Terms of Use

1.Who we are

Plotwise is a South African property search website that lets people advertise residential and commercial property for sale or to rent, and lets other people search those adverts. In these terms, “Plotwise”, “we” and “us” mean the site and its operator. “You” means anyone who uses the site, whether or not you create an account.

Plotwise is not a registered company. It is operated by an individual and is offered free of charge. You can reach us at contact@plotwise.co.za, which is the address for every notice, complaint or legal query described in these terms.

2.Accepting these terms

By using Plotwise you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site. These terms work together with our Privacy Policy, our Disclaimer and our Cookie notice, which are all part of this agreement.

You must be at least 18 years old, or have the permission of a parent or guardian, to create an account or post a listing. If you use Plotwise on behalf of a business, an agency or another person, you confirm that you are authorised to do so and that they are bound by these terms too.

3.What Plotwise is not

This section matters more than any other, so it is stated plainly.

We are not a property practitioner

Plotwise is not an estate agency and is not a property practitioner as defined in the Property Practitioners Act 22 of 2019. We do not market property on anyone’s behalf, we do not negotiate, we earn no commission, we hold no trust account and we do not hold a Fidelity Fund Certificate. We never act as your agent, or as the agent of anyone you find through the site.

We are not a party to your transaction

Any sale, lease, offer, mandate, deposit or agreement is strictly between you and the other person. Plotwise is not a party to it, does not guarantee it and takes no commission or fee from it. We never receive, hold or transfer money for a property transaction, and we will never ask you to pay us for one.

We do not give advice

Nothing on Plotwise is legal, financial, tax, investment, valuation or property advice. This includes our search results, our area pages, our guides and the bond calculator. We are not a registered financial services provider under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act 37 of 2002, and no calculation on this site is a credit quote or a pre-approval under the National Credit Act 34 of 2005. Speak to your own attorney, conveyancer, bond originator, bank or tax adviser before you commit to anything.

4.Your account

You can browse Plotwise without an account. You need one to save favourites, save searches or post a listing. When you create an account you agree to give accurate details, to keep them up to date, and to keep your login credentials to yourself.

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. Tell us immediately at contact@plotwise.co.za if you think someone else has access to it. You may close your account at any time.

5.Listings and content you post

“Your content” means anything you upload or submit: listing details, descriptions, prices, photographs, floor plans, addresses, contact details, enquiry messages and anything else. You keep ownership of your content.

What you promise when you post

By posting a listing, you confirm that:

• You own the property, or you have the owner’s written mandate or permission to advertise it.
• The details are accurate and not misleading, including the price, the location, the size, the number of rooms and the condition.
• The photographs are of the actual property, and you own them or have the right to use them.
• The property is genuinely available on the terms advertised.
• If you are an estate agent, you hold a valid Fidelity Fund Certificate and comply with the Property Practitioners Act.
• Your content does not break any law, infringe anyone’s rights or discriminate against anyone on a ground prohibited by section 9 of the Constitution or the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000.

The licence you give us

So that we can actually run the site, you give Plotwise a free, non-exclusive licence to host, store, reproduce, resize, display and distribute your content for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. That includes showing your listing in search results, on area pages, in a link preview when it is shared, and in search engine results. This licence lasts while your listing is on the site and for a reasonable period afterwards for backups and cached copies. It ends when you remove your content, apart from copies we are required to keep.

Removing content

You can edit or remove your listing at any time. We may also remove content ourselves under the suspension section below. If you believe something on Plotwise infringes your rights or is unlawful, use the Report this listing link at the bottom of that listing, or email contact@plotwise.co.za with a link to the listing and an explanation. We look at every report and act on it as quickly as we reasonably can.

6.We do not verify listings

Listings on Plotwise are written by the people who post them. We do not inspect properties, confirm ownership at the Deeds Office, check measurements, verify prices, confirm that a seller has a mandate, check an agent’s Fidelity Fund Certificate or confirm that anyone is who they say they are.

Property information is presented as we receive it. Erf sizes, floor areas, rates, levies, room counts, photographs and descriptions may be out of date, approximate or simply wrong. Availability and price can change without the listing being updated. Area, suburb and map information is indicative only and boundaries may not be exact.

7.Dealing with other users

When you contact a seller, landlord or agent through Plotwise, you deal with them directly and at your own risk. We do not screen users, do not vet them and do not stand behind them. Any dispute is between you and them.

8.Things you may not do

You may not:

• Post a listing for a property you have no right to advertise.
• Post false, misleading, duplicate, bait or test listings.
• Post anything unlawful, defamatory, harassing, obscene, hateful or discriminatory.
• Impersonate anyone, or misrepresent who you are or who you work for.
• Use the site to send spam, unsolicited marketing or fraudulent enquiries, or to harvest other users’ contact details for any purpose other than a genuine enquiry about that listing.
• Scrape, crawl, mirror, index or bulk-copy listings or any part of the site, or use any automated system to do so, without our written permission.
• Interfere with the site, attempt to gain unauthorised access to it, or introduce malicious code. Doing so may also be an offence under the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.
• Use the site or its content to build a competing service or database.

9.Availability of the service

Plotwise is provided free of charge and “as is”. We do not promise that the site will always be available, that it will be error-free, that listings will remain online, or that any particular feature will keep working. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the site at any time.

We are not responsible for keeping a copy of your content. Keep your own copies of anything you would not want to lose.

10.Third-party services and links

Plotwise relies on third-party services to work, including Google Firebase for hosting, authentication and data storage, and map and imagery providers for our maps. Some pages link to external sites, and our share buttons pass information to services such as WhatsApp.

We do not control those services or sites, and we are not responsible for their content, their availability or their privacy practices. When you leave Plotwise, their terms apply, not ours.

11.Intellectual property

The Plotwise name, logo, design, layout, text, software and the compilation of listings on the site belong to us and are protected by South African and international copyright and trade mark law. You may view and print pages for your own personal, non-commercial use.

You may not copy, republish, distribute, sell or systematically extract any part of the site or its database without our written permission. Content belonging to other users remains theirs, and you may not use it beyond making a genuine enquiry.

12.Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Plotwise and its operator are not liable for any loss or damage arising from:

• anything in a listing, including information that is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or fraudulent;
• any dealing, agreement, transaction or dispute between you and another user;
• any decision you make in reliance on the site, including any calculation produced by the bond calculator or any area or price information;
• the site being unavailable, interrupted, delayed or containing errors, or any loss or corruption of your content;
• the acts, omissions or fraud of any user, agent, seller, landlord or third-party service.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, savings, opportunity, data or goodwill, even if we were told such loss was possible.

Plotwise is provided free of charge, so where liability cannot lawfully be excluded it is limited to the amount you have paid us for the service, which is zero, or to R1,000, whichever is the greater.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for gross negligence, for fraud, for intentional misconduct, or for anything else that South African law does not permit to be excluded.

13.Indemnity

You indemnify Plotwise and its operator against any claim, loss, damage, penalty or reasonable legal cost arising from your use of the site, from content you posted, from your breach of these terms, or from your breach of any law or of anyone else’s rights.

14.Your consumer rights

Where the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 gives you rights that cannot be contracted out of, those rights stand and nothing in these terms limits them. If any clause here conflicts with a right the law guarantees you, the law wins and the rest of these terms continue to apply.

Under South African law, certain clauses in these terms limit our liability, place risk on you or require you to indemnify us. They are set out in plain language and highlighted so you can see them. Please read sections 3, 6, 7, 12 and 13 carefully.

15.Suspension and removal

We may remove any listing or content, and suspend or close any account, at our discretion and without notice, if we reasonably believe it breaches these terms, is unlawful, is fraudulent, or harms other users or the site. We are not obliged to monitor content, and removing some content does not mean we have reviewed the rest.

If your account is closed, these terms continue to apply to your past use of the site, and the liability, indemnity and intellectual property sections survive.

16.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the site changes or the law changes. The “last updated” date at the top shows when we last did. Continuing to use Plotwise after a change means you accept the updated terms, so please check this page from time to time.

17.Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and you agree that the South African courts have jurisdiction over any dispute.

Before going to court, please email us at contact@plotwise.co.za so we can try to resolve the matter directly. If a clause of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest of the terms remain in force.

18.Contact

For anything relating to these terms, to report a listing, or to raise a complaint, email contact@plotwise.co.za.

For anything about your personal information, see our Privacy Policy and our POPIA page.