to draft the necessary documentation for such transfer in the Deeds Office – a process we have been through many, many times.
We are 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 due care.