Home Calculators
Work out the numbers
The price is never the cost. These work out the duty, the fees and the repayment on any figure you put in, using the tables SARS, the Deeds Office and the Law Society publish. Nothing you type leaves your phone, and every rate is dated at the foot of the page.
What the transfer costs
Transfer duty, the conveyancer and the Deeds Office, on top of the price and payable in cash before registration.
The price you are offering, before VAT where the seller is a VAT vendor.
A sale that carries VAT carries no transfer duty, and a sale that carries duty carries no VAT. It is one or the other, never both.
The duty is the same either way. It has been the same table for every buyer since 23 February 2011. Only the conveyancer's compliance fee differs.
What the bank registers, which is the price less your deposit.
Cash needed on top of the price
- VAT on the price
- Transfer duty, to SARS
- Conveyancer, with VAT
- Deeds Office, transfer
- Bond attorney, with VAT
- Deeds Office, bond
- Compliance and lodgement
Attorney fees are a recommended guideline and are negotiable, so ask two firms. Not counted here, because no published tariff sets them: your bank's bond initiation fee, rates clearance, which is the municipal account the seller must settle, and each firm's own searches, postage and electronic fees.
Bond repayment
What the bank would take each month, and what the loan costs over its whole life.
Optional. Anything above the instalment comes straight off the capital.
Monthly repayment
- Deposit
- Amount bonded
- Paid off in
- Interest over that time
- Paid in all
The rate starts at prime. Your bank sets the real one against the land and against you, and a bond on farmland is commonly written over a shorter term than a house.
What you can afford
Work backwards from what you earn to the price worth looking at. Your arithmetic, not a bank's decision.
Before tax and deductions. Both incomes where two of you are buying together.
Vehicle finance, existing bonds, card and store accounts, implement finance.
All of it, not just the deposit. The transfer costs come out of this first, because they cannot be added to the bond.
Price worth looking at
- Instalment that fits
- Bond it carries
- Transfer costs, in cash
- What is left as a deposit
The transfer costs are taken off your cash first, so the deposit is what survives them, and they are worked out as a sale carrying transfer duty. On a farm sold by a registered VAT vendor, VAT is due instead and the cash you need is higher, so put that one through the transfer panel above. A bank may lend more or less than this, it works on your income after deductions rather than before, and on farmland it wants to see what the place earns.
What a sale leaves you
What reaches your account on registration, once the commission, the VAT on it and the bond are settled.
The price you are asking, or the offer you have.
Not in use: you have asked the panel to work back from a figure you want in hand instead. Set that back to zero to price forwards again.
Read it off your mandate. VAT is only charged where the agency is a registered VAT vendor, and many mandates quote a rate with the VAT already in it.
Working the other way round. Put in the figure you need to walk away with and the panel says what the farm has to be listed at to leave it. Zero to switch this off.
Nothing owing on the land: leave it at zero and the cancellation fee falls away too.
Rates clearance, arrear levies, a compliance certificate, an electrical or borehole repair agreed in the offer.
What reaches your account
- Price that leaves it
- Commission
- VAT on the commission
- Bond settled
- Cancelling the bond, with VAT
- Everything else
The buyer pays the transfer duty and the transferring attorney, not you. Capital gains tax on a farm sale depends on what you paid, what you have spent on it and how it has been used, so it is left to your accountant rather than guessed at here.
Land size and price a hectare
A mandate is written in hectares, an old title deed in morgen, a buyer from abroad thinks in acres. Price per hectare is what holds two farms against each other.
Leave it at zero for the conversion on its own.
Price a hectare
- Hectares
- Square metres
- Acres
- Morgen
A morgen is taken at 0.856532 hectares, the factor the Law Society published in November 2007 for converting old diagrams, and the one conveyancers still use.
Put a real farm through it Every listing carries its extent and its price, and opens these with both already filled in.
Where the figures come from
Four published tables and one rate, each read on the date below. When a budget or a gazette moves one of them, this page is changed rather than left to drift.
- Transfer duty
- The SARS table for the year from 1 April 2026. No duty up to R1 210 000, then 3 per cent of the amount above it, rising in steps to 13 per cent. Read on 11 September 2026 at sars.gov.za (opens in a new tab).
- Conveyancing and bond attorney fees
- The Law Society of South Africa Conveyancing Fee Guideline in force from 1 July 2026, Column B, plus VAT at 15 per cent. The guideline is a recommendation, not a tariff: fees are negotiable and a firm may quote above or below it. Read on 28 September 2026.
- Deeds Office fees
- The schedule made under section 10 of the Deeds Registries Act, in force from 1 April 2026, published in Government Gazette 54225, Notice 7180. No VAT is charged on it. Read on 28 September 2026 at deeds.gov.za (opens in a new tab).
- VAT
- The standard rate of 15 per cent. The rises announced in 2025 were reversed.
- The starting interest rate
- Prime at 10.75 per cent, from the repo rate of 7.25 per cent set on 25 September 2026. Move the slider: your own rate is the one your bank offers, which on farmland is usually above prime. Read on 28 September 2026 at resbank.co.za (opens in a new tab).
Two things these cannot do
They are general arithmetic on figures you type in, not legal, tax or financial advice, and nothing here is an offer of credit. The conveyancer handling your transfer gives you a costs statement, and that statement is the one that binds.
Where the seller is a registered VAT vendor selling in the course of a business, VAT is charged on the price instead of transfer duty, and no duty is due. Several farms carry that condition. Each ERFDEVCO listing says which position its mandate records, and the conveyancer confirms it before you sign.
Run the numbers on a real mandate
Send the figure you have arrived at and Martiens will tell you what it buys, what the duty on it actually comes to, and which of the mandates on the books sit inside it.