Protect your sectional title property from devaluation
Rawson - South Africa
Sectional title owners are often lulled into a false sense of security, believing that they can safely hand off all management, maintenance and repair responsibilities to their Body Corporate with no repercussions.
According to Tony Clarke, Managing Director of the Rawson Property Group, this kind of disinterest from owners, especially common with buy-to-let investors, has seen the deterioration and subsequent devaluation of many sectional title developments across South Africa.
"To protect your investment in a sectional title scheme," says Clarke, "it is vital to play an active role in the ongoing maintenance (and, ideally, improvement) of all the development's facilities. That means knowing what you should be doing yourself, as well as keeping an eye on what the Body Corporate is doing with all those levies you pay."
Protect your sectional title property
Law Society to invite tenders for digital conveyancing portal
Daily Record - Scotland
The Law Society of Scotland is to invite tenders to create a digital 'one-stop-shop' for property conveyancing. It hopes a digital property portal can be created which will allow solicitors to process conveyancing transactions online. The Law Society said it plans to invite tenders for the development of the digital property portal, and if successful, the portal would be an early move towards creating a new cloud-based system for property contract exchanges.
It hopes the portal will also provide a platform for future development, including potentially interacting with other organisations involved in the conveyancing process, such as searching agencies, Registers of Scotland and lenders. A tender panel is expected to be appointed by May, 2015.
Daily Record
Rental Payment Monitor
TPN - South Africa
A positive end to a lacklustre year
2014 ended on a positive note for landlords and rental agents, with 86% of residential tenants recorded as being in Good Standing. This figure is made up from 3 of the categories into which TPN indexes rental payment profiles: Tenants who paid on time, as well as those who paid during the "grace period" (the first 7 days of the month) and those tenants who paid late. In addition, there are categories for tenants who made a partial payment and for those who did not pay their rent at all.
There was however a slight shift in the underlying good standing categories: rent paid on time deteriorated by two per cent to 71%, as a result of more tenants paying late - 5% making grace payments - and 10% paying later - both increasing by one percentage point. In contrast 9% of tenants made a partial payment – a figure that has remained unchanged for 15 months, while 5% of tenants were recorded in the did not pay category.
Nonetheless the overall picture still constitutes good news for the industry, as the 86% good standing ratio achieved over the past 3 quarters of 2014 remains the highest on record.
TPN
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