Pitfalls of building without building plans

Pitfalls of building without building plans

With the new consumer protection act being in place, I have been to a couple of clients who have recently sold their houses, only to find out that the building plans are not in order.
Between these clients, I was amazed at the amount of problems I found that will have to be rectified before the building plans can be approved. As you’ll see, some of this can be very expensive to fix.

Remember that in each case where a building plan is not up to date, it will delay the sales process by as much time as it takes the building plan to be approved, something that might give many buyers a legal loophole to pull out of a sale should they want to.

In one case, the building was over a building line that was stated in a title deed. If a building line is stated in a zoning certificate, you can apply to go over the building line at the local council, but not so with a title deed building line. This client will have to have the title deed restriction taken out, something that can only be done by a lawyer. But that is not where the story ends, because remember the house is in the process of being sold. To have the title deed changed takes a couple of months and the sale cannot proceed until this is done. So instead, they are going to let the sale register, and then the seller is going to have the title deed changed, once it is in the buyer’s name. Very messy indeed!

Another title deed example is where the title deed prohibits the building of wooden or steel buildings on the premises. This might sound weird because it prohibits the building of steel carports and wooden stores (Wendy houses). But many of the older title deeds around Pretoria have exactly this restriction. Once again, these restrictions will have to be lifted before a building plan can be approved.

At one of my other sites I found that the outbuilding’s walls had been built as single leaf walls, in other words only half as thick as they were supposed to be. Apart from posing a danger, the building plan would never be approved with single leaf walls, so I have to draw the walls as double leaf, and the seller is going to have to foot the bill to have these walls built to standard.
At the same site, I found that the sewer lines had been built over. This is a major problem, because the cleaning and inspection eyes were under the building. This left the seller with a choice – either remove the offending building and drop the selling price, or re – route the sewer line, a costly operation. It’s easy to see how this problem could have been avoided with a decently drafted building plan.