Pretoria Deeds Office confronts new building problems

Pretoria Deeds Office management has hastily arranged a virtual meeting with conveyancers to address operational problems following its relocation to the new R1.88 billion Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) head office campus in Pretoria.

This followed an article published by Moneyweb that listed a litany of problems conveyancers raised regarding how the Pretoria Deeds Office was operating at its new offices.

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Donald Mokgehle, chair of the property committee of the Pretoria Attorneys Association, told Moneyweb last week the committee had been trying to set up a meeting with the Pretoria Deeds Office management and he hoped it would take place in early May “because we have this long weekend coming up so I don’t think anything will happen this week”.

The DALRRD has to date failed to respond to Moneyweb’s requests for comment on the problems at its new office.

Swift call for online meeting 

Mokgehle said Pretoria Deeds Office registrar of deeds Audrey Gwangwa called a virtual meeting last Wednesday and confirmed that engagements were taking place between her and the landlord of the building.

“The message was very positive and she [Gwangwa] affirmed to everybody that they are aware of the issues of concern and that they are being attended to.

“From the conveyancers side, we also confirmed that we see that the deeds office is committed to ensuring that everything is ‘smooth sailing’ and they render the best service to the conveyancers and the public at large,” he said.

Mokgehle said no timelines were given as to when the issues will be resolved. He added that someone from the office’s technical section attended the meeting and noted the issues regarding the intermittent cellphone network reception in the building, which is receiving attention.

Mokgehle said there are currently no backlogs at the deeds office.

“Everything is on par. Registrations and lodgements are taking place and the issues raised are more operational,” he said.

Engaging with building owner

A conveyancer Moneyweb spoke to confirmed the deeds office indicated that it is engaging with the owner of the building with a view to making changes at the office.

He said Gwangwa indicated during the meeting that management is trying to create offices, conference rooms, or spaces where conveyancers can meet deeds office staff. The conveyancer said this was in reaction to the issue raised about conveyancers no longer having direct access to examiners.

“You have to wait and see one person but if you have to discuss it with an examiner, they have to phone and get the examiner down. One conveyancing firm waited 45 minutes for the examiner to arrive while another waited 25 minutes,” the conveyancer said.

“That is unacceptable. You don’t have time like that and it’s going to drive people around the flipping bend. Business is incredibly slow compared to the boom days in the deeds office but if this economy ever takes off, it’s going to be chaos. They didn’t factor in all these things.”

Anger over media exposure

Another conveyancer said one thing to come out of the meeting was “how [livid] the deeds office is that this is in the media”.

He said about 50% of conveyancers are okay with how things are operating at the new office but the others are “peeved off” by things such as the pigeon holes for various processes being too small and that all paper and documents have to be removed from the deeds office daily.

“But the way the system is working is actually like it was during Covid-19. We have access to a registrar who makes decisions immediately if you have problems. We don’t have direct access to the examiners but that is not a problem as long as I’ve got somebody who can make a decision for me. In the old building, the examiners would just lock their rooms and if they weren’t there, they weren’t there.

“Sometimes it was even worse [than the new offices] because you had to get somebody to open their rooms to find out where your deed is. I think the system in the new building is better and it’s easier,” he said.

The conveyancer added that the deeds office management has done well in sticking to the undertakings made in regard to not having any backlogs and allowing deeds to be registered quickly.

“April could [otherwise] have been a disastrous month for a lot of firms. The outstanding issues are being tackled and are receiving the necessary attention,” he said.

List of problems

Complaints by conveyancers about the new deeds office include that:

• There is no cellphone reception in the building and conveyancers cannot make or receive calls and have to walk outside the building to make a call;
• Access to examiners is not directly allowed and conveyancers have to call them to come out of their offices;
• There are insufficient pigeon holes at the building for the various functions or processes performed by the deeds office prior to the lodgement of deeds for the registration of a transfer of ownership of a property; and
• The new “hot seat” approach towards deeds office staff at the new building means it is extremely difficult for conveyancers to find the deeds office person who was previously dealing with their transfers.

The Pretoria Deeds Office closed on 6 April 2023 to relocate to its new building and resumed services again from 17 April 2023.

This article originally appeared on Moneyweb and was republished with permission. Read the original article here.

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