City of Johannesburg property market chaos

Johannesburg homeowners are urged to try as soon as possible to obtain the approved building plans for their properties – or face the prospect of having to pay thousands of Rands for new plans to be drawn up, thanks to the chaotic state of the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) building plan records.

That’s the warning from Denese Zaslansky, CEO of the FIRZT Realty group, who notes that the banks are increasingly insisting that home sellers produce accurate and up-to-date building plans to ensure that all structures on the property are “legal” before they will grant bonds to prospective buyers. Buyers who intend to renovate will usually also require building plans for the property.

“This is quite understandable, but unfortunately, the previously approved building plans for many thousands of Johannesburg homes are scattered among the disorganised heaps of files and documents that were abandoned in various parts of the Metro Centre when it was evacuated in 2023 (see timeline below), and are proving very difficult and slow to retrieve at this stage.

“We appreciate that the CoJ has just announced a plan to rescue and re-organise those files full of building plans, town planning documents and other municipal records in a new archive in Newtown but for now, according to various architects we work with, most staff of the city’s displaced development planning department are still working from home. They also only have access to the shuttered Metro Centre for two hours a day to try to find plans and any other documents that are officially requested.  

“This means that home sellers who don’t have their own copies of previously approved plans now often have no choice but to commission an architect to draw up new “as built” plans and have those approved. And this could cost them anything from around R25 000 to R100 000 or even more, depending on the age, size and condition of their property and how complicated the plan approval process is.”

She says these costs could include:

• Architect’s fees for measuring an existing home and drafting “as built” plans, starting from around R20 000 for a 250sqm single storey home and R28 000 for a double storey building;
• Current CoJ submission fees (to get the plans examined and approved) of R25/sqm;
• Additional compliance fees including around R2500 for engineer’s sign off on structural elements, anything from R850 to R5000 for fire department and HOA approvals and R3500 for sustainable building regulation exemptions if the home was built before 2011; and
• R30 000 or more for the removal of any restrictive title deed clauses.

“The architect will also need to check if the property is correctly zoned for what has been built and if not, either submit a new Site Development Plan for approval or in the worst case scenario, start a rezoning process for the property. This would add a further cost.”

If the building is more than 60 years old, the plans will also need to be approved by the Heritage Council and if a building line needs to be relaxed, the town planning department will need to agree. Any one of these additional approvals can take up to three months to obtain, before the plans can finally be sent to the building control office to be checked and signed off, which itself can take anything from two weeks to two months.”   

Consequently, Zaslansky says, the time required to get the new plans approved will often exceed the time it would take to transfer the property. “But where plans are not immediately available, the parties can attach a signed annexure to the sale agreement to delay transfer until approved plans are secured.

“Alternatively, if the seller cannot afford to pay for new approved plans, they can agree to allow the conveyancer to withhold an agreed sum from the sale proceeds to cover the cost of obtaining the plans post-sale.”

She also says that while approved building plans are not a transfer requirement at this stage, it is worth noting that in terms of the National Building Regulations, all structures erected must have planning approval from a local authority and must be built in accordance with the approved plans.

“Homeowners should also note that they will need to get revised plans approved if they make any structural alterations, for example to internal or external walls, or change the use of any part of the building, for example a garage to a home office. The addition of carports and pools also requires planning permission.”