Property Transfer Costs for Buyers in South Africa

Key takeaways

• A South African property buyer should not treat “transfer costs” as one fee or one percentage of the purchase price. Build the cash budget in separate lines: the purchase-price funding, transfer duty or the transaction's VAT treatment, the transferring attorney's professional fee and VAT, any bond-registration fee and VAT, Deeds Office charges, lender charges, disbursements and sale-agreement adjustments. Each line should identify who charges it, what value it is based on, when it is payable and whether it is final or estimated.
• Transfer duty is a tax, not an attorney fee. A transfer fee and a bond-registration fee are also separate professional charges because they cover different registration instructions and may use different value bases. Current Law Society of South Africa guidance is negotiable and net of VAT; current Deeds Office charges are government registry charges. A lender's pre-agreement statement and quotation control the disclosed credit costs rather than a generic property calculator.
• Ask for a dated, itemised estimate before committing all available cash to the deposit. Update it when the purchase price, loan amount, transaction structure or expected registration date changes, and keep a contingency for figures that cannot yet be finalised.

1. Separate the purchase funding from the transaction costs

The deposit and remaining purchase price fund the property itself. They affect how much cash or finance the buyer needs, but they are not transfer duty, attorney fees or registry charges. Keeping them in the same worksheet is useful; labelling them as fees is not.

Start with three totals:

1. Purchase funding: deposit, approved loan and any cash balance needed to cover the price.
2. Cash-to-transfer costs: tax, professional fees, VAT, registry charges, finance-related legal work and transaction disbursements.
3. Other cash flows: occupational rent, contractual adjustments, moving expenses, insurance, utility deposits and early ownership costs where applicable.

Do not use the bond amount as proof that the bank will fund every cost. Confirm the approved loan, the amount available for the purchase price, any conditions and every fee in the lender's own documents.

2. Transfer duty is calculated separately

Transfer duty is a tax on the value of property acquired. SARS says the acquirer pays it, subject to statutory exceptions. The conveyancer submits the declaration electronically and obtains the receipt needed for the transfer process. The rate depends on the date of acquisition, so the date on which the agreement was concluded can matter.

For acquisitions from 1 April 2026, SARS records no change from the preceding year's transfer-duty table:

The zero-rate band is based on property value, not on a general first-time-buyer exemption. Other exemptions depend on the legal nature of the acquisition and should not be assumed from an online calculator.

SARS states that transfer duty must generally be paid within six months of the date of acquisition, after which interest can accrue. That statutory deadline is not a recommendation to hold the money for six months. The appointed conveyancer may require cleared funds much earlier so the duty receipt and registration documents can be obtained on schedule.

When VAT may apply instead

Where the seller is a VAT vendor and disposes of the property as a taxable supply in the course or furtherance of its enterprise, the transaction may be subject to VAT rather than transfer duty. The sale agreement should say whether the price includes or excludes VAT, but the label alone does not settle the tax treatment.

Do not add both taxes automatically, deduct a presumed VAT amount from the price or assume that a seller's VAT registration answers the question. The conveyancer and, where necessary, a tax adviser should verify the parties, property use, transaction structure and supporting evidence.

3. The transferring attorney's fee is a professional charge

The transferring conveyancer prepares and registers the deed by which the property is transferred to the buyer. The conveyancing glossary explains this regulated registration work.

The LSSA's 2026 Conveyancing Fee Guidelines apply to instructions received from 1 July 2026. They use stepped value bands for ordinary conventional transfers, are net of VAT and expressly state that the recommended amounts are negotiable—not fixed minimum or maximum tariffs. An instruction received under an earlier edition, a special transaction or an agreed alternative fee may produce a different figure.

The professional fee must therefore appear separately from:

• VAT on the firm's taxable professional services;
• transfer duty paid to SARS;
• Deeds Office charges;
• electronic, courier, certificate and other third-party disbursements; and
• work outside the ordinary transfer mandate that has been identified and agreed.

The separate article on how conveyancing fees are calculated owns the current stepped methodology, value definitions and quote-reconciliation process. For this buyer budget, record the appointed firm's written figure, the source or agreement it used, whether VAT is included and which extra work remains possible.

4. A financed purchase can have a separate bond-registration account

If the buyer uses a home loan secured by a new mortgage bond, a bond conveyancer prepares and registers that bond. This is a different instruction from transferring the property. The recommended professional-fee calculation generally uses the bond amount, not the purchase price, and VAT and disbursements must again be shown separately.

A financed purchase can consequently involve:

• a transferring attorney's account for the transfer;
• a bond-registration attorney's account for the new mortgage bond; and
• a lender quotation showing credit charges and conditions.

The firms may be different. Do not assume that a transfer estimate includes the bond account or that the lender will add it to the loan.

Section 92 of the National Credit Act requires a pre-agreement statement and quotation before a credit agreement is entered into. Use that quotation to identify the initiation fee, interest and other disclosed credit costs. Ask the lender which costs are once-off, recurring, conditional or payable to another provider. Avoid copying a fee cap or insurance amount from an undated webpage into the property budget.

5. Deeds Office charges are not attorney fees

The Deeds Office charges prescribed fees for registry acts, including the registration of a transfer and a mortgage bond. The current schedule was published on 27 February 2026 and took effect one month later. It uses value bands and should be checked against the expected lodgement or registration timing.

On the estimate, the government transfer-registration charge and the bond-registration charge should be separate from the firms' professional fees. The transfer and bond values may fall into different registry bands, just as they may use different professional-fee calculations.

If the transaction is delayed across a fee-schedule change, request an updated estimate. The final amount should follow the applicable official schedule, not a screenshot from an old calculator.

6. Identify disbursements and contract-specific amounts

“Postage and petties” is not a complete explanation of every additional line. Ask for a useful description, the supplier or authority, and whether the amount is fixed, estimated or recoverable after reconciliation. Depending on the transaction, an account may include electronic document services, deeds searches, certificates, identity or entity verification, courier work, bank-related documents or other approved third-party charges.

The sale agreement can also create or allocate cash flows that are not conveyancing fees. Examples may include a deposit, occupational rent, apportionments, guarantees and transaction-specific undertakings. Rates, utilities, levies and clearance figures require particular care: who advances money, who bears the final amount and how it is adjusted depend on the agreement, governing rules and actual account.

Keep post-registration homeownership costs in a separate section. Building or household insurance, moving, repairs, utility deposits, rates and levies may affect affordability, but they should not be misrepresented as amounts charged by the transfer attorney.

Use the property-transfer checklist to align the cost schedule with the sale agreement, FICA documents, finance conditions, guarantees and registration steps. The broader property-transfer service page explains where these payments sit in the process.

7. Build a cash-to-transfer schedule

Create one row for every amount. Preserve earlier estimates when figures change.

For each row, also record the amount, calculation base, VAT treatment, version date, who supplied it and whether unused advances will be refunded. Add the rows; do not apply one percentage to the purchase price and call the result “all costs”.

8. Reconcile the estimate before and after registration

Before paying, ask the appointed firms and lender to reconcile four facts:

• the purchase price and any value used for tax or fee purposes;
• the final approved bond amount;
• the applicable guideline and official fee-schedule dates; and
• every included, additional, provisional and third-party line.

Compare a revised estimate with the earlier version line by line. A changed total should identify the changed fact—such as the loan amount, registry schedule, tax treatment, extra instruction or supplier charge—not merely replace the bottom-line number.

After registration, request the final account and supporting reconciliation. Check actual disbursements against advances, confirm how interest or refunds were treated where relevant, and query a balance while the transaction documents are still accessible.

9. Verify every payment request

Property transactions are targets for payment-diversion fraud. Do not rely only on bank details contained in an email, attachment or messaging thread. Independently contact the responsible firm through a trusted number obtained before the payment request, follow its bank-verification procedure and verify any change through a second channel.

Confirm the account holder, bank, account number, payment reference, amount and matter identifier. Keep the verification record and proof of payment. If details change unexpectedly or pressure is applied to pay immediately, stop and verify before transferring funds.

The conveyancing practice route can help with transaction-specific provider discovery; it does not verify an emailed bank account or replace the appointed firm's mandate.

Questions to ask for a complete buyer estimate

• Which amount is purchase funding rather than a fee?
• Does transfer duty apply, or is the acquisition treated as a VAT transaction?
• What acquisition date and property value were used for the tax calculation?
• Which firm handles transfer and which handles the new bond?
• What value, guideline edition and instruction date were used for each professional fee?
• Is VAT included or shown separately?
• Which Deeds Office schedule was used?
• Which disbursements are fixed, estimated, conditional or refundable?
• What does the lender's pre-agreement quotation include?
• Which sale-agreement adjustments or post-registration costs remain outside the estimate?
• When is each amount due, and how must the bank details be verified?
• When will the final account and any refund be provided?

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