PROPERTY LAW

Selection of a representative sample of transactions undertaken during private practice of almost 40 years:

Managing and obtaining registration of more than 500 service station properties in one bulk transaction in all the Deeds Registries of South Africa to consolidate the property holdings of a large oil company and its subsidiaries;

Registering more than 700 personal and praedial servitudes to protect trading rights, rights of way, height restrictions and future developments throughout South Africa;

Drafting suites of agreements to allow owners of shareblocks relating to apartment buildings to sell their shareblocks to buyers who can then apply for conversion from the shareblock scheme to sectional title scheme but pay transfer duty on the shareblock sale and then claim exemption from paying transfer duty on acquiring the sectional title unit pursuant to the conversion in terms of the Transfer Duty Act. In such instances the seller does not have to pay transfer duty, often on much inflated property values since the original purchase, and the buyer only pays transfer duty once, which he was due to pay anyway. Moreover such a buyer gains the advantage of obtaining mortgage finance because a mortgage bond is registerable against the converted sectional title unit whereas no bond can be registered against a shareblock;

Drafting an opinion that shows the true relationship between sections 24 and 25 of the Sectional Titles Act and indicating that the circumstances when an extension of a section can be undertaken are quite different from those that apply to section 25 of the Act. See article "WHEN DOES THE EXTENSION OF A SECTION BECOME THE EXTENSION OF A SCHEME IN A SECTIONAL TITLE SCHEME?"

Drafting an opinion on whether common property in a sectional title scheme can be converted into a section during the existence of the original sectional title scheme. See article "CAN EXISTING COMMON PROPERTY BECOME A NEW SECTION?".