---
title: "Is it safe to sell your house privately in South Africa?"
description: "Where the money sits in a South African property sale, how the emailed banking-details scam works, and how private sellers vet buyers and run safe viewings."
url: "https://privately.co.za/guides/is-it-safe-to-sell-your-house-privately"
country: "South Africa"
updated: "2026-10-20"
published: "2026-08-14"
author: "Chandre Niemand"
source: "Privately"
---

# Is it safe to sell your house privately in South Africa?

*Chandre Niemand, Founder, Privately. Published: 2026-08-14.*

## Summary

Selling without an agent does not change who handles the price or how ownership passes. With no agent, the deposit and price normally go into the transferring attorney's trust account, which the Legal Practice Act requires practices to keep. Ownership passes only when the transfer registers at the Deeds Office. What changes is the work before the offer: viewings and buyers who cannot pay. Emailed payment fraud follows payments, not private sales. An attorney can confirm how this applies.

## Does selling without an agent change the legal protection?

For the price and for ownership, no. Two things carry them, and an agent is neither of them. The first is the trust account. As gazetted in 2014, section 86 of the Legal Practice Act requires an attorney who practises for their own account, alone or in partnership, or as a director of a practice, to operate a trust account. It also requires a trust account practice to pay money it holds for other people into that account as soon as possible after receiving it. The second is the Deeds Office. As first gazetted in 1937, section 16 of the Deeds Registries Act says that, save as that Act or another law provides, ownership of land may be conveyed only by a deed of transfer executed or attested by the registrar. Section 15 says that, save as another law provides, a registrar may not attest, execute or register a deed of transfer unless a conveyancer practising in that province has prepared it. Neither section mentions an estate agent.

The deposit is where an agent can matter. When an agent is in the sale, the deposit may be held in the agency's trust account, which the Property Practitioners Act, as gazetted in 2019, requires a property practitioner to keep (section 54(1)). So selling privately can change who holds the deposit. It does not change who handles the price or how ownership passes.

Registration is the moment ownership changes hands. Under section 13, a deed is registered when the registrar signs it, and deeds meant to be registered together, such as a transfer and the bond that finances it, are not registered until the whole batch is signed. All three Acts may have been amended since they were gazetted, so a conveyancing attorney can confirm the current text.

What selling privately changes is who does the work before the offer: finding buyers, arranging viewings and judging who is serious. That is where the practical risks sit, and the rest of this guide takes them in turn. [How to sell your house privately](/guides/how-to-sell-your-house-privately-in-south-africa) covers the sale from listing to transfer, and [how conveyancing works](/guides/conveyancing-and-the-transfer-process) covers what the attorneys do once an offer is signed.

## Where is the money held, and when is it released?

The table follows one private sale from offer to payout. The offer to purchase and the attorneys decide the details, so read each row as the usual shape of a sale, not as a rule. The bond guide sets out, from the banks' own pages, [how a bond is settled at transfer](/guides/selling-a-house-with-a-bond-south-africa).

ooba, a bond originator, writes that a deposit is normally paid to the estate agent or the transferring attorney. With an agent in the sale, the deposit may sit in the agency's trust account instead of the attorney's, and the offer says whose. The Property Practitioners Act, as gazetted in 2019, requires a property practitioner to open a trust account, to deposit all trust money it holds or receives into it immediately (section 54(1)), and to keep it there until the practitioner is lawfully entitled to it or is lawfully instructed in writing to pay it out (section 54(3)). In the Hawarden case below, the R500 000 deposit went to the agency's trust account. [Who holds your deposit, and when it is released](/guides/house-deposit-south-africa) covers both.

Money paid into anyone's personal account is outside this chain. It also does not appear to fall within the Fidelity Fund cover described next, which is about money given in trust to a practice, and we found no statement from either Fund on the point.

**Where the money goes in a typical private sale, and who controls it**

| What moves | Where it goes | When it is released | Who controls it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The deposit, if the offer asks for one | The trust account the offer to purchase names. With no agent, that usually points to the transferring attorney's account. | When the offer says. A common arrangement is that it stays in trust until the transfer registers. | The practice holding it. Section 86(2) of the Legal Practice Act requires a practice to keep money held for others in its trust account. |
| The balance of the price | Usually the transferring attorney's trust account, by transfer or secured by a bank guarantee, as the offer provides. | Normally at registration, when the attorney pays out. | The transferring attorney. |
| Your bond, any agent's commission and the other costs of selling | Deducted from the price by the attorney, so they come out of your proceeds. | Normally at registration. | The attorneys. The bank's cancellation figures set what the bond is paid. |
| Your proceeds | Your own bank account, from the attorney, after the costs. | Normally once the transfer has registered and the funds are available. | The attorney. |
| Ownership | Not a payment: it moves by a deed of transfer. | When the registrar signs the deed at the Deeds Office. | The registrar, on a deed prepared by a conveyancer. |

## What does the Fidelity Fund cover, and what does it not?

Two funds are in the picture. The Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund is the body behind the phrase "backed by the Fidelity Fund" and stands behind attorneys' trust accounts, so most of this section is about it. Its own page on trust accounts says it exists to protect users of legal services against loss from the misappropriation of trust money or property entrusted to trust account practices. The agent-side fund comes at the end of the section.

**What the Act says.** Section 55(1) of the Legal Practice Act, as gazetted in 2014, makes the Fund liable to reimburse a person's pecuniary loss, up to an amount the Minister sets by notice in the Gazette, from theft of money or other property given in trust to a trust account practice. The theft must be committed by an attorney in that practice, or by a person it employs or supervises. The section names two further cases: theft by an attorney or other person acting as executor or administrator of a deceased estate, and theft by an attorney who is a trustee of an insolvent estate or acts in a similar capacity. Section 56 limits a claim for money to the amount actually handed over, generally without interest, and takes off what the person has received, or could receive, from another source.

**What the Fund's claims page adds.** It lists what a claimant must prove: pecuniary loss, by theft committed by a legal practitioner, a candidate legal practitioner or an employee of the practitioner, of money entrusted to that practitioner by or for the claimant, in the course of the practice. It lists money held pending registration of the transfer of immovable property among the typical losses covered, and says the Fund does not reimburse losses arising from negligence by a legal practitioner. It says nothing about email fraud or diverted payments.

**What the Act does not say.** The wording is about theft, by someone in the practice, of money given to the practice. A payment a buyer sends to a criminal's bank account was never given to the practice, so the wording does not obviously reach it. We found no statement from the Fund on payments diverted by email fraud, and the Hawarden judgment below does not mention the Fund. Whether the Fund would pay in a case like that is for the Fund or an attorney to say.

**The agent-side fund.** The Property Practitioners Act, as gazetted in 2019, continues the Estate Agents Fidelity Fund as the Property Practitioners Fidelity Fund (section 34). Section 35(1) makes it available to reimburse pecuniary loss from theft of trust money committed by a property practitioner who held a Fidelity Fund certificate at the time, or from a practitioner's failure to comply with the trust account duties in section 54(1) or (3). As with the attorneys' Fund, we found no statement on payments diverted by email fraud, and the Act may have been amended since it was gazetted.

So "backed by a Fidelity Fund" describes theft by a practitioner of money entrusted to them, or an agent's failure to follow the trust account rules. On the sources we read, neither Act's wording says anything about a payment sent to the wrong account, and the attorneys' Fund's pages do not either. That gap is why the next section matters.

## How does the emailed banking-details scam work?

**How it works.** The Law Society of South Africa's advisory of 18 July 2018 describes it as business email compromise. Someone gets into a person's email, watches it, and at the right moment replaces an expected email with one so similar that the reader trusts it. Typically that happens when a payment is due, and the bank account in the false email belongs to the criminals. The advisory ties the fraud to the moment a payment is due, not to how a property was sold. It is written for attorneys. It suggests they put a warning in the first paragraph of their communications with clients who may have to pay them: confirm the account is the firm's, contact the person handling the matter if unsure, and know that the firm will not advise a change of bank details by email or other electronic message. That is the Society's suggested wording, and whether an attorney uses it is for the attorney.

**What the professional bodies have said.** The Legal Practice Council's fraud alert of 16 July 2020 is addressed to legal practitioners. It warns that hackers were intercepting law firms' emails to create messages with false bank details, says this was known to be happening in Kimberley but might be more widespread, and says bank details given by email should be verified by telephone or any other means. An earlier Law Society item, of 22 December 2015, reports a Pietermaritzburg firm whose client received a second email claiming a year-end switch to another trust account. The client phoned to check, and the second email had not come from the firm. The firm said its emails would in future carry a note that the account details would not change and be followed by a telephone call to confirm them. We found no statistics on how often this happens, so this guide does not rank it against other scams.

**One case.** In Edward Nathan Sonnenberg Inc v Hawarden [2024] ZASCA 90 (10 June 2024, a judgment marked not reportable), a buyer bought a property from a family trust for R6 million. The sale had an estate agent: the agency the seller had mandated emailed her to ask for a R500 000 deposit into its trust account, and warned her of cybercrime. She checked the details by phone and paid (paragraphs 2 and 3). About three months later, a criminal who had got into her email account sent messages that looked like they came from the seller's conveyancers and gave the criminals' bank details, one of them from an address in which two letters of the firm's name were transposed (paragraphs 4 and 5). She made an electronic transfer from her bank without verifying the account details with the firm (paragraphs 7 and 20). The money was withdrawn, and the bank that received it could not retrieve it (paragraph 9).

She sued the conveyancers the seller had appointed for R5.5 million, saying they should have warned her about the risk and advised the safer route of a bank guarantee (paragraph 12). The High Court allowed the claim (paragraph 1). The Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the firm's appeal and dismissed her claim (paragraph 27).

**What the court decided.** Only one question: wrongfulness, meaning whether the law should make the firm pay for a failure to warn (paragraph 16). It said no on these facts, and gave several reasons. One was the danger of indeterminate liability: holding the firm liable would have wide effects for attorneys and for any creditor who sends bank details by email (paragraphs 21 and 22). Another was vulnerability: a person who could reasonably have protected themselves counts against liability (paragraphs 23 to 25). On the facts, she was not the firm's client, the loss came from her own email account having been compromised, she had been warned about this risk by the agency and had checked then, she could have checked the firm's details with the firm or with her bank while she was at the bank, and she chose a transfer over a bank guarantee (paragraphs 20, 25 and 26). It added that, in the circumstances of the case, a warning from the firm would have meant nothing, because the criminal was already in her email (paragraph 20).

**What the judgment does not say.** It is one judgment, on its own facts, and it decided one element of the claim. It did not decide whether the firm was negligent. It does not say that a buyer can never recover from a conveyancer, and it does not say what anyone can recover from anyone else. It says nothing about private sales or the Fidelity Fund. Whether other facts would come out differently is a question for an attorney.

**For a seller.** Hawarden is a buyer's loss, in a sale that had an estate agent, so nothing in these sources ties this fraud to private sales. None of the sources we read describes a seller's payout details being changed. The one point in the judgment that bears on a seller is that an email saying a payment has been made can itself be false: the proof-of-payment email she sent was intercepted and altered, so the firm received a false one (paragraph 8), and a fake message in her name later said the transfer had been returned (paragraph 11). Our reading, not the judgment's: an attorney can say what has actually reached the trust account.

**The check.** The sources give it in different words. The Law Society's suggested client warning says a client who is unsure may contact the firm and ask to speak to the person handling the matter, and that the firm will not advise a change of bank details by email or other electronic message. The Legal Practice Council says details given by email should be verified by telephone or any other means. The 2015 item describes a firm following its emails with a telephone call. In Hawarden, the agency's warning told the buyer to call a named person at the agency, and she did (paragraphs 2 and 3). None of them says which number to use. Our reading, not theirs, is that a number from the firm's own website or from an earlier letter, rather than from the email in question, avoids phoning the criminals.

## Viewings: who comes in, and how do sellers check them?

A viewing lets someone you have not met see the inside of your home and learn the address. Where a sale is advertised without the street address, the seller decides who gets it; a listing on Privately shows the address the seller enters, so there the checks are about who comes inside. Either way the checks are yours. What follows describes checks sellers can use, not rules. Where a point traces to a source we read, the source is named; the rest is ordinary caution, not drawn from a source. The two South African Police Service pages we read are general home-safety advice and say nothing about property viewings.

- **Before the address is given.** A short phone or video call lets a seller ask what the buyer wants, by when, and whether they will use a bond or pay cash. Giving the suburb first and the street address once satisfied is one way to keep the address back.
- **Identity.** The police service's home-safety advice says not to allow strangers onto your premises or into your house without properly identifying them. A seller can ask to see photo ID and note the name and time. Whether the Protection of Personal Information Act applies to a private seller who keeps a copy of a visitor's ID is a legal question this guide does not answer. An attorney can say.
- **Keys.** The same advice says strangers should not be allowed to handle keys.
- **Valuables.** The police service's personal safety advice includes avoiding displaying valuables where criminals can see them. A seller can lock away jewellery, cash, laptops, medication and firearms, not only tidy them off the counter.
- **Company.** A viewing can be arranged for a time when another adult is home, and a seller can tell someone the visitor's name and the time.
- **Ending a viewing.** It is your home. A seller can end a viewing if a visitor's story does not add up, or if the visitor asks to see the house alone. The police service's personal safety advice includes trusting your instinct.
- **Estates and complexes.** The homeowners' association or body corporate sets how a visitor gets in. We have read no estate's visitor procedure, so this guide describes none.

## How can a seller tell whether a buyer can pay?

A viewing is also when sellers often ask about money. A buyer who needs a bond can show a pre-approval, but the words pre-approval and pre-qualification overlap, so the useful question is [what was checked](/guides/bond-pre-approval-south-africa). An offer can also be made subject to bond approval by a set date, and [the suspensive conditions guide](/guides/suspensive-conditions-subject-to-bond) explains what happens if the date passes.

A cash buyer can offer evidence of funds. The attorney does its own checks on who the parties are and, depending on the amount and the risk, where the money comes from. [FICA when selling property](/guides/fica-when-selling-property-south-africa) covers that side.

## The risks in one table

This table puts the risks above side by side. If you are weighing the disadvantages of selling privately, these are the ones that are about safety. For the wider comparison with using an agent, including cost and effort, see [selling privately versus an estate agent](/compare).

**Risks in a private sale: when each arises, who is exposed, and what addresses it**

| Risk | When it arises | Who is exposed | What addresses it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Strangers in your home | At viewings, before any offer | You, and anyone at home | Checks on who is coming, before the address is given and at the door. See the viewings section. |
| A buyer who cannot pay | After an offer, until the bond is approved or the funds are in | You, in time lost while the sale stalls | A dated bond-approval condition in the offer, and asking what a pre-approval checked. |
| An emailed change of banking details | When a payment is about to fall due, in any sale | Whoever pays into the wrong account. In Hawarden, a buyer in a sale with an agent. | Confirming the account with the firm before paying, in the words of the Law Society's suggested client warning and the Legal Practice Council's alert. See the scam section. |
| A forged proof of payment | After a payment is said to have been made | Anyone who relies on it | Asking the attorney what has reached the trust account, rather than relying on an email (our reading). |
| Money paid outside a trust account | At the deposit, or when someone asks to be paid directly | Whoever pays | The offer to purchase names the account. The Fund's wording under section 55 is about money given to a trust account practice. |
| Cash | If any part of the deal is in cash | The parties, and the attorney | The attorney's FICA process, which the FICA guide covers. |
| A buyer or seller who is not who they say | From first contact to signing | Both sides | The attorney's identity checks, and the identity check on the platform you use. |

## Do I pay agent fees if I sell privately?

With no agent involved, there is no agent's commission to pay. If you signed a mandate with an agency, or an agency introduced the buyer, whether commission is owed depends on the document and the facts: see [commission if an agent had a mandate](/guides/sole-mandate-estate-agent-south-africa).

## What can a platform check, and what can it not?

A platform can lower the practical risk before you meet anyone, but it has no part in the legal protections above. Privately never holds a deposit, and it does not register the transfer. In a sale, the money is held through the trust account process described above. A platform's checks also cover what happens on the platform, not an email or a payment that happens elsewhere. And an identity check says a person is who they say they are. It does not say they will turn up, pay, or behave well at a viewing.

This is what Privately does, and only this:

- Before a listing can be published, the seller has to pass an identity check, run through Secure Citizen. A seller who has not passed it can still save a draft.
- A buyer has to verify their identity before messaging sellers, booking viewings or making offers.
- Buyers never see a seller's email address or phone number unless the seller chooses to share them. Until then, contact is in the in-app chat.
- A buyer's finances can show as "Finances declared" or, once Privately has reviewed them, with a reviewed badge. Neither is a bank's approval of a bond, and neither replaces the attorney's checks or the conditions in the offer.
- Privately never holds a deposit. It goes where the offer to purchase says, normally a trust account.
- **Where to read more.** [How we protect you](/how-we-protect-you) is Privately's own page on its checks. When you are ready, you can [list your property](/signup?role=seller) on Privately, and you can browse [conveyancing attorneys on Privately](/attorneys) for the transfer.

## When does a private sale need an attorney early?

The situations below are legal questions before they are sales questions. In each, an attorney's view may matter before you list, not only at the transfer stage.

- **A deceased estate.** Section 13(1) of the Administration of Estates Act, as gazetted in 1965, says no one may liquidate or distribute a deceased person's estate except under Letters of Executorship, an endorsement the Act allows, or a direction by the Master of the High Court. The section does not spell out signing a sale agreement, so how it applies to a sale is for an attorney. [Selling an inherited house](/guides/selling-an-inherited-house-south-africa) covers the steps.
- **You will be abroad.** Signing from abroad may carry extra requirements, which we have not verified. [Selling property as a non-resident](/guides/selling-property-as-a-non-resident-south-africa) says what we have and have not verified.
- **A co-owner you are in dispute with.** This guide has no primary source on what the law requires when co-owners disagree, so it says only that this is a question for an attorney. [Selling a house during a divorce](/guides/selling-a-house-during-divorce-south-africa) covers the one case we have researched.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is it safe to sell your house without an agent?

Selling without an agent does not change who handles the price or how ownership passes. With no agent, the deposit and the price are normally paid into the transferring attorney's trust account, and ownership passes only when the transfer registers at the Deeds Office. With an agent, the deposit may sit in the agency's trust account instead. What changes is the work before the offer: viewings and judging who can pay. Emailed payment fraud follows payments, not private sales. A conveyancing attorney can confirm how this applies to your sale.

### Can you get scammed when you sell a house privately?

Yes, as in any property sale. The documented fraud is an email that looks like it comes from the conveyancers and gives new bank details, sent when a payment is due. The Law Society of South Africa and the Legal Practice Council have both written about it, and the cases we read involved a buyer or client paying a law firm, not a private seller. The Society's suggested client warning says to contact the firm and speak to the person handling the matter, and the Council says details given by email should be verified by telephone or any other means. The other risks are practical: strangers at viewings, buyers who cannot pay, and a payment made outside the attorney's trust account.

### How do I know a buyer is real?

No single check proves it. A seller can speak to the buyer before giving the address, ask for photo ID, and ask what a bond pre-approval checked or what evidence of funds a cash buyer can show. The attorney then does its own identity checks. On Privately, a buyer has to pass an identity check before messaging sellers, booking viewings or making offers, and a buyer's finances can show as "Finances declared" or, once Privately has reviewed them, with a reviewed badge. Neither replaces the attorney's checks.

### Should I accept a cash deposit directly from a buyer?

The deposit goes where the offer to purchase says, normally a trust account, not to the seller. Cash is a separate question. Section 28 of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, as first gazetted in 2001, requires an accountable institution to report a cash transaction above a prescribed amount, and the Act itself does not set that amount. Our FICA guide gives the figure the Centre publishes and what attorneys ask for. The attorney can say how it would treat any cash in your sale.

### Who holds the money when you sell a house in South Africa?

The offer to purchase says. In a private sale with no agent, the deposit and the price normally go to the transferring attorney's trust account, which the Legal Practice Act (section 86, as gazetted in 2014) requires a practice to keep for money it holds for others. When an agent is involved, the deposit may be held in the agency's trust account instead. When it is released is also set by the offer, and a common arrangement is that the deposit stays in trust until the transfer registers. Privately never holds a deposit.

### Does the Fidelity Fund cover email fraud?

We could not confirm that it does. Section 55 of the Legal Practice Act, as gazetted, makes the Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund liable for theft of money given in trust to a trust account practice, by someone in that practice, up to an amount the Minister sets. Money a buyer sends to a criminal's account was not given to the practice, and we found no statement from the Fund on diverted payments. An agent's trust account sits under a separate fund, the Property Practitioners Fidelity Fund, and we found no statement from it either. The Funds or an attorney can say how they would treat one.

### What did the Supreme Court of Appeal decide in Edward Nathan Sonnenberg v Hawarden?

It dismissed a buyer's claim for R5.5 million against the seller's conveyancers. The sale had an estate agent. The buyer paid the balance of the price into a criminal's account after a fake email gave the firm's bank details. The court decided only that, on those facts, the firm's failure to warn was not wrongful. Its reasons included the danger of indeterminate liability, and that the buyer had been warned about the risk earlier, could have checked the details while at her bank, and chose a transfer over a bank guarantee. It is one judgment on its own facts.

### What happens if I sell my house privately?

You and the buyer sign an offer to purchase, and an attorney prepares the transfer. The deposit and the price are normally paid into a trust account, your bond and the other costs are normally settled out of the price at registration, and you receive the balance. Ownership passes when the transfer registers at the Deeds Office. What selling privately changes is that you find the buyer and arrange the viewings yourself.

## Sources

- [Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014, sections 55, 56, 84 and 86 (the gazetted text, Government Gazette 38022 of 22 September 2014: the Fidelity Fund's liability and its limits, and trust accounts), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/3802222-9act28of2014legalpracticeacta.pdf)
- [Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund: Trust accounts (what the Fund exists to protect against, and the section 86 requirements), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.fidfund.co.za/trust-accounts/)
- [Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund: Claims (what a claimant must prove, the typical losses covered and the losses not reimbursed), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.fidfund.co.za/claims/)
- [Property Practitioners Act 22 of 2019, sections 34, 35 and 54 (the gazetted text, Government Gazette 42746 of 3 October 2019: the Property Practitioners Fidelity Fund and an agent's trust account), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201910/42746gon1295.pdf)
- [Edward Nathan Sonnenberg Inc v Hawarden (421/23) [2024] ZASCA 90, 10 June 2024 (Supreme Court of Appeal, the court's own copy, read in full: the facts at paragraphs 2 to 11 and the reasons at paragraphs 16 to 26), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.supremecourtofappeal.org.za/index.php/component/jdownloads/send/94-judgements-2024/4265-edward-nathan-sonnenberg-inc-v-hawarden-421-23-2024-zasca-90-10-june-2024)
- [LSSA Advisory, Cybercrime: Business email compromises (18 July 2018; a Law Society advisory to attorneys, with its suggested client wording), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.lssa.org.za/news/lssa-advisory-cybercrime-business-email-compromises/)
- [LSSA: Conveyancing trust account year-end scam (22 December 2015; a Law Society item reporting one firm's experience, older than the rest), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.lssa.org.za/news/conveyancing-trust-account-year-end-scam/)
- [Legal Practice Council: Fraud alert to Legal Practitioners (16 July 2020; the alert is the PDF linked from this page and is addressed to practitioners), accessed 20 October 2026](https://lpc.org.za/fraud-alert-to-legal-practitioners/)
- [Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937, sections 13, 15 and 16 (the text as first gazetted: when a deed is registered, preparation by a conveyancer, and how ownership of land is conveyed), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201505/act47of1937.pdf)
- [Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001, section 28 (the text as first gazetted, Government Gazette 22886 of 3 December 2001: the duty to report cash above a prescribed amount; the Act does not state the amount), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/a38-010.pdf)
- [Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965, section 13(1) (the original gazetted text, without later amendments), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.gov.za/documents/acts/administration-estates-act-66-1965-04-jun-1965)
- [ooba Home Loans: How much deposit do you need to buy a house? (a bond originator's page, cited only for its statement that a deposit is normally paid to the estate agent or the transferring attorney), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.ooba.co.za/resources/how-much-deposit-to-buy-house/)
- [South African Police Service: Safety Awareness at Home (general home-safety advice on access and key control; it does not address property viewings), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.saps.gov.za/alert/safety_awareness_home.php)
- [South African Police Service: Personal Safety Tips (general personal-safety advice on valuables and trusting your instinct; it does not address property viewings), accessed 20 October 2026](https://www.saps.gov.za/alert/personal_safety_tips.php)

## Related guides

- [How to sell your house privately in South Africa](https://privately.co.za/guides/how-to-sell-your-house-privately-in-south-africa)
- [Conveyancing and the property transfer process](https://privately.co.za/guides/conveyancing-and-the-transfer-process)
- [FICA compliance when selling a house in South Africa](https://privately.co.za/guides/fica-when-selling-property-south-africa)
- [How much deposit do you need to buy a house in South Africa?](https://privately.co.za/guides/house-deposit-south-africa)
- [Sole mandates in South Africa: the rules, commission and cancelling](https://privately.co.za/guides/sole-mandate-estate-agent-south-africa)
- [Selling an inherited house in South Africa](https://privately.co.za/guides/selling-an-inherited-house-south-africa)
- [Selling South African property as a non-resident](https://privately.co.za/guides/selling-property-as-a-non-resident-south-africa)

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Figures verified 2026-09-28. General information about South African property practice, not legal or financial advice.

Source: Privately, https://privately.co.za/guides/is-it-safe-to-sell-your-house-privately