This case study describes the housing story of one of the Transaction Support Centre’s clients who, in November 2019, together with her husband became the legal owner of the property they purchased informally almost 12 years ago.
This case study describes the housing story of one of the Transaction Support Centre’s clients who, in November 2019, together with her husband became the legal owner of the property they purchased informally almost 12 years ago.
In many low-income neighbourhoods across South Africa, two forms of land administration co-exist; the formal system governed by laws and regulations facilitated by legal professionals, and the informal system typically facilitated by local community leadership structures. Informal or ‘off-register’[1] property transactions are not recorded in the Deeds Registry and ownership of the property does not legally change from one owner to the next.
While informal transaction mechanisms are accessible and affordable, they create material risk. Local property markets are unstable, with competing systems to record and enforce property rights; local government is unable to identify and engage with property owners, impeding citizen-centric governance; and the financial sector is unable to support secured, housing-led investment, blocking a critical pathway for transformative financial inclusion. Critically, property owners are unable to realise the value of their housing assets and their wealth levels remain low.
While it is difficult to determine how many informal transactions have taken place in an area, the experience of the Transaction Support Centre in Khayelitsha, as well as other evidence[2], suggests that the practice of selling properties off-register was widespread[3].
Since its opening in July 2018, the Transaction Support Centre (TSC) in Khayelitsha has logged 112 cases with title deed problems due to past informal cash sales. Most of these sales took place over ten years ago but with rising property prices and increased awareness of the risks of not having a title deed, homeowners are actively coming forward to secure their property rights. To date the TSC has regularised ten informal cash sale cases and has a further 18 cases that are currently in the process of being resolved.
The TSC’s experience demonstrates that it is possible to regularise some informal transactions that have taken place in the past. Where the original sellers have been located, in the TSC’s experience, they are generally willing to participate in the regularisation process and sign the necessary documents. There are, of course, some cases that cannot be resolved through current processes. To date the TSC has had to close or pend 37 informal cash sale cases. In 22 cases, it is because the seller cannot be traced through the buyer, community networks or credit bureaus. In some cases sellers dispute the transaction, while in others the seller is deceased and heirs dispute that the sale ever took place. Where there is a dispute, registered property owners can evict off-register owners who may not have sufficient evidence of the transaction.
This exact risk prompted Nomathansanqa and her husband to approach the TSC for assistance with regularising a house they purchased 12 years ago. The couple bought the property in Khayelitsha for R15 000 in 2007. The property was badly damaged due to a car crash and the seller had already moved back to rural Eastern Cape. The seller’s brother, who still lived in Khayelitsha, helped facilitate the sale. Nomathansanga and her husband invested between R200 000 – R300 000[4] to rebuild the property. Nomathansanqa and her husband remained in contact with the seller’s brother and when they learned that the seller was in poor health, they were concerned that she might pass away putting them at risk of being evicted by her heirs.
With the assistance of the TSC, Nomathansanqa and her husband became the registered owners of the property in November 2019.
We spoke to Nomathansanqa to learn more about her housing story and how she feels now that she has a title deed.
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It would be interesting to see how the “informal” community controlled system compares to a dysfunctional centralised formal system which is wide open for abuse and corruption, without local authorities being able to remediate with more accurate local knowledge. In South Africa in particular and comparing that to an advanced society such as Sweden’s property transaction system, one should easily be able to see how inefficiency and information hiding renders a formal and centralised chain open to loss and unnecessary latency in monetary as well as in societal advancement. This is especially amplified where participants rely on and is loyal to a culture of trust in the distant unknown which does not necessarily even have the intention to exist beyond its own highly localised needs.