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The Rental Housing Act 50 of 1999 came into effect on 1 August 2000. It cancelled the Rent Control Act (No 80 of 1967). It provided at that time a three-year transitional period to protect tenants that fell under the Rent Control Act. In those 3 years landlords were only allowed to raise rentals by 10% per year.
The Rental Housing Act controls the relationship between landlords and tenants in the residential sector. In other words, buy to let investors in the residential sectors and anyone letting out their premises to a private person falls under this act.
The act applies to all written or verbal residential lease agreements that were entered into on or after 1st August 2000.
The Rental Housing Tribunal is the organisation that is responsible for the act to be implemented and resolve disputes between landlords and tenants.
To make this very clear as some get confused about whom the act applies to, here is a clarification.
The Rental Housing Act applies when:
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Any entity rents to a private person.
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Any private person rents to another private person.
The Rental Housing Act does NOT apply when:
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A person rents to a company (because the tenant is not a private person).
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Or a company rents to a company.
In essence the act was written to protect private / residential tenants from unscrupulous landlords and landlords from unscrupulous tenants. And generally protect both parties from unfair practices. To give an example: a tenant not paying rent is an unfair practice, but then again, so is a landlord changing keys to the premises to lock the tenant out.
Rental Housing Act protects both in its content. Some landlords think the act is not fair and in the same time some tenants think in the same way. However what one thinks is often based on all sorts of experiences and rumors that these parties had in the course of doing business with one another.
What is important to note is that, both parties tenants and landlords are often not very knowledgeable in the contents nor have a clear understanding of the Rental Housing Act, nor a clear understanding of their rights for that matter.
At Property Investor Network Campus , there is a entire series about letting residential properties, such as buy to let properties to tenants in a way and manner that is legal and doesn’t get the landlord into trouble. You can read more about how to do your letting right in the blogs posted there.
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