Editor – The community of Ekurhuleni must be extremely disappointed with the outrageous hike in Municipal Valuation rates.
Most property rates seem to have increased by R200 000 per property on average, an increase of around 30%.
This is going to result in a significant increase in most monthly property rates payments.
Even more upsetting is that the deadline to object or appeal the new valuation rates was June 18, while most residents have not, to this date, even received any official notification of the new rates.
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We eventually discovered that the new valuation rates are on the Ekurhuleni website – a big help to those who do not have a computer, smartphone or internet access.
Then what about the 6kl free water allocation to units having a valuation of R750 000 or less? Apparently this value is not going to change – that means there will be many that will lose that benefit.
What are residents getting in return for their property rates: regular electricity outages, water outages, sporadic refuse collection, potholes in streets, plus a general lack of infrastructure maintenance.
The Kempton Park CBD is a good example of filth and decay.
I live in a townhouse complex comprising 20 units – one typical example is a particular unit with an area of 105m² paying R480 000 for the new property rates, while the neighbour living in an almost identical unit of 106m² is paying R1 000 000. How can that be?
There are three more similar cases in our complex – who did the municipality employ to make such disastrous errors?
Most estate agents use a programme called Lightstone to obtain the latest sale values of similar properties in the neighbourhood. This will give a rather accurate market value of most properties.
Through an estate agent I established the new valuation of most of the units in our townhouse complex are much higher than the Lightstone market value report.
Then we are told the objection appeal date has expired, and that’s that!
I feel the entire community should institute a class action lawsuit against the Ekurhuleni Municipality concerning the new property valuations.
Who can help?
Bill Smith
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