The question that often comes up in sectional title schemes, is whether the trustees of the scheme are allowed to get involved in the letting of units in that scheme.
Are trustees of a sectional title scheme able to influence the landlord in his tenant selection or prevent him from renting it out in the way he wishes?
Are they able to influence the landlord in his tenant selection or prevent him from renting it out in the way he wishes?
Michael Bauer, general manager of IHFM, says that the legal relationship is between the landlord and the tenant, but in most sectional title schemes short-term letting is not allowed in the conduct rules.
“In my opinion, I think it’s possible to penalise someone in the scheme if they choose to let out their unit as they wish but not completely restrict them in this manner.
"If someone opts to offer short-term lets on their unit, an additional levy could be charged because of the increased turnover of tenants in their unit,” says Bauer.
He says if you choose to rent your unit out, as long as the bylaws are not infringed, such as the number of people allowed in the unit etc., the owner should be able to do what he wants with his unit.
The owner of the unit must, however, be willing to live with the consequences, says Bauer. "If the tenants misbehave for instance, there will be fines imposed by the body corporate so the owner must be prepared for this."
He says the threat for the owner here is that the body corporate might decide to go to arbitration when they cannot change the situation by fining or penalising him. "If the fines or warnings are ignored, the body corporate might send the first notice of warning, but attached to that will be a lawyer’s letter with a fee estimate (which could run to R20 000)."
Where fines are usually smaller amounts and often ignored, this system gets an immediate reaction from the owner of the unit in question, he says.
If an owner rents to a third party, he has to notify the trustees, as the Sectional Title Act stipulates, that there is a different person occupying the unit. There are various reasons why this should be done, for example, if a pipe or geyser should burst and no one knows who holds the key to the unit, the damage to the unit and the surrounding units could be enormous by the time they manage to contact someone with access.
Bauer says most trustees are not there to penalise or “police” the owners in the scheme, their job is to act in their scheme’s best interests and to ensure that no bad elements are allowed to creep in that might devalue the units - they are there to protect the scheme as a whole.
