The Sunday News
HAVE you ever wondered, “Where do residential stands come from?” New residential stands are generally created from larger blocks of vacant land.
A landowner may decide to develop his own land, or a developer may search for available land to purchase and develop. This vacant land is then “developed”, that means that the developer has to go through the process of creating many smaller pieces of land from one larger one.
How do you develop a piece of land? The development process is a very long, involved process. It has many steps and involves Local Government, surveyors, service providers, and registered Real Estate agents.
The first step is to approach your local authority to apply for a sub-divisional permit. This permit means that you have the permission to assess the possibility of developing the property.
The property then has to go through an Environmental Impact Assessment, which is done by the Environment Management Agency.
They will determine whether any of the work done on the property will have a detrimental effect on the environment. Then the property has to be surveyed and mapped. The proposed new stands, roads, and local services are mapped out.
The local authority will give guidelines for the amount of commercial stands, schools, clinics, churches, hospitals, and other amenities that will be required for this new neighbourhood.
The size of the area will determine the number of amenities which are needed. Also the type of residential stands needs to be decided. Will the new community be low density, medium density, high density, or mixed density?
Once all of these requirements have been met and all of the questions answered, the local authority will issue a Development Permit. The Development Permit grants the permission for the developer to begin servicing the area.
What does it mean to service an area? The Development Permit will lay out the conditions which need to be met, to consider the stands as serviced.
This permit says how many roads there will be. It also gives the necessary materials, depths and widths of each road. It will also list the drainage, sewerage (if any), water lines, and other services. Each required service will be mapped out and have a list of sizes, qualities and requirements.
The company who does this work is often referred to as a Service Provider. A P Glendennings and J R Goddard are examples of two Bulawayo companies that work as service providers.
This work has numerous inspections, which are carried out throughout the process. For example, the water line construction is inspected many times.
They are inspected when the trenches are inspected after being dug, when the lines are inspected when they are laid, when the first partial infilling is inspected, when the final filling is inspected, and finally when the lines and connections are tested for integrity and to ensure that they are water tight.
Once all of the servicing is completed and inspected the local authority will issue a Compliance Certificate. This document is one of the most important documents that the development receives.
Most of the stalled Bulawayo developments still have not been issued their Compliance Certificates, because the developers have failed to meet the requirements outlined in the Development Permit.
Without the Compliance Certificate, new Title Deeds cannot be issued for the newly created stands. This leaves the new purchaser of the stand in a very bad place. Many people have purchased stands in developments that have not been completed.
It is far safer to deal with registered Estate Agents and developers who are selling stands with the Compliance Certificate already issued. Always protect yourself with your Real Estate investments.
Jonathan Thompson is a registered real estate agent who works in Bulawayo. He has nine years of experience in Real Estate in the USA, and another 10 years’ experience in Bulawayo.
He is the founder and the Managing Director of Thompson Properties (Pvt) Ltd.
