Choosing a conveyancer who knows sectional title, not just freehold

You've found the unit. Now you need someone to move ownership across the line — and you're scrolling through conveyancer profiles wondering whether "experience in property transfers" actually means they've closed a sectional title deal, or whether they've mostly handled freehold land.

That difference is real. A conveyancer comfortable with freehold transactions might stumble hard on sectional title because the players, paperwork and timing are fundamentally different. You're dealing with a body corporate, multiple owners in the same building, levies, contribution formulas, and a scheme's founding documents that rewrite what you can and can't do with your unit. Picking someone who knows this terrain is not a nice-to-have — it's the clearest signal you'll get that your transfer won't derail mid-process.

Track record with sectional title, not just property law

When you contact a conveyancer, ask directly: how many sectional title transfers have you closed in the past two years? The specific number matters. A practitioner who handles three or four a year is dabbling; someone closing one or two a month has seen enough variation — different schemes, different by-laws, different developer situations — to spot problems before they become yours.

If they hesitate, deflect, or talk vaguely about "extensive property experience," keep looking. Sectional title is common enough in South Africa that a competent conveyancer should be able to rattle off recent deal examples without thinking. Ask them to walk you through a recent transfer — which headaches came up, how they handled the body corporate paperwork, what tripped up the buyers. If they can't or won't, they're admitting the work isn't their bread and butter.

Relationship with body corporate management and attorneys

Here's what separates the good ones: they know the body corporate administrator or managing agent. They know which schemes are slow to issue levy clearance certificates, which body corporate attorneys are reliable, and which sectional title files balloon because of missing documents.

This network speeds everything up. A conveyancer who has worked with your specific scheme before can anticipate delays and phone the right person to unblock a document. One who's starting fresh might not even know who to contact or how to push back when the administrator goes silent — and administrators can be slow.

When you talk to them, ask: "Have you worked on units in this scheme before?" If yes, even better. If no, ask who they usually liaise with for body corporate matters and whether they've built relationships with the bigger managing agents in your area. Listen for confidence born of repetition, not bluster.

Reading the scheme's founding documents

Every sectional title unit comes with a body corporate constitution and by-laws — often dense, contradictory, and full of buried gotchas. A conveyancer who specialises in freehold will glance at them; one who knows sectional title will read them thoroughly before you even instruct them.

They should be asking you questions about the scheme's rules before you ask them. Questions about:

• Whether you can lease the unit out or whether the by-laws restrict rentals
• What the contribution formula is and whether it's likely to change
• Whether there are unusual levies or a special levy coming up
• Whether the scheme allows short-term Airbnb lettings or has pet bans
• Which improvements need body corporate approval

If a conveyancer isn't interrogating the scheme documents early, they're leaving a stack of landmines for you to step on after transfer.

How they handle the levy clearance certificate

This is where sloppiness shows up fastest. A sectional title transfer cannot close without a clean levy clearance certificate from the body corporate — proof the seller has no arrears. Getting it should be straightforward, but in practice it often isn't. Administrators delay, documents go missing, special levies are disputed.

Ask your conveyancer: "What's your process when the administrator sits on the levy clearance?" Do they have a standard follow-up sequence? Will they escalate to the body corporate attorney if it's taking too long? Do they build extra time into the transfer timeline to account for this? A conveyancer who has done a hundred sectional title deals has a playbook for it. A freehold specialist will treat it as an anomaly.

The stakes here are simple: hire someone whose everyday job is sectional title transfers, not someone who handles them occasionally alongside freehold work. Your transfer is too specific, the moving parts too many, and the cost of a mistake too high to accept anything less. On Strove you can filter conveyancers by their sectional title experience and read reviews from past buyers — use that to find someone who's been through the exact gauntlet you're about to run.