Questions we are asked

Yes. Golden Homes is registered with the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority, the PPRA, which took over from the Estate Agency Affairs Board in 2022. Registration isn't a formality. A property practitioner must hold a current Fidelity Fund Certificate to earn commission, and a conveyancer won't pay commission to anyone who can't produce one. The fund is there for you: if you lose money through an agent's dishonesty, you have a claim against it rather than nothing. So the certificate is your protection, not the agent's badge. A Golden Homes deal runs through the proper legal channels. You sign an Offer to Purchase, the bank registers a bond if you're financing, and a conveyancer transfers the property at the Deeds Office. Nothing changes hands on a handshake. Ask any branch to show you the firm's certificate before you sign a mandate or an offer, and they'll put it on the desk in front of you. Each principal's PPRA status appears beside their name on the team page.

Golden Homes runs branches across three provinces. In Gauteng the offices sit on the East Rand and the eastern side of Johannesburg: Benoni, Boksburg, Boksburg South, Germiston, Primrose and Kensington, each working the suburbs around it. In KwaZulu-Natal the Glenwood branch covers the Berea and the Durban suburbs beside it. In the Western Cape the West Coast branch works the stretch from Langebaan through Saldanha to St Helena Bay, and the George branch covers the Garden Route. Each branch is its own camp with its own patch of ground. The Boksburg principal knows which streets in Bartlett sell faster and where the value sits in Parkdene, because that's the ground they walk. A head office can't know it and doesn't pretend to. Each listing on this site names the branch holding the mandate, so you know who to phone. If your area isn't on the list, contact the nearest branch anyway. They'll tell you honestly whether they can help, or who can.

It depends on the bank, the municipality and other known or unknown factors, so nobody honest will promise a date. The safer assumption is around ten weeks from accepted offer to registered transfer. Here is where the time goes. Once the seller accepts your Offer to Purchase, the bond application starts, and a bank can take a few days or several weeks depending on your paperwork and the property. Plan for eight weeks on the bond, not four. While the bank works, the conveyancer applies to the municipality for a rates clearance certificate and, if the seller still has a bond, asks the seller's bank for cancellation figures. The electrical certificate gets issued and any repairs get done. You both sign the transfer documents and you pay the transfer costs. The conveyancer then lodges at the Deeds Office, which tends to take seven to ten working days to register. Plan for ten weeks, and an early transfer is a bonus rather than a scramble.

Transfer duty, conveyancing fees and bond registration costs sit on top of the purchase price. They're part of the real cost of the home, not optional extras. Take a R1.8 million house in Boksburg. Transfer duty on it comes to about R21 800, paid to SARS on a sliding scale which starts at nil for the first R1 210 000. The conveyancer's fee for the transfer tends to add somewhere around R40 000 with the Deeds Office fee and disbursements. If you're financing, the bond attorney's account adds a similar amount again, plus the bank's initiation fee. None of it appears on the listing. If you move in before registration, you pay occupational rent for those weeks. Sellers carry their own costs too. There's the agent's commission, the compliance certificates, the fee to cancel an existing bond, and the rates the municipality wants in advance before it clears the property. A branch will put the figures for the actual property in writing before you commit. Both sellers and buyers incur costs, so ask before you sign.

Commission isn't fixed by law in South Africa. It's a percentage of the selling price, agreed between you and the agency in the mandate before the property goes to market. The usual range is between five and seven and a half percent, plus VAT. When an agent says five percent they mean five percent plus VAT on the commission, which comes to 5.75 percent of the price. On a R1.5 million home in Benoni that's R86 250, so ask whether the figure you're given includes VAT. The seller pays it, not the buyer, and it comes out of the proceeds when the conveyancer pays over on registration. Nothing is due until the sale is through. An agent earns commission by introducing the buyer who signs, and the agent's job is to complete the deal, not inflate the price. A realistic valuation sells; an inflated one sits. The percentage is negotiable, particularly on a well-priced home in a strong area. Ask the branch for its figure, in writing, before you sign a mandate.

Ask to see the Fidelity Fund Certificate. Each property practitioner in South Africa, the firm and each agent in it, must hold one issued by the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority, the PPRA. It's renewed each year and expires on 31 December, so look at the date, not only the name. The date is the point. Under the Property Practitioners Act an agent without a valid certificate isn't entitled to commission, and a conveyancer won't pay it. A registered agent has passed the required qualification and is bound by the PPRA's code of conduct, which gives you somewhere to complain if things go wrong. The PPRA keeps a register and will confirm a certificate if you contact them. A genuine agent produces the certificate without hesitation; reluctance tells you what you need to know. On this site each principal's PPRA status appears beside their name, and any Golden Homes branch will show you the firm's certificate on request.

They're two different bills, and buyers regularly budget for one and get caught by the other. Transfer duty is a tax. It goes to SARS, it's worked out on the purchase price on a sliding scale, and there's currently no duty at all on the first R1 210 000, with the rate rising in bands above that. On a R2 million home the duty comes to about R33 800. If the seller is a VAT vendor, a developer for example, you pay VAT on the price instead of transfer duty, not both. Transfer costs are professional fees. They go to the conveyancer for the work of moving the property into your name: drawing the documents, obtaining the clearances, lodging at the Deeds Office and attending to registration, plus the Deeds Office fee and small disbursements. Both duty and costs are the buyer's, and both must be paid before the conveyancer can lodge. If you're taking a bond, bond registration costs are a third, separate account. Ask the conveyancer for a written breakdown of all three before you sign.

A sole mandate is a written agreement giving one agency the exclusive right to market your home for a fixed period, commonly ninety days. During that period no other agency may sell it, and if a buyer arrives through anyone else, including a neighbour over the fence, you still owe the sole agent commission. That's the trade. In return the agency puts money and hours into a home it knows it won't lose to a rival: photographs, the portals, show days, the buyers already on file. An open mandate lets several agencies compete. It sounds better and tends to produce less effort from each, because nobody spends on a sale someone else may close. Cancelling a sole mandate early is a breach of contract. The agency can claim what it has spent, or the commission if a buyer it introduced later signs. So read the period, the commission and the cancellation clause before you sign, and pick a term you can live with. Ninety days is enough for a well-priced home in Boksburg or Benoni.

Once the seller accepts it, an Offer to Purchase is a binding contract, and walking away is a breach. There are three lawful exits. The first is a suspensive condition. If your bond isn't approved by the date in the offer, or your own home doesn't sell by its date, the agreement falls away and nobody owes anything. The second is the cooling-off right in the Alienation of Land Act. It gives you five working days to cancel in writing, but only where the price is R250 000 or less, so it rarely applies to a house. The third is a breach by the seller which they fail to fix after written notice. Outside those three, cancelling means the seller can hold you to the sale or claim damages. The agent may still claim commission, because they did the work of introducing you. Read every clause before you sign, and if a condition is important to you, make sure it's written in as a condition and not left as a conversation.

Voetstoots is an old Dutch word meaning as it stands. A voetstoots clause in the Offer to Purchase says you buy the property in the condition it is in, with the defects it has, and the seller isn't liable for them after transfer. A cracked pool, a roof which leaks in the first summer storm, a geyser on its last legs: if you could have seen it and didn't ask, it's yours. The clause doesn't protect a seller who knew about a defect and kept quiet. Hiding a known problem is fraud, and the buyer can claim regardless of what the contract says. Since 2022 the Property Practitioners Act has required a mandatory disclosure form, completed by the seller and attached to the mandate and the offer, listing known defects in writing. So the two work together: the seller discloses what they know, and voetstoots covers what nobody knew. Read the disclosure form before you sign, walk the property with a critical eye, and if something worries you, pay for an inspection. It costs far less than the repair.

One is required on every sale in South Africa: the electrical certificate of compliance. A registered electrician inspects the installation, issues the certificate if it passes, and it must be less than two years old at transfer and cover any electrical work done since. The rest depend on the property. If there's a gas installation, a gas certificate. If there's an electric fence, a separate electric fence certificate. In KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape a beetle certificate is customary though not law, and the City of Cape Town requires a plumbing certificate under its by-law. The seller pays for the inspections, and the seller pays for whatever has to be fixed to pass, which is where the money goes. A house in Germiston with old wiring can need R15 000 of work before the electrician will sign. Get the electrical inspection done early, before the buyer's bond is approved, so a failed inspection doesn't hold up registration. The conveyancer won't lodge without the certificates in hand.

Occupational rent is what one party pays the other for living in the property while it still belongs to someone else. It arises two ways. A buyer moves in before registration because their lease has ended, and pays the seller for those weeks. Or a seller stays on after registration, because their new home isn't ready, and pays the buyer. The amount is agreed in the Offer to Purchase and tends to sit near market rent, often around one percent of the price a month, so R15 000 a month on a R1.5 million home. It's paid monthly in advance, water and electricity are usually for the occupant on top, and it stops on the day of registration. Two cautions. Once you're in, you carry the risk of the property, so check your insurance starts on the occupation date and not the transfer date. And if the sale then falls through, you're a tenant with no lease. Agree the occupation date in writing and keep it close to transfer.

It means the sale only goes ahead if a bank approves your home loan by a date written into the Offer to Purchase. Until then the contract is suspended: real, but waiting. If the bond is granted in time, the condition is met and the sale is on. If it isn't, the agreement falls away and you walk off without penalty, which is the whole point of the clause. It protects you from being bound to buy a house you can't pay for. Three things to get right. Put the full amount you need in the clause, not a smaller figure you hope to top up. Give yourself a realistic date: plan for eight weeks on the bond, not four, because banks ask for documents twice and municipal valuations take time. And know that approval in principle is not a granted bond. The bank's final grant, in writing, is what satisfies the condition. If the date is about to pass, ask for an extension in writing before it does, because a lapsed condition can't be revived by a phone call.

Yes, and most sellers do. The bond doesn't have to be paid off before you sell. It's settled on the day of registration out of the purchase price, and the conveyancer handles the mechanics. They ask your bank for cancellation figures, the bank's attorney cancels the bond at the Deeds Office in the same lodgement as the transfer, and the balance comes to you. Two costs catch sellers out. The bank charges early settlement interest unless you give it ninety days' written notice of your intention to sell, so send that notice the day you sign the mandate, not the day you find a buyer. And the bank's cancellation attorney charges a fee, which is yours to pay. The one situation which stops a sale is a shortfall. If the price is less than the amount you still owe, you must settle the difference before the bank releases its bond, and the conveyancer can't lodge until it does. Ask your bank for a settlement figure before you set an asking price.

FICA is the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. It makes banks, attorneys and estate agents check who they're dealing with, so that property can't be used to launder money. Estate agencies and conveyancers are accountable institutions under it, which means they must verify your identity and, for larger amounts, the source of your funds before they may act for you. An agent can't take a seller's mandate or conclude an offer without it. For a private individual the usual documents are your identity document, proof of address not older than three months, and your income tax number. If you're married, add the marriage certificate or antenuptial contract, because that affects who must sign. A company or trust needs its registration documents and the resolutions authorising the sale. Both buyer and seller are checked, and the conveyancer will ask again. It isn't personal and it isn't a judgement. It is the same check each buyer and seller in the country goes through, and the agency stores the copies under POPIA.