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Anton du Plessis, the CEO of Vineyard Estates, one of the smaller, high turnover agencies serving Cape Town’s southern suburbs, has drawn the attention of all in the property sector to an often overlooked but vital part of any Deed of Sale, where the purchase is conditional upon the sale of the buyer’s house.

Many contracts, says du Plessis, fail to specify what must happen if, after the seller and buyer have signed the Deed of Sale, something goes wrong with the transaction before the transfer has taken place.  It is, for example, often agreed in the contract that the deal cannot be finalised until the buyer’s own house is sold – less frequently a buyer may be liquidated or even die.

“This happens only rarely,” says du Plessis, “but it can mean that the sale of the home cannot go through and the seller may find himself waiting months, or even years, until a new buyer for the house is found, court actions or deceased estate arguments are finally resolved.”

Du Plessis said that the only way around this problem is to have a clause in the deed of sale to the effect that the seller has the right to cancel the agreement or to insist that the sale does go through if matters are not sorted out by a specified time.

“This,” said du Plessis, “is pure common sense, but it is surprising how many deeds of sale have no such exit clause for the buyer when he is in a seriously disadvantaged position through no fault of his own.”