Your Lease and Your Deposit: What the Law Expects

This is an operations note for people in a ManjeProp house, not a legal opinion and not a substitute for reading the document you sign. South African residential leases sit under the Rental Housing Act 50 of 1999 (as amended) and, in some consumer fixed-term cases, the Consumer Protection Act. Provincial Rental Housing Tribunals exist when the relationship breaks. What follows is the shape of the law as commonly applied to deposits and inspections. Confirm the current text and your own lease before you rely on a number.

A listing on manjeprop.co.za is not a lease. A booking row in PropertyCare is not a lease. The signed agreement is the lease.

A written lease you can find again

You should be able to say, without hunting through chats: who the landlord or agent is, which room or dwelling, the rent, the deposit, the start and end, what is included, how you give notice, and how you report defects. If a clause is in a WhatsApp only, it will be the clause nobody can prove.

Ask for the document before you pay a deposit. Pay on the banking details that belong to the business, not to a new personal account that arrived by SMS.

The deposit is not a gift

Under the Rental Housing Act, a deposit is the tenant’s money held for the tenancy. Landlords are generally required to invest it in an interest-bearing account with a financial institution, at not less than a savings-type rate, and to be able to account for it. You should get a receipt.

The deposit is not extra rent. It is not automatically “kept for painting.” Ordinary wear and tear is not the same as damage.

Incoming inspection: the starting photograph

The Act expects a joint incoming inspection so defects existing at the start are listed and attached to the lease. If that list is missing, arguments at the end become guesswork. ManjeProp’s practical rule is: walk the room together, photograph it, and keep those photos with the file. Tenants should take their own set as well.

Do not skip the inspection because the taxi is waiting. The twenty minutes you skip will return as a deduction you do not recognise.

Outgoing inspection: three days is not a rumour

On expiry, the landlord must arrange a joint inspection at a mutually convenient time within three days before the lease ends, to see what changed. If the landlord fails to inspect with you as the Act requires, that failure is generally treated as an acknowledgement that the dwelling is in good order, with no further claim against you for that damage. If you ignore a reasonable request to attend, the landlord may inspect within seven days after expiry to assess loss.

These timelines are in the statute. They are not a house rule we invented. Still: read the current Act and get advice if a large sum is at stake.

How money comes back

In broad terms the Act says:

If nothing is owing, the deposit plus interest should be refunded within seven days of expiry.
If amounts are owing, the landlord may apply the deposit and interest to what you lawfully owe under the lease — including reasonable repair of damage and lost keys — and must refund the balance within fourteen days of restoration of the dwelling.
You should be shown the receipts for those costs.

No receipts, no itemisation, no inspection trail: that is a weak deduction. It is also why we photograph incoming and outgoing, and why we log repairs with evidence instead of a memory.

What we will not do in a blog post

We will not tell you that you may withhold rent, change a lock in a particular way, or ignore a clause because a stranger on a forum did. We will not draft your Tribunal papers. If you need a ruling, use a qualified adviser or the KwaZulu-Natal Rental Housing Tribunal process that applies to your case.

ManjeProp staff do not paste identity numbers into tickets to “strengthen” a deposit file. The inspection photos and the invoices are the file.

Practical next step in this house

Read the lease you have. Keep the incoming photos. Report new damage when it happens, not on the last morning, via Report a fault. If you are still looking for a Durban room, ask on the enquiry form how deposits and inspections are handled before you travel.

For a live fault, or a lock that will decide a deduction later, use the form or call +27 60 313 6961. For a legal determination, do not use the fault form. Use advice and the Tribunal.