Sectional Title Levy Calculator — South Africa

How to Use This Calculator

Enter your unit size in m² and choose the complex tier that best matches your scheme's amenities — Basic (no amenities), Standard (garden + security), Premium (pool + gym) or Luxury (full-service estate). Then select the scheme's reserve fund status — check the latest AGM financials or ask your managing agent if you're unsure.

For a general estimate, that's all you need. To get an exact reserve fund contribution figure instead of general guidance, open the optional advanced section and enter the scheme's annual levy income and budgeted repairs & maintenance line, then calculate to see your estimated monthly levy, annual total and reserve fund position.

What Does a Sectional Title Levy Actually Pay For?

A sectional title levy is the monthly amount every owner in a scheme pays to the body corporate to keep the property running. It funds building insurance for the whole scheme, maintenance and repair of common property (roofs, lifts, gardens, pools, driveways, boundary walls), management or managing agent fees, security costs, cleaning and staff wages, municipal charges billed to the scheme as a whole rather than to any one unit, and — since October 2016 — a compulsory contribution toward the scheme's reserve fund. It does not cover your own unit's municipal rates, your personal water and electricity account, or anything inside your own section; those are billed to you individually and are entirely separate from the levy.

How much that adds up to depends heavily on what the scheme offers. A Basic complex with no shared amenities typically charges R30–R45/m² a month, since there's little more than building insurance and basic upkeep to fund. A Standard complex with a garden and security steps up to R45–R65/m², a Premium scheme with a pool and gym runs R65–R90/m², and a Luxury full-service estate — with concierge, extensive landscaping and round-the-clock staffing — can charge R90–R130+/m². These are typical South African market ranges, not fixed tariffs; every scheme sets its own budget.

How Levies Are Legally Calculated — Participation Quota vs. This Calculator's Per-m² Shortcut

The calculator above uses a per-m² market-rate shortcut because it's a fast, practical way to budget without knowing a specific scheme's financials — but it is not how your actual levy bill is worked out. The legal method, set out in the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act, allocates costs according to each unit's participation quota (PQ) — your unit's floor area expressed as a percentage of the total floor area of every section in the scheme, fixed on the scheme's sectional plan when it's registered. The formula is: (your unit's PQ ÷ sum of all units' PQ) × the scheme's total annual budget. A unit with a 2% PQ in a scheme with a R3,000,000 annual budget carries roughly R60,000 of that budget for the year, split into monthly instalments.

This means two identically sized units in two different schemes can have very different levies even at the same per-m² market rate, because the real number depends on that specific scheme's budget and that unit's exact PQ — not a generic tier average. Use this calculator to budget and compare tiers realistically; use your body corporate's own levy statement, budget and PQ certificate for the number you'll actually be billed. If you're weighing a sectional title purchase against a freehold one, our Sectional Title vs Freehold comparison walks through the ownership and cost trade-offs in more detail.

The STSMA Reserve Fund Rule, in Full

Every South African body corporate has been legally required, since October 2016, to maintain a 10-year maintenance, repair and replacement (MR&R) plan and fund it through a dedicated reserve fund — the rule sits in the STSMA's Prescribed Management Rules. How much the scheme must contribute in a given year depends on the reserve fund's size relative to that year's annual levy income, in three tiers:

Tier 1 — reserve below 25% of annual levy income: the body corporate must budget at least 15% of the new year's total levy income toward the reserve fund. Tier 2 — reserve between 25% and under 100%: there's no fixed percentage; instead the contribution must be enough to cover whatever repairs and maintenance items are already budgeted for that year's administrative budget. Tier 3 — reserve at 100% or more: no reserve contribution is required in that year's budget at all, since the fund is already fully provisioned relative to income.

A scheme moving through these tiers over several years is normal and healthy — most schemes start below 25% early on and build up over time. What matters for a buyer is checking where a specific scheme currently sits, since a Tier 1 scheme is more likely to need levy increases (or a special levy) to catch its reserve fund up, while a Tier 3 scheme has more budget headroom.

Special Levies — When Trustees Can Charge More

Beyond the ordinary annual levy, trustees can raise a special levy — a once-off additional charge outside the approved budget — to cover unforeseen or additional expenses, such as a major roof repair, an unbudgeted lift replacement, storm damage not fully covered by insurance, or a legal dispute. The authority for this comes from Section 37(2)(b) of the Sectional Titles Act 1986 and Section 3(4) of the STSMA. Special levies are billed to owners in the same PQ-based proportion as ordinary levies, and can be a meaningful unbudgeted cost — this is exactly the kind of expense a healthy, well-funded reserve fund is meant to reduce the need for.

Sectional Title Levies vs Municipal Rates — Two Separate Bills

Levies and rates are commonly confused, but they fund entirely different things and go to entirely different bodies. Your levy is paid to the body corporate and covers scheme-wide costs — building insurance, common-area maintenance, security, management fees and the reserve fund. Municipal rates, by contrast, are paid directly to your local municipality and fund municipal services like roads, refuse removal, stormwater and municipal administration, calculated on your unit's own municipal valuation rather than its PQ. Every sectional title owner pays both, as two unrelated line items — see our Municipal Rates Calculator for how the rates side is worked out city by city.

Worked Example — Monthly Levy by Complex Tier (80m² Unit)

The table below shows this calculator's per-m² range and midpoint applied to an 80m² unit across all four complex tiers, plus the resulting annual total at the midpoint.

* Illustrative ranges only. Your scheme's actual levy is set by its own approved budget and your unit's participation quota, not a generic per-m² tier.

The Formula This Calculator Uses

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