Why Compliance Will Decide the Next 24 Months

Why would a sale that everyone agreed on still fail to register? Very often the answer is paperwork that nobody treated as urgent until the conveyancer asked for it.

A transfer only moves when the documents behind it are in order. The seller needs an electrical compliance certificate, and depending on the property and the contract, an electric fence or gas certificate as well. The municipality has to issue a rates clearance certificate before the deeds office will register the transfer, and in a sectional title scheme the body corporate has to confirm that the levies are paid up. Each of those steps has a person on the other side who can say not yet.

The conveyancer also has to complete FICA checks on both buyer and seller, and a buyer who cannot show where the deposit came from can hold up a file just as surely as a missing certificate. None of these requirements is new. What catches people out is how long each one can take when it is left to the end.

That is why compliance, more than marketing, will decide which sales close smoothly in the months ahead. A signed offer is only a promise. The certificates and clearances are what turn it into a registered transfer, and the people who gather them early are the ones whose deals stop slipping.