Letter: Mystifying estate rules

Heidi Gibson of Durban North writes:

Be warned, gated estate homeowners: there is another side to selling a property – a darker side – that neither I nor my estate agent was prepared for.

Seaward Estate fitted our budget and we enjoyed the close proximity of schools and a brand-new hospital on our doorstep.

As the years went by we made changes – we enclosed our veranda, put up an awning, changed the back area, put in air conditioning and installed a JoJo tank, believing all of this would add value if I ever came to sell.

I attended AGM meetings, served a bit of time as an elected trustee and kept myself abreast of changes to regulations.

Life was hunky-dory until I decided to sell.

All went well until I came to get approval from the estate management.

It turned out that there was a lot wrong with my house and the estate was not going to give the green light until changes were made.

I had a signed sale agreement, buyers in occupation paying rent and they were telling me my awning did not meet the design review committee requirements.

Without going into detail, my question to the estate is this: why do you wait until I am ready to sell to tell me this?

If the estate rules had changed why didn’t you tell me?

Issue me with a notice and tell me to get my house in order when I first put up the awning?

My protestations fell on the deaf ears of the consultant – a retired architect – who held the whole process to ransom.

What should have taken 2 months ended up taking 8 and nearly ended up in court.

I wished I had never sold my house and I know there are others like me living in Seaward Estate who are going through the same thing.

Estate manager Simon Clark replies:

This speaks to an important and fundamental point around residential community schemes, particularly member awareness of property compliance.

Members have obligations and have signed a legal and binding contract with the association to comply with rules and regulations.

The obligation is for a member to approach the association regarding making changes to their own properties in accordance with the architectural rules and regulations.

Any change to a property is required to run through a standard and formal application process to seek approval from the association by way of application to the design review committee made up by suitably qualified professional advisors.

Besides this, regularisation in many cases also needs to applied for in terms of municipal town-planning bylaws.

If a homeowner wishes to sell their property it is inspected by our compliance manager (qualified architect), to ensure that any non-compliances are not unfairly transferred to the purchaser.

It is important to note that a concession has been made by the association to allow for the transfer of properties where the purchaser is fully aware of all non-compliances and allows them to agree and accept to regularising the property within a 6 month timeframe.

This allows for the sale to go through with the full knowledge of the new member and assures the association that the property will become compliant within a reasonable time period.

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