By Nick Wilson

The Association of Property Unit Trusts (Aput) has welcomed the City of Johannesburg's plan to dramatically improve its turnaround time for building and rezoning applications.

However, the council needs to apply the same logic to the full ambit of services offered to property owners, it says.

Aput, which represents the property unit trust sector on the JSE, said yesterday the plan announced recently by the city's planning chief for urban development, Prof Philip Harrison, was a "fantastic start", but that the problems with delays did not just apply to zoning applications.

Aput spokesman Craig Hallowes said problems with opening and closing of municipal accounts could also delay the transfer of properties .

The City of Johannesburg, which had come under increasing pressure from disgruntled property developers to improve its turnaround time for building and rezoning applications, said this month it planned to approve 60% of building applications within 24 hours.

The city said that, from September, a new customer service centre, the Metro Link Centre , would make it possible to process two-thirds of building applications in 24 hours.

Up to 70% of plans that may have queries could be approved within 28 days.

The plan was welcomed by the property industry, with some developers saying they had been kept waiting for up to four years for rezoning or township development approval.

Hallowes said the "red tape" problems affected the whole listed property sector. He said SA was experiencing a "nice commercial property boom at the moment" and this had put quite a lot of demand on the current property capacity, especially in terms of warehousing and offices.

"Listed property unit trusts and other listed property companies are often developing their own property stock because of the demand."

Hallowes said the red tape caused delays for additional property stock to enter listed property unit trust property portfolios. In addition to the zoning "help desk", he encouraged the City of Johannesburg to develop a "fast, functional customer-centric facility" for the opening and closing of municipal accounts .

"It's a great initiative, but the city needs to take the logic and apply it across the whole ambit of services to property owners," said Hallowes.