13 PROPERTIES TO BE AUCTIONED TOMORROW

MBABANE – An opportunity has been availed to entrepreneurs who seek to explore the property industry.

The Municipal Council of Mbabane will tomorrow auction 13 properties at the Mbabane Magistrates Court’s car park.
The auction shall be at 10am. The municipality will be selling the properties following that some owners had accrued arrears on their rates payments.

Developed

From the 13 properties, the most expensive property is 1065 square metre that was developed. It has a reserve price of E784 000. The property is set to go under the hammer following a debt of E12 218.44 by the owner.

According to a notice of sale in execution, all the properties that will be auctioned had their cases argued in court since 2014.
Meanwhile, the least expensive plot has a reserve price of E38 000 while it had rates arrears worth E6 211.16.

Fully-fledged

The plot is situated at Msunduza Extension 4.
When computing the value of the rates owed to the municipality, the rates that it seeks to recover are valued at E135 102.
According to a list released by the Mbabane Magistrates Court, all properties lined up for auction are developed.
This means the properties have fully-fledged structures.

The municipality as a local authority, in line with their strategic plan or Integrated Development Plan (IDP), uses a couple of strategies in order to encourage property owners to pay their rates.
These include providing incentives to owners who pay their rates religiously, through running ‘pay your rates in full and win campaigns’, where ratepayers get rewarded with prizes.

During 2016/17 financial year, prizes such as a TV set, stove and fridge were won by deserving ratepayers.

Payment

The municipality also convenes stakeholder meetings where they educate town’s residents and property owners on rates payment and other issues relating to their operations.
“It is not council’s intention to auction ratepayers’ property for outstanding rates.

“However, when all of the above-mentioned strategies have failed together with other means for rates recovery as stated in Rating Act (1995), for instance, issuing reminders for rates due and publishing list of rates defaulters in the print media, then we institute legal proceedings, in order to recover outstanding rates,” said Information and Public Relations Officer Lucky Tsabedze.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: