A Conveyancer’s Diary

And here we are, already well into a new year.


What will this year bring, for each of us personally, for the country, politically, sport, F1 and other events?


I am not going to make any predictions this time except maybe just one small one: I predict that our interest rates will remain more or less constant during the coming year.

Today’s note really concerns those dreaded levy clearance certificates that the conveyancer must obtain [in sectional title transfers] in order to be able to “certify” in the Section 15 B(3) certificate that all the levies have been paid up to date [or that provision to the satisfaction of the body corporate for payment has been made]. The conveyancer’s Section 15B(3) certificate is lodged at the Deeds office, and NOT, as some think it is, the levy clearance certificate.

Recently, while attending to a transfer of a sectional title unit of a “scheme” in Bonella, Durban, we were told by the Seller that there were no levies payable, that there were no trustees and there were no managing agents. We did a bit of detective work and could not find anything to help us in our quest. I was about to give up and sign the certificate so that the transfer could go through but something was worrying me about the whole issue. I did a search to establish the names of all the seventeen or so owners in this scheme and prepared a letter to each and every owner in which I pertinently asked whether that owner had any objection to the transfer going through and whether that owner was aware of any levies due, etc.

I hand delivered [personally] all seventeen letters. In some cases, the owner or a family member was at home. In other cases, I had to place the letter under the main door or between the burglar guards. We then had one single solitary phone call from one of the owners, and we managed to find out that the entire scheme was actually under administration in terms of the Sectional Titles Act, that the administrator had appointed managing agents and that my “esteemed” Seller actually owed about R30,000 (thirty thousand Rand!) in arrear levies.

The managing agents were given our undertaking, which they fortunately accepted and we paid the full arrear amount to them once the transfer had gone through. So, all’s well that ends well, in this case. I shudder to think what may have happened had I simply signed the Section 15 B(3). Not only would I (possibly) have been held personally liable for the payment of the outstanding levy, I would also have been reported to the Law Society.

Who says conveyancing is not fun?

Regards
Sieg



Quote:

“Good cannot be accomplished by evil means”

Stephen Donaldson, in Against All Things Ending: The last chronicles of Thomas Covenant, 2010 on p. 333