Frequently Asked Questions

The South African deeds registry is the official government record of who owns every piece of land in the country. Every transfer of ownership, every bond (mortgage), and every restrictive condition has to be registered there to be legally valid. Run by the Office of the Chief Registrar of Deeds under the Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937, it's a fully public record — anyone can request the information for any property in South Africa.

There are 11 deeds offices spread across the country, each handling properties in its geographic jurisdiction. DeedsCheck connects directly to the registry's electronic interface, so the data in your report is exactly what the registry holds — just delivered to your inbox in minutes instead of requiring a visit to the registry office.

Yes — it's deliberately public. The deeds registry was set up so anyone considering a property transaction, lease, or loan can verify the legal facts before committing. You don't need the owner's permission, and you don't need to be an attorney to access it.

The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) still governs how that data is processed downstream — we mask preview details, never sell aggregated lists, and POPIA-compliant request handling is baked into our reports. But the search itself is fully lawful for any legitimate purpose: due diligence, verifying a seller, checking a landlord, settling an estate, or just curiosity about your own street.

An erf number is the unique identifier the deeds registry uses for each piece of land in a township. Think of it like a street address, but issued by the registry instead of the municipality — every legal action on the property references the erf number, not the address.

You'll see it written as something like Erf 4521, Brackenfell or with a portion suffix like Portion 3 of Erf 4521. If a piece of land has been split (subdivided), each part gets its own portion number under the same parent erf.

If you're searching for a property and only have the street address, our address search will look up the erf automatically — you don't need to know it upfront.

The deeds office depends on where the property is, not where you live. There are 11 offices in South Africa: Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Mthatha, King William's Town, Mmabatho and Vryburg. Each one covers specific magisterial districts.

For most owners this never matters — DeedsCheck automatically routes searches to the right office. If you're doing an in-person visit, the easiest way to find the right office is to search the property on DeedsCheck and note the registry that comes back in the report.

A property transfer goes through a conveyancing attorney — only conveyancers are allowed to lodge deeds at the registry. The conveyancer drafts the transfer deed, collects clearance certificates from the municipality and (for sectional title) the body corporate, pays transfer duty to SARS, and lodges everything at the deeds office.

Examination by the deeds office takes about 7-10 working days. The conveyancer pays out the seller on the day of registration and the new owner's name appears in the registry immediately — that's the legal moment ownership changes.

End to end, an average residential transfer takes eight to twelve weeks from offer-to-purchase to registration. Delays usually come from bond approvals or FICA documentation, not the registry itself.

Searching and previewing properties is free. You only pay when you order a report. Prices below are current as at May 2026 — the order pages on the homepage always show the latest:

• Property Document Search — R55 — list of registry documents available for the property
• Property Search Report — R225 — owner, bonds, transfer history
• Valuation Report — R225 — automated market valuation with comparables
• Title Deed Copy — R640 — the actual title deed PDF, ordered after a Property Document Search confirms it's available

Prices are in South African Rand and include all registry retrieval fees — there are no hidden charges or per-page costs. Payment goes through PayFast (card or EFT) and the report is delivered immediately on payment confirmation.

For most products, delivery is immediate — within a minute of paying you'll get the report by email and on the order page. Title deed PDFs that haven't been requested through us before take a bit longer because we have to retrieve them from the registry on demand; expect them within a few minutes in normal conditions, occasionally up to 10-15 minutes if the deeds office is busy.

If something can't be retrieved, we'll email you, refund the order, and (if you want) escalate to a manual retrieval by hand from the deeds office.

Payment is processed through PayFast, South Africa's most-used payment gateway. You can pay by credit or debit card, instant EFT (FNB, ABSA, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Capitec), or Zapper. No DeedsCheck account is required — just enter the email you want the report sent to and pay.

All transactions are encrypted end-to-end. We never see or store your card details.

The Property Search Report (R225 as at May 2026) contains everything the deeds registry holds for that property:

• Registered owner name(s) and ID number(s)
• Title deed number, registration date, and purchase price
• Current bond holder (lender), amount, and registration date
• Full transfer history — every previous sale, the date, the price, and the previous owners
• Erf number, township, extent, and SG diagram reference
• Registered conditions, servitudes, and restrictions

The report is delivered as a clean, printable PDF — useful for due diligence, refinance applications, estate work, or just satisfying your own curiosity.

Yes. Run a Property Document Search on DeedsCheck to see the list of documents the registry holds for the property, then order the Title Deed Copy itself. The certified PDF is delivered to your inbox and carries the same legal standing as the original you'd get walking into the deeds office (banks, attorneys, SARS will all accept it). Live pricing for both products is on the order pages.

If you already know the deed number (e.g. T74887/1997), the search is instant — we check our cache first, then retrieve from the registry if needed. Most deeds are available within a few minutes; older deeds occasionally take longer because the registry sometimes has to digitise them on demand.

The Valuation Report (R149 as at May 2026) is an automated property valuation built from Lightstone's database of registered transfers, current municipal valuations, and comparable sales in the area. It's the same data professional valuers use as a starting point.

The report shows an estimated market value (with a confidence range), recent comparable sales nearby, the municipal valuation, and basic property attributes like extent and number of bedrooms where available. It's well-suited for selling-price guidance, refinancing decisions, or settling an estate — but for legal purposes (e.g. divorce settlements) you'll often need a full physical valuation by a registered valuer in addition.

Yes. Every product page has a masked sample of the actual report — same layout, same sections, real data shape, just with the identifying details (names, ID numbers, exact addresses) blurred so you can see what you're buying without exposing a real owner. The masked sample is what your full report will look like when delivered, minus the blur.

If the registry has no record for the property you searched, we'll detect that and refund you in full — you don't pay for an empty report. The most common reasons for this are:

• The address is recent and hasn't yet been linked to a deed in the registry
• The property is registered under a previous township name or owner
• The address is ambiguous and matched the wrong property

If you're unsure whether a search will succeed, try the free preview first — it'll tell you what the registry believes is at that address before you pay.

Search by the property's street address or erf number on the DeedsCheck homepage. We'll look up the property in the registry, show you a preview with the owner's details masked, and offer the full Property Search Report (R225 as at May 2026). The full report reveals the registered owner's full name and ID number, current bonds, and the transfer history of the property going back decades.

If you only know the owner's name and ID (not the property), our search can also work the other way around — return every property registered to a person across all 11 deeds offices.

Yes — address search is the default. Type the street address into the homepage and we'll match it against the registry's address index, return the matching property, and resolve the erf number for you. If the address has multiple units (sectional title), you'll get a tabbed result showing each unit so you can pick the right one.

If the address is ambiguous (e.g. a farm with no street number), use the map search instead — pan to the property, click, and we'll resolve it from coordinates.

Sectional title is how apartments, townhouses, and units in a complex are registered. Instead of one title deed for the whole building, each unit has its own title deed and its own legal owner. The building itself is held by a body corporate that all owners share.

When you search a sectional title address on DeedsCheck, we return both the scheme (the building) and the unit (the specific apartment). Choose the unit you're interested in and the report shows that unit's owner, its bond, and the scheme's overall conditions.

Sectional title deeds use the prefix ST (e.g. ST123/2018) rather than the freehold T prefix.

Map search lets you pan and zoom to any location in South Africa, click on the property, and we'll resolve the erf number from the coordinates. It's the easiest way to search when you know where a property is but don't have an exact address — typically rural farms, smallholdings, or properties on roads without a clear number.

Once the property is identified, the rest of the flow is identical to address search: preview the property, then order the full report.

Yes. The deeds registry indexes properties by owner name and ID number across all 11 offices, so a single search can return a person's complete property portfolio in South Africa. This is how attorneys verify hidden assets in matrimonial disputes, executors locate property in deceased estates, and journalists trace property ownership.

To run this kind of search you'll need the owner's full legal name as it appears on official documents and ideally their South African ID number — minor variations in spelling can lead the registry to miss matches.