Engineer’s legal nightmare after buying house on Bluff when owner left SA
IT WAS meant to be an investment in a neighbourhood he grew up in when Gerald Francis, a Cape Townbased engineer, bought a house on the Bluff.
His dream has now turned into a nightmare after he discovered that its plans were not approved and the occupancy certificate was fraudulent.
Francis bought the house for R1.5 million from Dale van der Byl in December 2015 after FNB granted his home loan application.
He received a prosecution notice from the ethekwini Municipality, just two weeks after the sale was finalised.
It emerged that over the past four years, the three-bedroom house underwent major alterations and additions including a granny cottage and a pool, but ethekwini never approved those plans.
Municipal spokesperson Tozi Mthethwa said the plans received by the city in September, 2013 were refused the following month.
“The plans had lapsed on December 29, 2015 as it was not corrected and resubmitted for consideration for approval. The falsification of the occupancy certificate was reported to our city integrity and investigations unit for an investigation and recommendations on the adjudication of this matter, and we are therefore unable to respond until such time that this exercise is concluded.” she said
The investigation comes after Francis accused building inspector, Nico Mtshali, of stamping and signing the fraudulent certificate. “The stamps in all the documents are authentic, because Nico Mtshali was involved in this whole thing and had Fatima Salie (the bank’s bond registration attorney) done her job, she would have picked that up before the sale was finalised,” Francis said.
Salie was appointed by FNB to provide them with approved building plans, which she was supposed to get directly from the council.
Head of the legal department at FNB home loans Jacqueline de la Rey confirmed that the occupancy certificate received by the bank was part of the compliance pack from the registering attorney.
“As per legislation, the occupancy certificate is issued once the local authority confirms that the building has been erected in accordance with the act,” she said, adding that the bank had also done its own investigation on the matter.
Salie declined to comment saying the matter was sub judice as Francis had lodged a complaint against her with the Cape Law Society. At the time of publication the decision of the law society was still pending.
Francis forked out R75 000 in bond registration and transfer costs and believes Salie should apologise and pay back some of the money.
“She did not follow the bank’s instructions and as a result has cost me close to R500 000, because I’ve spent the past year flying in and out of Durban for meetings with city officials, police and getting inspectors to assess the house for defects.
I’ve paid more than R100 000 in legal fees and I’m obviously going to be spending more money because of the pending criminal case against Mtshali,” Francis explained.
Attempts to get comment from Mtshali were unsuccessful. Francis said it would cost abouyt R250 000 to fix the 18 defects around the property before ethekwini could approve the plans.
The defects include crossing the building line without consent from the neighbours or the municipality and sewerage pipes running inside the wall of the double garage.
“Last year, I felt like I was losing my sanity and also had a nervous break down and spent two weeks in hospital because of this house.
“Van Der Byl also moved to New Zealand after selling the house, so now I have to wait for the police to conclude their investigation but that is also taking forever,” Francis said.
The frustrated owner does not want to fix the defects and is now in the process of trying to sell the property. “I am exhausted by this merry-go-round,” he said.
“I did nothing wrong apart from buy a house and apply for a mortgage from FNB. All the documents were scrutinised by so-called professionals, who were paid large sums of money to do what they are qualified to do, but now I have to fork out more money to get the people who have committed a crime to be held accountable.” Attempts to get comment from Van der Byl were unsuccessful.