Cost & decisions
Landlord repair obligations, and the tenant's repair bill
A landlord may have to pay a tenant back for an urgent repair, and the Rental Housing Tribunal's ruling carries the force of a court judgment.
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All resources
Maintenance
Property & facilities
Burst pipe at night in Johannesburg: who fixes what
The water meter is the line. Johannesburg Water fixes its side, you fix yours, and a leak on your side is billed to you until it stops.
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Property & facilities
Emergency repairs in a body corporate, after hours
The trustees cannot meet at 2am, and the Act and the management rules already say who may authorise the repair, who may enter a unit and who pays.
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Property & facilities
Burst geyser: what to do in the first ten minutes
Switch off the power, shut the water, protect the ceiling, then photograph everything before you phone the insurer. Here is the order and why.
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Cost & decisions
Commercial property investment pack, and what net hides
Broll's Wynberg lot shows R2,14m gross, R1,03m recoveries and R2,06m net. Those numbers fit two very different investments, and the listing does not say which.
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Cost & decisions
Standby generator tenders in South Africa, and the spec
Our catalogue holds 36 public generator lines this week. Who is buying, and the four different points at which a model gets written into the spec.
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Cost & decisions
SANRAL routine road maintenance tender, nine provinces open
SANRAL has at least 40 routine road maintenance contractor lots open in nine provinces, and eleven compulsory briefings fall between 12 and 19 October.
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Property & facilities
Nine centres changed hands. Who maintains them?
Dipula is buying nine shopping centres for R2 billion, and on the day of transfer somebody has to know who fixes the air conditioning.
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Cost & decisions
Client matching for contractors, from closed tenders
A tender that closed with no award posted is a buyer who needed the work done. Five on Gauteng ground from late September 2026, and the call to make.
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Cost & decisions
Contractor matching service when the tender comes back empty
Public buyers re-advertise the same refurbishment and the same maintenance contract. The board shows why a second advert rarely fixes the first.
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Property & facilities
Maintenance contractors for bodies corporate
The Act makes trustees maintain the common property. It does not say how to find the contractor, compare the quotes or check the registers first. This does.
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Property & facilities
Who approves the quote in a sectional title scheme
There are 130 female sectional title owners for every 100 male owners, and the quote your contractor wrote is still addressed to a single homeowner.
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Cost & decisions
Municipal tariffs rose 8,1% and 10,2% in July 2026
Headline inflation fell to 4,3% while the services a building actually buys went up by twice that, which is why the maintenance budget broke.
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The Arabella Brief
What changed this week, and what it costs you on Monday.
One email on a Friday, covering the week from Friday to Thursday so the week is closed when it is written. What actually changed, everything with a date on it, one development run through what it means for a contractor with forty people, and what we got wrong. A thin week is a short issue.