We all know that by buying a new home comes with a lot of paper work. One of the most important papers that you will need to obtain will be the Rate Clearance Certificate from your local municipality. In this article I will explain the term Rates Clearance Certificate.
It is important that you know that a home seller can’t sell his property unless he is issued with that certificate. South Africans have experienced a lot of problems with obtaining these important papers. People are complaining because of the long waiting period. The reason for this is because there is a lot of administration involved in the process, and thus creates a long turn around time.
We know that they can only start on the process once the transfer is complete, making it very difficult to coordinate the physical move between two houses. This also causes more costs which get involved in the home buying process. People who buy a new home should then first get a temporary home while they wait for the certificate. They should also pay for the storage of their furniture. It is also a lot of hard work to pack everything, un-packing it again, and then packing it back again. All of this takes time and effort, and we know nowadays that time is money.
We know that Cape Town has started to implement a system called ISIS (Integrated Spatial Information System). The system was introduced to us at the end of 2011 to improve the speed of the process.
The system uses information of people and run a data analyse whilst in the work flow process, enabling them to speed up the certificate issuing process. It integrates the data of the municipality, records and information in one electronic system. It works in conjunction with ratesclearance.com to make it easier for managers to obtain the needed info to process the certificate.
They say that with this new system a rates clearance certificate can be issued within 10-12 working days that’s if there are no queries attached to the application. The system can only work if the data is precise and 100% correct. As soon as the system picks up a query, then it will be handed over to human assessing, which pro-longs the process.
In Johannesburg we have seen that people can wait up to 21 working days to be issued with the certificate. With a query then they can wait up to 8 weeks for the process to be completed. It thus makes it clear that they need to implement the ISIS system as soon as possible. There are still many questions to why they have not switched over to the system. It is free of charge, and the needed education is provided. It has been revealed that JHB delivers a lot less certificates than Cape Town and at a much slower pace.
A few years back, the most difficult part of the home buying process was obtaining the loan. Nowadays it is to obtain the Rate Clearance certificate. The banks are a lot more lenient with their money due to the good interest rates that we are experiencing. The property trade is booming at the moment, if the municipalities can just start to issue out those certificates a bit quicker, then the home buying process can be so much better.