Sectional Title Disputes: Body Corporates, Levies and the CSOS

Living in a sectional title scheme comes with its own set of rules and its own dispute-resolution system, separate from renting a house or flat. This page explains the framework, what a body corporate can and cannot do to enforce its rules, how levies work, and how to use the Community Schemes Ombud Service (CSOS) when something goes wrong.

Information last verified on 23 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about South African sectional title law and does not constitute legal advice on an individual case.

The Legal Framework: STSMA and the CSOS Act

Two Acts govern sectional title schemes, and both commenced together on 7 October 2016. The Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act 8 of 2011 (STSMA) sets out how a scheme is run: the body corporate's functions, the administrative and reserve funds, levies, and the management and conduct rules. The Community Schemes Ombud Service Act 9 of 2011 (CSOS Act) created the Community Schemes Ombud Service and its dispute-resolution process, which now sits alongside, and largely replaces, the courts as the first-stop forum for most scheme disputes.

A body corporate, made up of all the owners and run day to day by elected trustees, is required to maintain an administrative fund for ordinary running costs and a reserve fund for future maintenance and repair, to insure the buildings, to keep the common property in a good state of repair, and generally to control, manage and administer the common property for the benefit of all owners (STSMA section 3).

Levies: The Duty to Pay and Special Levies

Liability for levy contributions arises once the trustees pass a resolution to raise them (STSMA section 3(2)); the body corporate then recovers unpaid levies through a CSOS application rather than going straight to court. Where a section changes ownership, the new owner becomes liable for levies proportionally from the date of the transfer. Special levies, meaning any contribution other than the ordinary annual budget contribution, follow the same resolution-and-CSOS-recovery mechanism (STSMA section 3(3) and (4)).

Practitioners commonly advise that an owner should not simply withhold levies over a maintenance dispute, and should instead pay and separately apply to CSOS for a repair or works order. That advice is a sound reading of the scheme (pay per the trustees' resolution, dispute through CSOS), though a specific statutory clause barring an owner from setting off levies against a maintenance complaint was not identified for the owner context; a comparable set-off bar does exist for a tenant paying a body corporate directly on a landlord's behalf (CSOS Act section 39(1)(f)).

Conduct and Management Rules: No Automatic Fines

A scheme's rules come in two kinds: management rules, which can be changed by unanimous resolution, and conduct rules, which can be changed by special resolution, both of which must be filed with and approved by the chief ombud before they take effect (STSMA section 10). The default, prescribed conduct rules cover everyday matters such as animals, refuse, vehicles, damage to common property, and noise and behaviour, but they do not contain a monetary fine provision, and neither does the Act itself.

This is the point worth getting right, because it is one of the most common misunderstandings among owners and even trustees: a body corporate does not have a default statutory power to fine an owner for a rule breach. The only sanction the statutory scheme provides is loss of voting rights, and that applies only where a member persists in breaching a conduct rule after a court or a CSOS adjudicator has already ordered them to stop (STSMA Regulations, regulation 20(2)). A scheme can only create its own fines regime by properly amending its own conduct rules through a special resolution, subject to chief ombud approval, which makes any fine a matter of that specific scheme's validly adopted rules, not an automatic entitlement every body corporate has from the Act.

The CSOS Dispute Process

The CSOS Act sets out an exhaustive list of dispute categories a CSOS application can address (section 39): financial issues such as levy disputes, insurance and payment orders; behavioural issues such as nuisance and unauthorised alterations to common property; governance issues such as invalid or unreasonable rules; meeting disputes, including compelling a meeting or invalidating one improperly held; managing agent compliance and termination disputes; and works orders covering repairs and maintenance of common property.

An accepted application goes to conciliation first (CSOS Act section 47); only if conciliation fails does the ombud refer it to an adjudicator (section 48). An adjudicator's order for payment of money, or any relief within a magistrate's court's jurisdiction, is enforced as if it were a judgment of that court once it is lodged with the clerk of the court, and the same applies through the High Court registrar for orders beyond a magistrate's court's jurisdiction (section 56). An order can be appealed to the High Court, but only on a question of law, within 30 days (section 57); this is confirmed on CSOS's own published guidance, which describes an adjudicator's order as final and binding subject only to that narrow legal appeal. In practice, this means CSOS, not the High Court, is where the substance of a scheme dispute gets decided.

CSOS Fees

Registering a community scheme with CSOS carries no fee. What an individual dispute application costs is less clear: CSOS's own website is inconsistent with itself, one page describes conciliation and adjudication as free of charge, while another quotes a R50 conciliation fee and a R100 adjudication fee. The underlying regulations leave the actual application and adjudication fee to be set by a separate Gazette notice, distinct from the quarterly scheme levy CSOS itself charges to community schemes, calculated as the lesser of R40 or 2 percent of the amount by which the scheme's monthly levy exceeds R500. Given the contradiction, treat this as a modest fee that may apply, with a waiver process for those who qualify, and check CSOS's current published fee schedule at csos.org.za before applying.

Owner Rights: Records, Meetings and Exclusive Use Areas

Owners, and registered bondholders, are entitled to request access to a range of scheme records, including meeting minutes, membership and tenant lists, and financial statements, and the body corporate must make these available for inspection or copying within 10 days of a written request. An annual general meeting must be held within 4 months of the end of the scheme's financial year, unless every member unanimously agrees in writing to skip it. Where a scheme has exclusive use areas, such as a designated parking bay or garden, the rules creating them must include a scaled layout plan and a schedule showing which owner each area belongs to, and an owner with an exclusive use area is generally required to contribute extra toward the rates, insurance, maintenance and utility costs attributable to that area.

Related Reading

• South Africa Housing Law
• Rental Housing Tribunal: the Free Remedy
• Eviction and the PIE Act
• Noise Complaints in South Africa, which also covers noise disputes inside a sectional title scheme
• CCTV and Neighbour Cameras, relevant where a body corporate installs CCTV on common property
• For the wider picture, see the South Africa Laws hub

This page is general legal information about South African law and is not legal advice. For advice on your own situation, consult an attorney, or contact Legal Aid South Africa on 0800 110 110 if you cannot afford one.