Home > WinDeed Database Deeds Office Document Search Pros and Cons

WinDeed Database Document Search - Pros and Cons

PROS

WinDeed Database search is cheaper
A live Deeds Office search costs R20.85. A search against the WinDeed database costs about half of that – R13.09. (The quoted prices are exclusive of VAT).
WinDeed Database search is faster
When you make a live Deeds Office search, WinDeed, in real-time, places your request against the Deeds Office database, waits for the result and then displays that result to you. A search against the WinDeed database doesn’t incur the additional time penalty of the Deeds Office leg of the enquiry – we have the data here in our own database and can return the information to you much quicker.

WinDeed Database search is more reliably accessible

There are times that the live Deeds Office information system is intentionally scheduled to be unavailable:

  • On the first working day of every month the service is down while the Deeds Office does some month-end processing.
  • The Deeds Office system is down every evening between about 11pm and 1am while the Deeds Office makes backups.

There are also times when the Deeds Office service is unintentionally unavailable – when the system just goes wrong for some reason.

Because a WinDeed Database search is serviced entirely in-house, without requiring us to make a call upon the Deeds Office system, it does not suffer from these planned and unplanned outages.

CONS

WinDeed is not the Deeds Office

The Deeds Office, a government entity part of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, is responsible for the registration, management and maintenance of the property registry of South Africa. It is the ultimate authority on land ownership in the country, and as such, maintains a database that is continually updated in real time. A live WinDeed Deeds Office search directly accesses this database and is, therefore, as up-to-date as the Deeds Office itself.

WinDeed receives a notification from the Deeds Office on a weekly basis of all of the property-related documents captured during the previous week. This is one of the main ways we keep the WinDeed Database up-to-date, the database that is searched when you make a WinDeed Database search. So, the WinDeed database may not be aware of documents captured at the Deeds Office since the last weekly update. If the document you are interested in is likely to have registered the last week or so, rather make a live Deeds Office Document or Property search.

The WinDeed database may be aware of non-property related documents, but cannot guarantee their availability;  therefore, they are not supported. We recommend making a live Deeds Office Document search for information on non-property related documents.  The following document types are currently supported by the WinDeed Database Document Search:

  • T – Transfer
  • ST – Transfer Sectional Titles/Schemes
  • TG – Transfer Grant Rights
  • TL – Transfer Leasehold
  • TE – Transfer Leasehold to Ownership
  • TF – Development Aid Transfer
  • TX – Grant
  • G – Crown Grant
  • GO – Transfer by Endorsement
  • BX – Bond on Grant Rights
  • SB – Bond Sectional Scheme
  • BF – Development Aid Bond
  • BL – Bond Leasehold
  • B – Bond
  • BG – Bond Grant Rights
  • BGL – Leasehold Bond on Grant Rights