A sectional title scheme divides a building, or several, into sections that can be owned and sold separately. Each owner holds a section and an undivided share of the common property — the land, the structure, the driveways and gardens — in proportion to a participation quota based on floor area. From the first transfer, the owners together form a body corporate that governs the scheme. The register is opened at the end, by a conveyancer, after a land surveyor has measured the building and the Surveyor-General has approved the sectional plan. But the plan records what was built, and what was built was fixed earlier — in the zoning, the layout and the building plans. That is where parking, common property and exclusive use areas are settled, whether anyone intended it or not.
Some schemes start as a vacant site, others as a building that has stood for forty years. In our experience these are the four situations that call for one.
Before anything else, establish what was approved. A scheme is sectioned as it stands, and a cottage or addition that never had plans passed is usually the first thing a conversion has to resolve. Start with the approved plans — in your own records, or in the municipality’s.
Every scheme answers five questions, deliberately or by default. Each is settled in the layout and the building plans before a land surveyor measures anything.
The units themselves. Garages and stores can be sections of their own, part of a unit, or exclusive use areas — and the choice decides whether they can be sold separately later.
Everything that is not a section — the land, the structure, the roof, driveways and gardens. Owned by all in undivided shares and maintained through the levies.
Parking bays, gardens and patios set aside for particular owners. Where they are not bounded by walls or kerbs, a land surveyor has to delineate them.
Each section’s share of the scheme, calculated from floor area. It sets the levy each owner pays, the weight of each vote, and each owner’s share of the common property.
Whether the scheme is built at once or in stages, and who controls the land held back for later. Decided before the first transfer, or by the owners afterwards.
Everything before the land surveyor arrives, and the coordination after. Six things make a scheme divide cleanly.
Confirming the zoning permits the density and use, and that no title condition prevents the scheme. Sectional title cannot create rights the land does not have.
Sections, common property, exclusive use areas and parking resolved in the site layout, so the scheme divides the way it will be sold.
Building plans approved for a new scheme. For a conversion, the building compared with its approved plans and anything unapproved regularised first.
The plans and schedule lodged with a reservation of the right to extend, drawn to hold the later phases with room for the scheme to change.
Briefing the land surveyor who prepares it, resolving queries against the approved layout, and seeing it through to Surveyor-General approval.
The approved plan and supporting documents passed to the conveyancer who opens the register, with the planning position documented for the first sales.
Extension plans deserve particular care. The Act holds a developer strictly to the plans lodged when the right is reserved, and departing from them later has been left for courts to resolve. Drawn with room for the scheme to change, they protect the later phases; drawn too tight, they become a constraint no change in the market can release.
Five phases. A conversion runs through the same ones as a new scheme — it simply starts with a building rather than a site.
Zoning, density and title confirmed as permitting the scheme. For a conversion, the building’s current use confirmed as lawful.
Sections, common property, exclusive use and parking resolved on the layout — or, for an existing building, established from what is there.
Plans approved and the building erected — or, for a conversion, unapproved work regularised so the building matches its approvals.
Prepared by a land surveyor from actual measurement, with our coordination, and approved by the Surveyor-General.
Opened by the conveyancer. The first transfer establishes the body corporate, and the owners govern the scheme from then on.
Where the land divides cleanly into viable erven, full title usually leaves both owners freer. Where it does not — too small, a shared driveway, a building across the line — sectional title is often the only route to separate ownership. Which applies to your property is a planning question, and it is answered before either application.
Our fee covers the planning, the layout and the coordination. The land surveyor who prepares the sectional plan and the conveyancer who opens the register are separate appointments. Four things move our figure.
A house and cottage is two sections and a short exercise. Forty units with parking, stores and gardens is forty sections and everything allocated to them.
A single-phase scheme is sectioned once. A phased one needs extension plans and a schedule lodged at the outset, drawn to survive a market that moves.
A new scheme is designed for sectioning from the start. A conversion has to establish what exists, compare it with what was approved, and regularise the difference.
Where the zoning already carries the density, the scheme proceeds on it. Where it does not, a rezoning or consent comes first, with its own timeline.
Set it against a scheme that will not divide the way it was sold. Parking promised but never allocated, a garage that cannot be sold on its own, a second phase the owners will not consent to — each is fixed at design stage for the cost of a drawing, or after registration for the cost of a dispute.
One is the alternative to sectional title. The other three are what a scheme usually needs before it, or alongside it.
What developers and owners ask us before a scheme is designed or a building converted.
Send us the erf number, and tell us whether the building exists yet.
Send us the erf number, and tell us whether the building exists yet. We will tell you whether the rights support the scheme, what has to be settled before a surveyor measures anything, and whether sectional title or full title suits the property better. Initial consultations carry no obligation.
35 Fricker Road, Illovo, Sandton · Sectional title schemes across the Gauteng City-Region