Question NW938 to the Minister of Finance
16 May 2018 - NW938
Lees, Mr RA to ask the Minister of Finance
(1)Whether the National Treasury will speed up the transfer of ownership of homes worth R180 billion to about one million poor persons from 1 April 2018 over a period of three years (details furnished); if so, what are the details of the (a) process to be followed, (b) estimated costs of the specified process and (c) geographic areas involved; (2) have the homes that are to be transferred been (a) identified, (b) surveyed and (c) registered with the Deeds Office; if not, what (i) are the details of the land surveyor resources that will be required, (ii) are the land survey costs, (iii) are the costs of legal fees to do the deeds offices’ registrations and (iv) is the ability of the deeds office to deal with the volume of property registrations; (3) which government departments will participate in this process?
Reply:
- There is no plan by the National Treasury (NT) to speed up the transfer of ownership to 1 million households, per se. The Budget Review (Chapter 6, pg 73) refers to a backlog of around 1 million subsidised homes, which still need to be registered for title deeds, which is estimated at around R180 billion in equity.
- However, there is a programme to ‘eradicate’ the title deeds backlog. This is led, undertaken and overseen by the national Department of Human Settlements (DHS).
- DHS approached NT to create a separate Title Deeds Restoration Grant (TRG).
- Through the 2018 Budget process, and after obtaining Cabinet approval, NT created the TRG, amounting to R518.7 million in 2018/19, R547.7 million in 2019/20 and R577.8 million in 2020/21.
- Further details on the programme elements, monitoring and evaluation, must be referred to the DHS.