Property Sales Hampered by Gauteng Bureaucracy

May 21 - In order for a property transfer to be complete in South Africa, sellers need to produce a rate clearance certificate from their city council.

While this should, theoretically, be a process that takes only several days, some sellers have found themselves in the nightmare position of being in limbo as they wait up to a year for their certificates in Gauteng.

The Johannesburg City Council has fallen into a backlog of processing thousands of rate clearance certificates, hampering the sales process of homes.

The backlog is already causing problems in the Gauteng property market, with many sales being held up since 2009, or cancelled with buyers unable to wait so long.

According to property law, a seller will only receive payment once all the documentation - including rate clearance certificates - have been cleared.

Nobody can understand why such a simple process is taking so long to complete, and both buyers and sellers are getting more frustrated by the day.

The Johannesburg City Council said that it had recently migrated its software onto another system, explaining the problems, however it could not go as far as to predict when the problem will be rectified.

Some sellers have consulted legal avenues and are weighing the option of taking the city council to court in a bid to get them to speed up the process.

5/21/2010 9:16:35 AM