Estate Living Magazine #liveyourbestlife - Issue 46 December 2019 | Page 30

D E V E L O P
&
I N V E S T
PROPERTY PRACTITIONERS ACT:
WHAT IT
MEANS FOR
DEVELOPERS
The Property Practitioners Act has now been
signed into law. What does it mean for property
developers, and how will it change the way we
all work?
Early October 2019 saw the Property Practitioners Act of 2019
signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The new law was
generally welcomed by property practitioners … even if there was
initially some confusion about who exactly counts as a property
practitioner!
The new act was a long time in coming: it repealed the 43-year-
old Estate Agency Affairs Act 112 of 1976, introducing important
changes to the real estate industry (including regulating the buying,
selling and renting of land and buildings). It puts in place better
monitoring mechanisms, including small but significant changes
like, for example, requiring inspectors to obtain warrants to enter
premises.
There was, inevitably, a whole load of debate around the new law.
As industry body Rebosa (Real Estate Business Owners of South
Africa) was quick to point out: ‘There is […] a long road ahead as the
regulations must now be drafted, published for comment and finally
approved by the minister. Only then will the bill be promulgated to
become an act. Incidentally, it is even technically possible that it
never gets to be promulgated.’ Rebosa CEO Jan le Roux went on to
tell SAFM that the new act is more of a renovation than a complete
overhaul of the old act.
Before we unpack the act and what it means for estate developers,
it’s worth checking the act’s definition of the term ‘property
practitioner’. To sum up 25 lines of dense legalese, a property