Frequently Asked Questions

Typically eight to twelve weeks from a signed offer to purchase until the new owner's title deed is registered. Roughly:

• Weeks 1-3 — the buyer applies for a bond; the seller engages a conveyancer; the conveyancer requests the existing title deed and bond cancellation figures from the seller's bank.
• Weeks 3-6 — buyer pays the conveyancer's pro-forma (transfer duty, registration fees, deposit); the conveyancer prepares and lodges the transfer documents.
• Weeks 6-10 — deeds office examines the documents (about 7-10 working days), all linked conveyancers agree to simultaneous registration, registration happens.
• Week 10-12 — buyer takes occupation if not already done; conveyancer pays out the seller and finalises the file.

Delays usually come from the bond approval, missing FICA documentation, or a backlog at a specific deeds office. Each of the 11 offices works at slightly different speeds.

The buyer pays transfer duty. It's a tax payable to SARS, levied on the purchase price of property bought from a private seller (purchases from a VAT-registered developer attract VAT instead, not transfer duty).

Transfer duty is calculated on a sliding scale that's adjusted annually in the Budget Speech. As at the current SARS schedule, properties below the threshold (currently R1.1 million) are duty-free; from there it rises in bands, reaching 13% on the portion of the price above R12 million. SARS publishes the current rates and a built-in calculator.

The buyer pays the conveyancer; the conveyancer pays SARS and lodges the duty receipt with the transfer documents. Without the receipt, the deeds office won't register the transfer.

A conveyancer is an attorney who has passed an additional exam authorising them to lodge documents at the deeds office. Every property transfer in South Africa must go through a conveyancer — you cannot lodge a transfer yourself.

The conveyancer:

• drafts the transfer deed, power of attorney, and supporting documents
• obtains rates and levy clearance certificates from the municipality and any body corporate
• calculates and pays transfer duty to SARS
• lodges the deed at the correct deeds office and pushes it through registration
• holds the purchase price in trust and pays it out to the seller on registration

The seller normally chooses the conveyancer (it's called the transferring attorney). The buyer is bound by that choice but pays the conveyancer's fees. There's a separate bond attorney appointed by the buyer's bank, plus sometimes a cancellation attorney for the seller's existing bond — all three are simultaneously involved in larger transactions.

No. Under the Deeds Registries Act, only an admitted conveyancer (a specially-qualified attorney) can lodge a deed at the deeds office. This applies to every transfer — between family members, between companies, even gifts. The same rule covers bond registrations and bond cancellations.

The reason is partly historical and partly protective: the conveyancer is held personally liable for the accuracy of the documents lodged, and carries professional indemnity insurance against errors. The system has its critics (it's expensive), but it's the system. Budget for conveyancer fees from the start.

What you can do yourself, without an attorney, is search the deeds registry, request copies of title deeds and bonds, and view your own property's history. That's exactly what services like DeedsCheck are built for.

A deeds office is a government registry that records who legally owns property in South Africa, what bonds (mortgages) are registered against each property, and what conditions apply to it. Every transfer of land has to be lodged at the deeds office that has jurisdiction over the property — until the registrar signs the deed, ownership doesn't change in the eyes of the law.

The system is governed by the Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937 and run by the Office of the Chief Registrar of Deeds (a unit of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development). The same office also keeps records of antenuptial contracts, sectional title openings, and certain notarial documents.

There are 11 deeds offices in South Africa, each with jurisdiction over specific magisterial districts. They are: Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Mthatha, King William's Town, Mmabatho and Vryburg.

The office that handles your property depends on where the land is, not where you live. A Sandton owner's title deed is registered in Johannesburg; a Sea Point owner's deed is in Cape Town. If you're not sure which one to approach, our full registry directory covers each office's jurisdiction, address, and the types of documents it handles.

Every deeds office keeps the original signed title deeds for property in its jurisdiction, plus the supporting documents that have been lodged against each property over time. That includes:

• Title deeds — proof of ownership for freehold, sectional title, and certain agricultural properties
• Bond documents — every mortgage registered or cancelled, with the amount and the lender
• Servitudes and restrictive conditions — rights of way, height restrictions, building lines
• Antenuptial contracts — for marriages out of community of property
• Sectional title scheme documents — opening of the scheme, unit plans, participation quotas

Anyone can request a copy of any of these documents. Some require an attorney or registered conveyancer to obtain; others are available directly via online search services.

Deeds-registry information is public record. Any member of the public can request information about who owns a property, what bonds are registered against it, and what conditions apply — the registry was set up precisely so ownership can be checked openly.

That said, the system was historically designed for in-person visits by attorneys and conveyancers. Searching online is faster: services like DeedsCheck retrieve the same information via the registry's electronic interface and present it in a readable report. The data is identical to what you would get walking into a deeds office, just delivered in minutes instead of hours.

The two offices deal with different aspects of land but are often confused:

• The deeds office records who owns a piece of land and what rights are attached to it (bonds, servitudes, restrictive conditions). It deals with the legal document — the title deed.
• The Office of the Surveyor-General records where the boundaries are — the geometric shape, area, and coordinates of every cadastral piece in the country. It deals with the diagram (the SG diagram or general plan).

A title deed always references its SG diagram by number. When you search a property, the deeds office tells you who owns it; the surveyor-general tells you exactly where it is.

Yes. The deeds registry indexes properties by both property descriptor (erf number, address) and owner. You can search for "every property registered to John Smith of ID 8506125000000" and get back a list of all properties they currently own across all 11 deeds offices.

This is how attorneys check for hidden assets in matrimonial disputes, deceased estates, and judgement enforcement. It's also how journalists trace property portfolios. DeedsCheck offers a Property Search Report that includes a name-and-ID search if the buyer is known.

Owner names returned are exactly as they appear on the title deed — usually full legal name and the South African ID number used at the time of transfer.

Yes. Deeds-registry information is explicitly public under the Deeds Registries Act, and accessing it doesn't require the owner's consent.

The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) regulates how personal information is processed, but it has specific carve-outs for information that is already in the public domain or made publicly accessible by law. The deeds registry is a textbook example. POPIA still applies to how that data is used downstream — for marketing, profiling, or onward disclosure — so a property search service has to handle it responsibly. But the search itself is lawful.

Common legitimate uses include: pre-purchase due diligence, verifying a seller's identity, checking for liens or restrictions, and confirming a landlord's ownership before signing a lease.

Online property reports often mask ID numbers, full names, or certain bond details in the preview of a report — these are revealed only when you pay for the full document. There are two reasons:

• Anti-scraping — without masking, someone could compile a database of every owner and ID number in the country from preview pages alone. POPIA principles of minimisation apply even to public-domain data when it's aggregated.
• Commercial — the report retrieval itself has a cost (the registry charges per query). Paywalling the full data covers that cost.

The full report, once purchased, contains exactly what the deeds office holds. Nothing is hidden from a paying buyer.

No. The deeds registry was deliberately structured as a public register precisely so that anyone considering a transaction with a property owner — buying from them, renting from them, lending to them — can verify the legal facts without having to ask.

Notifying the owner is sometimes a courtesy in commercial settings (lawyers will typically tell their counterparts they're running a search before negotiation), but it's never a legal requirement. The same applies to bond details and registered conditions: all public, all searchable without consent.

A title deed is the legal document that proves you own a particular piece of property in South Africa. It's issued by the deeds office and signed by the Registrar of Deeds — without that signature, no transfer of ownership is legally complete.

The deed identifies the parties (seller and buyer), describes the property exactly (erf number, township, registration division, extent), records the purchase price, and lists any conditions or restrictions that bind the new owner. If a bond was registered to fund the purchase, the deed also references the bond and the financial institution that holds it.

We have a longer plain-English walkthrough at what is a title deed, including an annotated example.

It depends on whether you have a bond on the property:

• Bond on the property — the original title deed is held by your bank as security for the loan. You can request a copy from the bank or the deeds office at any time, but the original only comes back to you when the bond is cancelled.
• Property paid off (no bond) — the original is usually with your conveyancing attorney from the last transfer, in a safe-deposit box, or sometimes simply at home. There is no requirement to physically hold it — the legal record is the deeds office, not your filing cabinet.

If you've lost it, you can apply at the deeds office for a certified copy. Most conveyancers will do this for you.

You have three options:

• Walk into the deeds office with the property's erf number or title deed number. They'll print a certified copy on the spot — usually for a small fee, payable in cash or via card.
• Ask a conveyancing attorney to fetch it for you. This costs more but is convenient if you're not local to the registry office.
• Order an electronic copy online at DeedsCheck. The same document, delivered to your inbox within minutes.

A certified copy has the same legal standing as the original for most purposes — banks, attorneys, and SARS will all accept it.

From the date the conveyancer lodges the deed at the deeds office to the day it's ready for collection, count on two to four weeks in normal conditions. The actual examination by the deeds office takes about 7 to 10 working days; the rest is queueing.

The full transfer process from offer-to-purchase to a signed deed is much longer — typically eight to twelve weeks. The deeds office is the last step. Most of the time is taken up earlier by the bond approval, transfer duty payment to SARS, and the conveyancer preparing the documentation.

If you're mid-transfer and want to know whether your deed has been registered, the conveyancer can check the deeds office status in real time.

Title deed numbers follow the format [letter] [number]/[year]. The letter identifies the type of document:

• T — a standard transfer deed (residential or commercial freehold)
• ST — a sectional title transfer (a unit in a sectional title scheme)
• B — a bond document (a mortgage registered against a property)
• K — a notarial deed (servitudes, antenuptial contracts)
• SK — a sectional title bond

The number is sequential within that office and year, and the year is when the deed was registered. So T74887/1997 means: the 74,887th standard transfer registered at a particular deeds office during 1997. The office isn't in the number itself — you need to know which registry the property belongs to (see our deeds offices directory).