 Welcome to your Property Rights Podcast, proudly brought to you by Private Property. If you're looking for expert legal answers to all your property-related questions, then stay tuned. It's nice to have you listening. A warm welcome to your Property Rights Podcast, brought to you proudly by Private Property. I'm Paul Rotherham and joining me in studio is the MD of SSLR Incorporated Attorneys, Silna Stain. Hello again, Silna. Hey, Paul. Always nice to share studio with you. And it's always lovely to have you here as our expert on property law, a specific focus on rentals and evictions. And do remember, SSLR Incorporated Attorneys has a national footprint. So wherever you are in the country, wherever you're clicking onto this Facebook post and listening to this podcast, SSLR Incorporated Attorneys will be able to assist you. Today, a deep breath here because this is a little bit long, but I think it's very important, Silna, that I give you all the details here. This person writes as follows. My tenant is refusing to pay any increase in the deposit, although in the contract I have with him, it states that the deposit will increase when the rental increases. He's been living in my townhouse for about four years. In the beginning, he paid the rent on time. Hmm, we've heard this story before. But then he started paying later in the month, sometimes skipping months completely. He recently got a plumber out and deducted the amount from the monthly rental. I've seen no invoice even after asking for it. In our contract, it states that no repairs are to be undertaken without my consent. I do have insurance for that, writes this person. In January and February, he short paid the rental. He's been paying at the end of the month instead of the beginning. In August, there was no payment. September, no payment again. I've been sending letters to him every month about the outstanding amounts from January and I've now sent him a seven-day letter of demand stating that he will be asked to vacate and that he would be blacklisted should he refuse. He keeps saying he will pay, making promises, but is now ignoring WhatsApp messages and emails. Oh, this to me, unfortunately, I'm going to say this because I am a landlord myself and I've been in that circle. This is something that is not uncommon. This is a situation that presents itself very often between a landlord and a tenant. And so we do have a few questions specifically from this listener. His first question is, and I can sense the exasperation here. How much more notice do I need to give him? Well, this is exactly the kind of questions that I make a living from. So when you rental an eviction expert attorney, this is what I deal with every day. So I'm quite comfortable. And in my comfort zone with this question, what I do want to mention is I think the start of the question dealing with the deposit is the least of this listener's problems. I think the deposit is almost that after the factor, if you can just leave that part of the question for me until the very end, we can deal with the deposit, which is anyway not going to be topped up or used in any way. The question right now is, how much more notice must I give the person? Now, what I find interesting here is very often I see landlords doing so many things. But the one thing that they're not doing is the right thing. They're doing a lot of letters, a lot of WhatsApp messages. And none of those things will actually get you to the point where you want to be. And to be honest, the point where you want to be is to cancel this lease agreement. Get the tenant to change from a tenant into an illegal occupant. Hopefully he will move out. But if he doesn't, at least then we can commence eviction proceedings because we can't go to court with an eviction unless we've cancelled the lease agreement. And what I'm hearing from this question is this hasn't happened. This is a month to month agreement. So this notice is potentially not even necessary if the landlord is willing to just write off all the areas. The easiest way of getting this person to no longer have a right to occupy the property is to give one month's written notice in terms of the rental housing act when it comes to a month to month agreement. Give him a calendar month's written notice of termination of the month to month agreement. Yet it's important that you do not use the word cancellation but termination. We can basically do a full episode just on the difference between termination and cancellation, but just in short as to frame my answer, termination is a natural end to your contract. So a month to month agreement ends when one of the parties give the other one a month's notice of termination. Cancellation is an act to breach. And this is also an option this landlord had. And to be quite honest, the first month your tenant doesn't pay or the first month your tenant pays late. You need to get a letter of demand out. Now, a letter of demand is very specific. In this case, it's a month to month agreement. So section 14 of the consumer protection cannot apply. So seven days is perfect. However, if it is a fixed term agreement and there is a natural person, so a person in their name, not two juristic entities, then section 14 will apply. And then unfortunately, we need to give 20 business days notice to remedy your breach. But that is not your letter of demand. Isn't a notice of cancellation. It is time for the tenant to remedy his breach. Payee's rear rents start complying with the conduct rules. Whatever his form of breach is, he has seven days to fix that. Only if he doesn't, can you cancel the agreement? Then we can start the eviction process if the person does not vacate. So that was a very long answer to a relatively short question. But I think it's quite important to realise that this listener feels like I've been doing everything I've been doing so much. And the sad part is none of that, except now potentially for the letter of demand that was done recently, is the correct thing the easiest way and just a tip out there for the listeners. The TPN tenant profile network does have a system where you can generate a letter of demand. I'm actually the drafting attorney of that letter, so I know the content pretty well. And it's very cost effective. You don't have to go to an attorney, but it's very important that the content of that letter is perfect. Especially if you have to give 20 business days notice. If you then get to an attorney and they say the content was wrong, you didn't clearly state what the breach was and what the effect would be if you do not remedy in time. Unfortunately, that letter means absolutely nothing. And unfortunately, I can say this, none of your WhatsApp messages or anything else that's not done in terms of the lease agreement is any way worth anything. So those literally carry no weight at all. Assuming that this now does go to court and notwithstanding what you've said about what is valid and not valid and legal and not legal, let's assume this were to go to court now. The question that is coming here is, would this person be liable for the costs? And my assumption would be go to court for either the real rental collection or foreign eviction or both. And the answer is every single time in our courts in South Africa, your court order, your cost order in terms of your court order will always follow the unsuccessful party. Unless there's something funny, but most of the times your cost will follow the unsuccessful party, meaning the tenant, illegal occupant now, will have to pay the cost of that. But in fairness, practically, I think by now you've seen that I'm a practical person. Very much so. The fact that you have a court order, demanding and ordering that this person must pay the legal cost doesn't mean you can send him your attorney's bill. Now you have to appoint the taxing master, which is somebody sitting at the high courts and the magistrate court. You need to submit your bill of costs. And once you have submitted your bill to the taxing master, the taxing master then compares your fees, a bill by your attorney, to the cost scale that your court order allowed. So if your court order said the tenant, illegal occupant must pay costs on a party and party scale, it's much lower. It's a much lower scale than what your attorney charged. This is 100% legal. It's very similar to medical age rates versus private practice in their rates. Yes, I'm with you. So the same thing. But now you have this taxed bill. This now costs you a load of money as well because you had to get a cost consultant. You had to tax your bill of cost. Even though you can issue a warrant of execution on the back of that, what are the chances of actually getting money out of this person? I was just going to say, and I don't want to cut you short because you've always got so many good things to say. But there are a couple more questions I want to get to. And I was just going to say, here your tenant is, they haven't been paying rent. If you honestly think that you're now going to be able to get the money out of them for covering legal fees and costs, you're going to go nuts because that could take you years. Exactly. And I know that there's so much we can get our teeth into here. But just to speed it up a little bit, if you don't mind, Silna, moving on to the next question, would this person, the landlord in this case, be able to claim interest on the outstanding rentals that haven't been paid from the tenant? How does that work in a nutshell? Very good question. That is also only at the time when you issue your letter of demand. Will your Mura interest start running? Your what interest? Mura interest. Is this tomorrow or is this another Latin word? It's another Latin word and Mura means default. So your default interest rate is usually around 10 percent, but it changes like the interest rate does. But the Mura interest rate about the you can charge that from the date of sending your letter of demand or in terms of your lease agreement, you're allowed to charge 2 percent per month to a maximum of 24 percent per annum. If your lease agreement does allow for this, if not, you're only entitled to your Mura interest if you demanded from your letter of demand. Otherwise, only from the time where your attorney issues the summons. OK. And a quick question here. We've ascertained that this is not a contract, but it is a month to month agreement. What are your thoughts as a legal expert specific to rental and things that are in keeping with that? What are your thoughts on having a month to month agreement? Is that something that we should actually be steering away from? Is a long term rental better? Any thoughts on that? Just to some advice? Yes, all the thoughts you can imagine. A month to month agreement does not necessarily mean that it's a verbal agreement. A verbal agreement will always be a month to month agreement, but they could you could have a written month to month agreement. And there's quite a few benefits in that. Actually, we've mentioned that TPN lease back lease before. One of the leases as part of that lease back, which which I'm obviously one of the drafting attorneys of is a month to month agreement. The reason why some investors prefer a month to month agreement is then your lease agreements not governed by a section 14 of the CPA. That's one of the biggest benefits. So if somebody doesn't pay rent, you can give him seven days to remedy instead of 20 business days. On the other hand, you don't have you don't know for a fact how long somebody is going to be there. So if you buy a property and you're planning to, say, for instance, make a few renovations and then resell it, definitely, then I would use a month to month agreement and then 100 percent encourage that that would be in writing. Longer term agreements, it depends on the kind of landlord that you are and your requirements. Same for the tenant. As long as your lease agreement is in writing, which is not a requirement in law. But trust me, if your lease agreement is not in writing, it makes it quite difficult to act in terms of that agreement. When it's a verbal agreement. So whether it's month to month or longer term lease, always have it in writing. I think the one thing we've learned from your property rights podcast, or at least this edition, is if there are any problems, if anything starts going haywire, sort it out straight away. Act now. Don't wait. As we heard from this listener, this person, the landlord, Biggie, pardon the tenant, has been short paying for close on a year now. And as you say, sending a WhatsApp or a smoke signal or a slip of paper under the door simply isn't the right way of sorting the problem out. Exactly. And it won't help you in court at all. Silne Stain, thank you very much for joining us for another episode. It's only a pleasure. Brought to you by Private Property, it is your property rights podcast. I'm Paul Rotheram, and please do join us again for another episode coming soon to this platform. 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