Update as at 19 October 2017.

In late 2016, the Trustees decided to request permission from all owners to sell apartment 404 through a postal unanimous resolution. The decision was based on the need to raise additional funding to replace the problematic lifts.

The postal unanimous resolution was a very lengthy process and the trustees managed to successfully achieve a 100% unanimous vote in favour of selling the apartment. The unanimous resolution specified the process for selling the apartment, including the minimum price that the trustees would be authorised to accept. The process took a number of months and the trustees were finally able to take the apartment to market at the start of May 2017. It was decided that the apartment would be sold with a right for the new owner to rent a parking bay, as per the same terms as all other owners.

We appointed two agents, Pam Golding and LeapFrog. Both agents ran advertisements in the weekend papers and held show days. The asking price was an optimistic R1,3 Million. The Trustees retained the right to accept offers directly from private buyers. All offers would be submitted directly to our conveyancing attorney Chris Fick and Associates, who would then advise the trustees on the best offer to accept. All the trustees signed an undertaking not to buy the apartment to avoid any conflict of interest.

We received a number of offers, all well below R1 million and with very onerous terms and large financing percentages. The trustees decided to hold out for better offers.
On the 17th July, the Trustees accepted a cash offer of R1 057 000 Million for the apartment. This ensured that the Body Corporate would received R 1 million in cash for the apartment after costs. At R20 000/square meter, this was the highest price paid for a unit per square meter to date.

Currently our attorney Chris Fick is handling the transfer. The buyer paid over the full purchase price to our conveyancer mid August 2017.

There have been a number of complexities in handling the transfer.

1. There is significant documentation required to facilitate the transfer as the seller is a body corporate, and there are a number of checks and balances. These are mostly complete.
2. We discovered that there was a bond registered over the property from 35 years ago with Perm Bank. This bond was settled many years ago, but we needed to cancel the bond to allow for the property to be released for transfer. This involved tracing the bond number which was with Perm Bank; now managed by Nedbank. We finally received the old bond account number and documentation at the start of October 2017. Cancellation of the bond is currently underway.

We anticipate transfer taking place late November to December.