Launching a listing: FICA, defects and mandate
What the Real estate pack asks of a South African seller before a listing goes live, from FICA documents and defects disclosure to the signed mandate.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Real estate businesses in South Africa
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
The seller wants the board up by Saturday. The photographer is booked, the agent has a buyer in mind and everyone is keen to get going. Then, three weeks into marketing, someone notices that the seller's FICA documents were never collected, the defects disclosure is still in the agent's car, and the mandate on file is unsigned on page four.
Those gaps are not just untidy. They tend to surface at the worst moment, when an offer is on the table and the conveyancer is asking for the paperwork.
The Real estate pack in Achekam's Industry CRM handles the launch of a South African listing as one workflow, so the paperwork is done before the marketing starts rather than chased afterwards. Here is what it asks of the seller, and what it leaves to your judgement.
The launch at a glance
When a listing is launched, the pack:
- asks the seller for their FICA documents
- asks the seller for a written disclosure of known defects
- has the mandate signed electronically
- runs a marketing checklist
In the Industry CRM, a workflow creates its tasks stage by stage, and a step can send the customer a request for documents or a document to sign electronically. The seller's answer moves the task on. Your agent does not have to remember to check whether the seller replied; the task tells them.
Requesting the seller's FICA documents
The first request goes to the seller for their FICA documents. Which documents you ask for, and how you verify them, follow your agency's own FICA procedures; the pack sends the request and tracks the answer, it does not decide what is enough. The Financial Intelligence Centre's page on estate agents covers estate agents as accountable institutions under the FIC Act and the compliance guidance that applies to the property sector.
Because the request goes from the workflow, the seller receives it in writing, and it is the seller's answer that moves the task on. Whether the step is done no longer depends on what is sitting in one agent's personal inbox.
A tip from practice: ask for everything in one request rather than three. Sellers answer one clear list faster than a trickle of follow-ups.
A written disclosure of known defects
The second request asks the seller for a written disclosure of known defects. That is the seller's own statement of what they know is wrong with the property: the damp patch behind the cupboard, the gate motor that sticks, the roof repair from two winters ago.
Getting it in writing before marketing starts protects everyone. The agent can describe the property honestly, buyers can be shown the disclosure before they make an offer, and the seller cannot later say nobody asked. Read it when it comes back. A disclosure that says "none" for a house with obvious damp is a conversation to have now, not after the offer is signed.
Signing the mandate electronically
The mandate is sent for electronic signature from the workflow. Achekam's e-signing places signature and initials fields on the document, sends to signers in order or all at once, and sets an expiry and reminders. Where a property has two owners, both can sign, one after the other or at the same time.
A signer from outside the business must be linked to a client or a CRM lead before an envelope is sent, so make sure the seller is on record before the mandate goes out.
When everyone has signed, Achekam produces the signed PDF with a completion certificate listing each signer's e-mail, the times, their IP address and browser, and the document's fingerprint, and files it back into Documents. These are simple electronic signatures: the certificate cites section 13 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act and states that they are not advanced electronic signatures. The offer to purchase is a different matter, because South African law does not accept an electronic signature on a sale of land; why the offer to purchase is still signed in ink explains how the pack handles it.
Starter wording to review
Every contract or agreement in the industry packs, the mandate included, is marked as starter wording that the business must review before use. That is not a formality. Mandate terms differ between sole and open mandates, between sales and lettings, and between agencies, and the starter text cannot know which you use.
Before the first launch, give the starter mandate to your attorney or your principal, compare it with the mandate you sign today, and adapt it. Do the same for the defects disclosure wording. Once your version is settled, use it for every listing from then on.
The marketing checklist
The launch ends with a marketing checklist. The pack publishes nothing to property portals, so the checklist is where your team keeps track of marketing work done in other systems. Work that agencies typically track at this stage includes:
- professional photographs and, where you use them, a floor plan
- the portal listings, loaded the way you load them now
- the board, if the seller has agreed to one
- the first show day or the first private viewings
Tasks in the Industry CRM can have subtasks up to three levels deep, so a large item such as "photographs" can carry its own steps, from booking to approving the final set with the seller.
Before your next mandate
Settle your mandate and disclosure wording first; everything else in the launch depends on them. Then launch your next listing through the pack and watch where sellers slow down. If you run more than one agency entity, set the pack up in each entity's own workspace, as covered in keeping books for more than one agency entity.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
