Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain looms over the city's Waterfront district. File picture: Reuters Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain looms over the city's Waterfront district. File picture: Reuters
Cape Town residents are bucking the property slump trend, with the city receiving more than 300 new rates clearance applications each day.
A property seller must ensure all accounts are paid before the transaction goes through and transfer may be completed only once the certificate is issued. This usually takes around five days
This week the city presented an update on its Integrated Spatial Information System, its new database that went live in December. The system captures a range of data and handles rates clearance certificates.
At the moment, there are 30 960 “active” rates clearance cases on the system.
Demetri Qually, mayoral committee member for corporate services, said there had been 5 142 rates clearance applications in January.
“The city used to receive fewer than 200 new applications a day, but by the end of January this had increased to 300 a day. For the first week of February 2012 the daily average increased to 380.
“We are therefore not only dealing with a new IT system, but have also seen an approximate doubling in the number of rates clearance applications received each day.”
At this week’s meeting, Andre Stelzner, city director for information systems and technology, briefed the finance portfolio committee on the system’s progress.
The system handles property-related data, including processing the rates clearance applications.
“Let no one say there is a property downturn in Cape Town, this is the highest volume of cases the office has seen,” Stelzner said. “Normally the average is 150 to 200 cases. We’re seeing 300 a day.”
Stelzner said the new system allowed the city to track individual cases from start to finish and each time the status of the application changed, this was logged on to the system.
The new system was strict on “data integrity”, which meant there were virtually no loopholes for misinformation.
However, there had been some delays in issuing the certificates shortly after the system was implemented, the city said. This had been due to technical problems.
Trevor Blake, city director for revenue, told the committee meeting that certificates were usually processed in five days and the city had spoken regularly to the Cape Law Society about the system’s progress.
There were some concerns about how long applications were taking. Queries were being escalated to the offices of mayor Patricia de Lille and city manager Achmat Ebrahim. - Bronwynne Jooste