Selling a house with an asbestos roof in Cape Town

This is the way it usually goes. The house shows well, the offer comes in, and then somewhere between the offer and the signature the word asbestos enters the conversation. Sometimes the buyer's father says it. Sometimes the home inspector writes it down. And suddenly there is a discount being negotiated that is roughly the size of somebody's guess at a removal quote.

That guess is almost always wrong and almost always high, because the only numbers on the internet are removal numbers and removal is the most expensive possible answer. You are now negotiating against an imaginary invoice.

South African property sales run on a mandatory defects disclosure, and the honest position is straightforward: if you know the roof is asbestos cement sheeting, say so. A voetstoots clause does not protect a seller who deliberately conceals a known defect, and a roof you have been quietly worrying about for three years is a known anything.

The good news is that disclosure and panic are not the same thing. Intact, undisturbed, sealed asbestos cement sheeting is a managed building material, not a hazard notice. The document that makes that credible is a written scope, photographs and a guarantee, which is exactly what a completed encapsulation leaves you holding.

Bond approval is about valuation and about the property being habitable and insurable. A leaking roof of any material is a problem in that conversation. A sound, sealed, watertight roof is not, regardless of what the sheets are made of.

Insurers vary and we will not guess at your policy. What we can say is that the questions that come back are almost always about condition and about water ingress, and both of those are answered by a photographed scope and a guarantee document rather than by an argument about the material.

1. 1Get the roof inspected and photographed, so you know whether it is sound enough to seal at all
2. 2If it is sound, seal it and keep the full handover pack, photographs, specification and guarantee
3. 3If it is not sound, get a removal quote from a registered asbestos contractor and disclose with the actual number attached rather than leaving the buyer to imagine one
4. 4Fix the gutters and downpipes at the same time, because water marks on a soffit undo everything the roof work just achieved
5. 5Give the agent the paperwork on day one so it is part of the story rather than a discovery

None of this is legal or financial advice, and your conveyancer is the person to confirm disclosure wording with. But on the practical side, in the Northern Suburbs, the sealed roof with a folder beats the bare roof with a rumour every time.