The Audit That Saves You Is Your Own

The municipality's check on a property's account is the least useful one, because it comes too late. On transfer the conveyancer must obtain a rates clearance certificate, and the municipality issues it only once the amounts it says are owed have been paid. If those amounts are wrong, the seller learns it with a buyer waiting and a registration date planned.

Errors build up in ordinary ways. A refuse charge appears twice on the account and nobody notices because the total looks roughly familiar. A meter number on the account turns out to belong to the neighbour's connection. A property sits in the wrong category on the valuation roll, and the correction takes weeks of letters. None of it feels urgent until a transfer depends on it.

An owner who reads each statement, checks that the meter number on the account matches the meter on the pavement and queries anything strange while it is small, finds these problems while there is still time to argue. The owner knows the property better than any clerk does. At clearance, the municipality's version is the one that gets paid.