The Long Conversation With the Same Client

Most families who buy a house will need property help again, for a lease, a sale, a deceased estate or a second home, so a first transfer works better as the start of a long conversation than as a closed file. A starter townhouse in Polokwane becomes a rental when the family needs more space. Later a parent's house in Tzaneen has to be dealt with, with an executor, a valuation for the estate and a tenant who was never on a written lease. Each is a separate deal on paper. In life they are one story, and whoever followed it from the start already knows what the levies were, why the first bond was structured as it was, and which neighbour argued about the boundary wall.

That memory saves time and prevents mistakes, because the second deal begins where the first ended instead of from nothing. It also changes how the first deal is handled. Someone who expects to sit across the table from the same family again explains occupational rent properly and is honest about the valuation, because they will still be around, in the same town, when the consequences land.