Being a landlord of a buy to let property can be easy if you make use of our free templates. From invoicing your tenant, to billing, budgeting, to keeping the records of communication as well as dealing difficult situations with your tenants, we will show you how to do it step by step.

Learn from our years of real estate management experience of how to manage your properties and tenants with minimum work. Reading our articles is almost like having your personal team of property experts guiding you around the clock for free.

We promise you won’t find the same old text book information here – Our exclusive landlord guides are packed with real life advice and practical wisdom to save you time and money when it comes to property.

Take your first step to becoming a highly successful landlord and property investor with our free landlord forms, guides and resources:

Useful forms and templates to be a successful Landlord

Because of technical problems, we can make the sample invoice available on a downloadable link. Please email us on info@lessor.co.za and we email you the sample invoice as a excel file.

Is the tenant or occupier responsible?

Parties can change their obligations in a written lease contract, or even agree orally that the tenant would pay for certain services such as water or electricity.  The owner or landlord usually requires the tenant to have the water and electricity account in his / her name so that the tenant is directly contracted to the local authority and liable for the payment of the consumption charges.

The Constitutional court judgment

The Constitutional Court gave a judgment that ultimately holds the owner responsible for all outstanding amounts regarding consumption charges due to the local authority – even if the account is in the tenant or non-owner occupier’s name.

In the Mkontwana v Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality 2005 (1) SA 530 (CC) case, Yacoob J said,

“The basic reason for the accumulation of consumption charges due in connection with any property occupied by non-owners is non-payment by those occupiers.  However, it is ordinarily possible for both the municipality and the owner to guard against an unreasonable accumulation of outstanding consumption charges.

“The municipality has a duty to send out regular accounts, develop a culture of payment, disconnect the supply of electricity and water in appropriate circumstances, and take appropriate steps for the collection of amounts due. 

The owner’s ability to protect her own interest by ensuring that consumption charges are kept within reasonable limits depends to some extent on the nature of the relationship between her and the occupier.

“If that occupier is on the property with the knowledge and consent of the owner, the latter can, amongst other things, choose the occupier carefully and stipulate that proof of payment in relation to consumption charges be submitted monthly on pain of some sanction including ejectment.”

Two recent High Court cases will make it a great deal more difficult to avoid the payments due on sectional title levies and rents.

So says Grant Gunston, senior director of Grant Gunston Attorneys, who adds that “recently, there have been instances where defaulting body corporate (BC) members and/or defaulting sectional title tenants have applied for debt counselling”. “And the National Credit Act (NCA) stipulates that where this happens the defaulting payer is entitled to a temporary moratorium on his payments in order to give him time to sort out his affairs.

“These new High Court rulings have exempted the landlords and BCs from this ruling, taking us by and large back to the situation where non-payers are held to the contract they signed.”

In the first High Court case, Dlamini v the Body Corporate Frenoleen, the court ruled that the body corporate (BC) member had to find a way to pay his levies and make up the arrears despite being in debt counselling.

In the second case, Pareto v Kalnisha Sigaban (trading as KS Flowers ‘n More) the court again refused to exempt the tenant from payments because he or she was in debt counselling.

Gunston said that the decisions in both cases recognise the realities of the property market.

“We have to accept that in our society property has become a popular investment channel and that many of the investments are geared, i.e. bought with bonds. We also have to accept that BCs are simply representatives of their members. They are not in most cases wealthy asset holders who can afford to carry their members and their water, electricity, sewerage and insurance payments.

“Similarly, bondholding investors can be seriously compromised by one or two months of non-payment, let alone the longer wait that often follows obtaining and putting into effect an expensive court eviction order.

“The new rulings are, therefore, welcome and in the long run will help to restart residential property development in South Africa, currently stagnating as a result of a lack of bank support for developers and the strict criteria of the NCA.”