Once you have taken the decision to build a new house, or have one built for you, you will need a property (also called a stand or erf) to build the house on. Erven comes in all shapes and sizes, with different virtues and restrictions. In urban areas, all stands have one thing in common: They are all part of a proclaimed township. Being part of a proclaimed township in the jurisdiction of a local authority has various advantages, as well as certain restrictions.

Municipal requirements

The major advantage is that if you buy an erf in a proclaimed township, chances are good that it will already be serviced. This means that there will be a municipal water connection, a sewer connection point, an electricity connection point and there should be a tarred road in front of the erf with stormwater drainage and street lights for your safety at night. With all these benefits, make sure you never buy a stand from a developer in an unproclaimed township! You will need real water and electricity to build your house, not promises of future services coming (or not!).

Although the above-mentioned services give you peace of mind, they come at a cost. As soon as you have taken transfer of your new property, the local authority will start to levy municipal rates and taxes to cover their capital outlay to provide those services in the first place. From the outset, property tax will be payable, based on the municipal value of the property, as well as basic levies for the provision of the water, sewer, electrical and waste removal services. Once you start to use any water and electricity, your consumption will be metered and you will be charged for that as well.

Statutory requirements

Conditions of Establishment

When a township developer of a residential township establishes the town, one of the legal processes he/she has to go through is to compile a list of special Conditions of Establishment. This procedure enables the developer to specify special conditions to which all property buyers must adhere. It may for instance in a particular township be required that no houses shall have corrugated iron roofs, or that no house should be smaller than say 200 m².

It is thus clear that Conditions Of Establishment may (and will) vary for each township proclaimed, depending on the preferences of the particular developer. However, the Conditions of Establishment of every single township ever proclaimed is always available at the Town Planning Department of the relevant Local Authority. All prospective house builders should therefore check with their local authorities before finally deciding on a building plan for their future house.

Conditions of Establishment of a particular township may, under special circumstances, be relaxed by the local authority, once the township developer has agreed to such relaxation. Applications should be launched at the relevant local authority.

Title Deeds

Each and every urban stand in South Africa which is situated in a proclaimed township, has a Title Deed document stored at the central Deeds Office. Title Deeds may, amongst others, also impose general and specific conditions or restrictions of which a prospective homeowner should be aware. Such restrictions may for instance limit the height of a building in relation to its distance from a boundary fence, or may impose a building line on a specific property, to prevent any building from being built too close to a stand boundary or access road. Servitudes registered to accommodate services like a sewer line for instance may also be taken up in the Title Deed.

Restrictions laid down in a Title Deed are usually more difficult to relax, but such relaxation may under certain circumstances be warranted by the local authority. In most cases approval has been obtained from the relevant provincial authority.

Town Planning Schemes

A Town Planning Scheme is a document adopted by a local authority by which all development under the jurisdiction of the authority is governed. This may include broader issues like land uses (zonings) and density of a development, or issues focused on the individual stand, including coverage, height restrictions, building lines, servitudes etc. Restrictions imposed by an authority's Town Planning Scheme are very specific to the relevant local authority, and may usually be relaxed by such authority.

Coverage is the area in square meters of the footprint of the ground floor of a building (measured over the outside of the walls) divided by the area in square meters of the stand. It is expressed as a percentage, so if the area of the footprint is for instance 400m² and the erf is 1 000m², the coverage will be 40%. Height restriction is usually measured in the number of floors above the natural ground level, while building lines are setbacks from each erf boundary within which cannot be built. A typical street building line may be 5m from the street boundary line, a rear building line may be 3m from the rear boundary line, and a side building line may be 2m from any side boundary.

It is important to note that no local authority will approve a building plan, and therefore will not allow building work to commence, if the owner's building plans show a contravention of any restriction imposed by any of the aforementioned documents. Prospective home builders should therefore always make sure that his/her proposed house does not contravene any of the above-mentioned restrictions.

National Building Regulations

The National Building Regulations is a set of regulations appended to the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act, Act 103 of 1977, as amended. Based on these regulations, a new set of building regulations, referred to as the SANS 10400 building regulations, came into effect on 1 July 2011. These regulations are applicable to all buildings erected anywhere in South Africa, and were promulgated to prevent different local authorities from announcing their own set of building regulations.

Although the National Building Regulations are perceived by many to be extremely confusing and involved, this is really not the case. It comprises two mainstream regulation types, namely functional regulations and deemed-to-satisfy rules. In its simplest interpretation, the functional regulations simply state that every building must be suitable for its intended purpose! To achieve this simple requirement, any building is regarded as complying to these Regulations if a rational design has been performed by a competent and suitably qualified person. Therefore an owner can do whatever he/she wishes to do, as long as all decisions are based on a rational design. This is specifically done in order to encourage innovative designs and building materials.

Because not all designers may be interested in using innovative methods and/or materials, and because such methods and materials may not always be practical and economical, the Act provides for a complete set of deemed-to-satisfy rules, by which any part of any building can be judged for compliance to the regulations.

In the Building a house section elsewhere in this blog, frequent reference is made to the relevant deemed-to-satisfy rules of the SANS 10400 Building Regulations.

Your own stand's SG diagram

Although strictly speaking not a 'statutory requirement', each erf in every proclaimed township in South Africa has a SG diagram, which is obtainable either from the local authority's town planning office, or from the offices of the Surveyor General. The SG diagram shows the exact coordinates of the erf boundaries (length and direction of each boundary), the exact surface area of the stand as well as any servitudes that may have been registered over the erf. A servitude is a registered right that a party has over the immovable property of another. It allows the holder of the servitude to do something with the other person's property, which may infringe upon the rights of the owner of that property. This may include a right of way to grant access to an adjoining property, or like in most cases, a servitude in favour of the local authority to protect an existing or future underground service like a water or sewer pipe or an electrical cable.

Aesthetic and Planning Guidelines in gated communities

This regulating document is only applicable if your property is located in a closed community with some form of governing body like a Home Owner's Association. Most HOA's have specific rules, regulations and guidelines to manage the aesthetics of all new developments and improvements in the closed community. There may be site specific guidelines to manage aspects like boundary walls and gates, driveways, side and back spaces, paving etc. as well as specific aesthetic guidelines about the architectural look and feel of the houses, wall finishes, window treatments, roof slopes and materials, height restrictions etc. So if your erf is located in such a gated community, it is imperative that you find a copy of these aesthetic guidelines from the HOA office!

National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC)

The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) is a regulatory body of the home building industry. It was established in 1998 in accordance with the provisions of the Housing Consumers Protection Measures Act, 1998 (Act No. 95 of 1998). Their mandate is to protect the interests of housing consumers and to ensure that builders comply with the prescribed building industry standards. Their goal is to assist and protect housing consumers from any unscrupulous home builders who may deliver substandard houses because of bad workmanship and / or using poor quality building materials.

Any person who is involved in the business of building homes is required by law to register with the NHBRC and failure to do so constitutes a criminal offence punishable by law. The NHBRC certifies builders who meet the prescribed industry standards criteria in terms of technical competence, construction experience and financial capability. As fas as I could establish, the requirements of the NHBRC are not applicable to owner-builders, as there is no need to protect you against yourself! The website of the NHBRC can be reached here.

Footnote: Portions of this post have been based on a page from inhouseplans.com