Thandiwe Nkosi, South Africa contributor

Covers South Africa's private-sale process from primary sources: the conveyancer who registers the transfer at the Deeds Office, the compliance certificates a seller must produce, and the rates and sectional-title levy clearances that have to be settled before the Registrar of Deeds will sign. This desk tracks the detail that reassures first-time private sellers, that ownership and the seller's payout both land on the same day at registration, routed through the conveyancer's trust account rather than a private cash handover.

A common misconception is that the estate agent is the gatekeeper of a South African sale. They are not. A seller can list the home, field offers, and set the price independently, and the one party that genuinely cannot be skipped is the conveyancer, the attorney who prepares the transfer and lodges it at the Deeds Office. That single distinction reframes how a private seller should approach the whole transaction.

Sequencing is where most of the avoidable trouble lives. The electrical compliance certificate should be ordered before listing, not in the week of transfer. Municipal rates and sectional title levies need to be brought up to date early, because no clearance certificate means no registration, full stop. The offer to purchase deserves slow reading, because once both seller and buyer sign it, it is generally binding, and the suspensive conditions inside it (the bond approval deadline, the occupation date, the occupational rent) are where deals quietly fall apart.

Then the money. Transfer duty is the buyer’s cost, not the seller’s. On the seller’s side sits capital gains tax, which for most ordinary home sellers is softened by the primary residence exclusion, alongside the costs the seller actually carries: bond cancellation, the compliance certificates, and any arrears. A written estimate from the conveyancer up front turns the rest from a black box into a known number.

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