Your home is the largest transaction of your life. Here are the five things we see go wrong regularly and how to make sure they don’t happen to you.
Morgan Housel wrote that the most important financial skill isn’t intelligence, it’s behaviour. The ability to stay calm and avoid expensive mistakes under pressure.
Property transfers are pressure. There’s a chain: buyer, seller, bank, Deeds Office, municipality, body corporate, and any link can break. Your conveyancer sits at the centre. Here’s what we see from that vantage point.
Your bond approval can expire. Most approvals last 90 days. In 2026, transfers are routinely taking twelve to fourteen weeks in Gauteng. If yours runs long, the approval lapses and you reapply, possibly at a different rate. Build buffer into your timeline from day one.
Rates clearance is the number one delay in Gauteng. Before transfer can happen, the municipality must confirm all rates and taxes are paid up. Some municipalities take two weeks. Others take six. There’s almost nothing anyone can do to speed it up once submitted. The difference is when you submit. A proactive conveyancer lodges the application on day one, not day thirty.
The seller’s bond must be cancelled too. If the seller has a mortgage, their bank must process a cancellation in parallel with your bond registration. We’ve seen transfers delayed by weeks because nobody chased the seller’s bank early enough.
Solar panels and boreholes can create legal complications. Is the solar system owned or leased? Were those renovations approved by the municipality? These need answers before lodgement, not after the Deeds Office examiner flags them.
Sectional title transfers have extra steps. Body corporate levies must be current. A clearance certificate from the managing agent is required. Trustees may need to approve. These add time and cost that freehold buyers don’t face.
Housel’s line applies perfectly here: the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan. Every transfer has a plan. And every transfer has the moment where it meets reality, a missing FICA document, an outstanding municipal account the seller didn’t know about, a bank that goes quiet for ten days.
The conveyancers who earn their fee aren’t the ones who handle the smooth transfers. It’s the ones who navigate the complications calmly, proactively, with a phone call instead of an email, and with enough experience to know what the examiner will flag before they flag it.
The transfer process is not glamorous. But done well, it’s what turns a signed offer into your front door key, and that matters.
Jenna Moritz Attorneys | Sandton | National reach
