What’s in a zoning certificate?

The second in a mini-series on property zoning, development & value

Your zoning certificate is your golden ticket to knowing:

a)    What you can do with your land and

b)    How you can do it.

It’s the stuff you want to know when your neighbour comes knocks chanting, “you don’t have the rights”.

In a nutshell, your zoning certificate answers 3 questions:

1. What land do you have?

Joburg’s got a lot of properties, so we use erf numbers to keep track.

Erf is Afrikaans for ‘land’ or as we know it, ‘stand’.

Urban densification means we have:

Farms (undivided land),

subdivided into Erven e.g. erf 5,

subdivided into Portions of erven e.g. 1/5 (portion 1 of erf 5) or RE/5 (remaining extent of erf 5)

Township is town-planning lingo for suburb.

2. What can you use your land for?

Enter complex terms like Res 3, special, consent etc.

Foreign as they sound, they define the realty & premises type your land may be zoned (used) for.

For specifics, check your relevant amendment scheme.

Get the full breakdown here.

3. What can you build on your land?

FAR stands for Floor to Area Ratio – Building to Land Ratio – this tells you how much of your land you can develop.

It represents the maximum amount you can build in relation to the size of your land (AKA bulk).

In reality, your useable bulk is further defined by:

Coverage

• % of land your building can physically cover (on the ground)

Height

• No. storeys allowed

Parking ratio

• No. parkings

Building line

• How far from the boundary wall you can build

Density (for res)

• No. res units/hectare (ha)

Let’s wrap it up…

Your zoning tells you what your rights and development potential are.

You’ll want to consider this when choosing space to buy & deciding how much you’re going to pay for it.

However, what your zoning doesn’t tell you is where the best deal that suits your strategy is – for that, you need to chat to Kat Woolf.