To help you stay up to date with Residential Rentals News & information I have decided to put together a weekly summary of informative articles and information from the web pertaining to residential property rentals.
To read the specific articles, or access the original post / information, simply click on the hyper-linked title.
This week’s summary includes:
- 4 Free Webinars to Watch at Your Leisure
- Payment Allocation by a Landlord
- State of Disaster Rental Recovery Plan – Rent Recovery Documentation Pack
- Evictions Services Continue
- Social justice groups call for urgent ban on evictions during coronavirus crisis
- Community Living in the Time of COVID-19
You’ll find a brief summary of each contribution below . . .
I hope you enjoy this first edition and find it informative and helpful.
Wishing you a productive week in rentals – times are certainly very trying for us all . . .
If there is anything I can assist you with, please feel free to contact me on shaun@shaunluyt.co.za
4 Free Webinars to Watch at Your Leisure – Presented by Marlon Shevelew
- 5 Essential Tips for Rental Agents
- Uncover 15 critical dates for Rental agents who manage residential properties
- Learn about the new Rental Housing Act amendments coming in
- The role of the rental agent in the landlord tenant relationship
Source: Property Practitioners Facebook Group (15 Mar, 2020)
Payment Allocation by a Landlord
How much freedom does a Landlord have when it comes to allocating payments made by a Tenant? The answer of this question is mostly regulated by the lease agreement. Should the lease agreement be completely silent on the matter and rent is specified in the lease agreement, inclusive of utilities then any payment made by the Tenant will be allocated accordingly. Should rental be a specified amount, but utilities and any other services to the premises are excluded and will be charged at an agreed amount, but not as per the invoice from the service provider. In this case it would come down to the wording in the lease agreement should the lease agreement not address this position, the Landlord would be entitled to allocate any unspecified payment from the tenant to any of the amounts due.
Source: SSLR Blog (18 Mar, 2020)
State of Disaster Rental Recovery Plan – Rent Recovery Documentation Pack
The TPN team, SSLR Inc. and Fullard Mayer Morrison Inc. have pulled out all the stops to make a ‘State of Disaster – Rental Recovery Pack’ available at no cost. Michelle explains how to use the pack documents and what you can do right now to minimise your risk as a landlord or property manager during the National State of Disaster we find ourselves in due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tenants whose income has been lost or limited due to:
• Retrenchment;
• Placed on temporary unpaid leave; and
• Commission earners who are unable to work
but who have all previously exhibited a trend of paying their rent in full, are candidates for a Rental Recovery Plan.
Source: TPN YouTube Channel (20 Mar, 2020)
Evictions Services Continue
An urgent directive from the Office of the Judge President was issued on 17 March 2020 . . . in which the following should be noted (please note this is in respect of the High Courts only at this stage):
- Only those matters which are already enrolled, save for those matters which are urgent, will be dealt with at this stage at the court building itself;
- No practitioner, messenger or member of the public may enter the court building to issue a new process, however new processes may be instituted via the judicial online system (“Caselines”);
- General Court staff are still working in order to ensure that the general work of the Court is not compromised at this stage.
Source: SSLR Blog (20 Mar, 2020)
Social justice groups call for urgent ban on evictions during coronavirus crisis
A group of 27 social justice organisations has issued an urgent call for a moratorium on evictions during the Covid-19 state of disaster, raising concerns that evictions would lead to “displacement and homelessness” as the virus spreads across the country.
Community Living in the Time of COVID-19
Following the declaration of a national state of disaster by President Cyril Ramaphosa to curb the spread of Covid-19 in South Africa, the trustees and directors of community schemes like townhouse complexes, retirement villages and residential estates must ensure that the measures implemented by the President are complied with, says specialist community schemes attorney Marina Constas. Failure to do so, she states, would constitute a breach of their fiduciary duty.
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