Residential Property Transfers
Key Takeaways:
Residential property transfers involve the legal conveyancing process of changing property ownership.
Steps include drafting a deed, title searches, and registration at the Deeds Office.
Professional guidance ensures a seamless transfer, addressing complexities and ensuring compliance.
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.
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.
Why should you hire a Conveyancer to handle your transfer?
When it comes to either commercial or residential transfers, there are so many varying legal aspects to consider, it can make your head spin.
Sure, the transfer process is complicated but it is also so exciting. As we set out above, transferring a property is “the legal transfer of ownership of immovable property from seller to buyer” together with all related aspects (which quite simply includes - the registration of mortgage bonds, lodgement of documents at the deeds office and payment of transfer duty).
The transfer process eventually culminates in the actual transfer of the property, ultimately ending with the buyer holding the keys of the new property in their hands.
In order to attend to a property transfer (whether it is commercial or residential), a Conveyancer is tantamount to this transfer process actually happening. As we said, without a Conveyancer, a property transfer would not occur.
The question is therefore not why should you hire a conveyancer to handle your transfer but rather which conveyancer you should hire to handle your transfer.
This is not an if question but rather a who question.
Why should you trust Benaters with your property transfer?
We have coordinated both residential and commercial property transfers across the length and breadth of South Africa, many times, over many years.
You could say that we are experienced. To the nth degree.
We believe in taking a proactive approach and are happy to hold your hand, guiding you through this exciting process from start to finish. And everything in between.
We are proud to be Conveyancers. We enjoy what we do and being able to offer such a specialised niche service to our clients, makes us brim with pride and enthusiasm.
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.