Does it cost anything to go to the Tribunal?

No. Lodging a complaint with a Rental Housing Tribunal is free and you do not need an attorney to do it. That is the point of the Act: to give tenants and landlords a route that does not depend on being able to afford litigation. What it does depend on is the quality of the file you lodge.

How long does the landlord have to refund my deposit?

It depends on whether anything is deducted. Where nothing is owing the full deposit plus interest is due within seven days of the termination date, not counting weekends and public holidays. Where the landlord has deducted for repairs or arrears the balance is due within fourteen days, and where you did not attend the outgoing inspection the period is twenty-one days. Deductions have to be substantiated and the receipts must be available to you, which is why the ingoing and outgoing inspections matter so much.

The listing has already been taken down. Am I stuck?

Not necessarily. Check whether the agent still has it live elsewhere, whether a portal cached it, and whether you were sent the details by email or WhatsApp at the time. Capture whatever still exists today, because it will exist for less time than you think, and say plainly in the complaint what you were able to preserve and when.

I am the landlord. Does this help me?

Yes, and it is underused on that side. A landlord who lodges the dated advertisement, the signed inspections, the maintenance thread and the invoices is answering the Tribunal’s questions before they are asked. A landlord relying on undated photographs is not.

Can the Tribunal deal with an eviction?

No. Evictions are governed by the PIE Act and go to court, not to the Tribunal. The Tribunal deals with unfair practices in an existing rental relationship, which is deposits, deductions, maintenance, services, notices and harassment. If you are facing eviction, get legal advice quickly.

Rental Housing Act and the provincial Tribunals

The Tribunal is free. Your file is what decides it.

Every province has a Rental Housing Tribunal and lodging a complaint costs nothing. It handles the disputes that would otherwise sit in a magistrate’s court for a year: a deposit that was never refunded, deductions nobody can justify, an unlawful lockout, services cut off, harassment. It rules on what you put in front of it, and the listing you signed against was edited months ago.

Capture the listing now How it works

Works on Chrome and Edge. From $4.99 (about R83) as a one-off, or a 7-day trial that requires a credit card.

The Rental Housing Tribunals decide landlord and tenant disputes for free, and they decide them from the file each side lodges. The most common complaints are a deposit not refunded, unfair deductions, failure to maintain the property, unlawful lockouts, interruption of services, invalid notices and harassment. Section 5(3) of the Rental Housing Act sets three deadlines for returning the deposit with the interest it earned: seven days after the termination date where nothing is owing, excluding weekends and public holidays; fourteen days where the landlord has deducted for repairs or arrears; and twenty-one days where the tenant did not attend the outgoing inspection. A landlord who deducts has to be able to show what was damaged and what it cost. A ruling by the Tribunal is deemed to be an order of the Magistrate’s Court, it may be taken on review to the High Court, and failing to comply with it is an offence punishable by a fine or imprisonment. The evidence that settles it is ordinary and it is all online: the original advertisement with the photographs, the messages agreeing the terms, the ingoing and outgoing inspection reports, the maintenance requests that were ignored. Under section 15 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 a data message is admissible and its weight turns on how reliably it was generated and stored and how its integrity was maintained. ProofSnap captures each of those as a package with the full page, the saved source, the URL, the capture time in UTC, a SHA-256 hash of every file and an RSA-4096 signature. From $4.99 (about R83) as a one-off.

By Radim Motycka, Founder and Lead Engineer, ProofSnap · Last updated: 31 July 2026 · Independently verifiable via Trust Verifier

Why the file beats the argument

The listing changes, and then the hearing arrives

A tenancy dispute is a documents dispute. The problem is that most of those documents live on somebody else’s website.

The advertisement is edited or pulled

The Property24 or Private Property listing that showed the condition, the inclusions and the asking rent is edited the moment the unit is relet, and often deleted. It is the single most useful document in a deposit dispute and it is the one most likely to be gone.

The agreement lives in WhatsApp

What was actually agreed about the deposit, the repairs, the appliances or the early exit is usually in a message thread, not in the lease. Threads get deleted for everyone, and phones get replaced.

Photographs prove nothing on their own

Inspection photographs are only useful if the date is not in dispute. An image file with editable metadata is exactly the kind of document the other side will say was taken later, and there is no way to answer that after the fact.

How the process is structured

Knowing the shape of it tells you when your evidence has to exist, which is earlier than most people assume.

Seven, fourteen or twenty-one days

Section 5(3)(i) gives the landlord seven days after the termination date, excluding weekends and public holidays, to pay back the full deposit with interest where nothing is owing. Section 5(3)(g) allows fourteen days where deductions have been made, and section 5(3)(m) allows twenty-one days where the tenant did not attend the outgoing inspection. Deductions have to be substantiated, and the receipts must be available to the tenant.

Lodging is free and in writing

Complaints go to the Tribunal in your province on its complaint forms. There is no fee and you do not need an attorney. The complaint is registered, given a reference and screened for whether it discloses an unfair practice, and the investigation can run for some months.

A ruling binds like a court order

A Tribunal ruling is deemed to be an order of the Magistrate’s Court and binds both parties. It can be taken on review to the High Court, and failing to comply with it is an offence under the Rental Housing Act, punishable by a fine or imprisonment.

Landlords and agents need the same file

This cuts both ways. A landlord who can produce the dated advertisement, the signed ingoing inspection and the outgoing inspection alongside the invoices is in a far stronger position than one relying on recollection and loose photographs.

Capture on the day it matters, not on the day it goes wrong

The single most common mistake is capturing the listing when the dispute starts rather than when the lease is signed. By then the advertisement has been edited or removed and you are arguing about what it used to say. Capture the advertisement on the day you sign, capture the ingoing inspection the day you move in, and the deposit dispute eighteen months later is a five minute conversation instead of a three month investigation.

How do I capture the listing and the inspection?

No forensic training required. The proof is in the package, not in your testimony about how careful you were.

Capture the listing, the thread and the inspection

Open the advertisement, the message thread and any inspection report or photograph page in Chrome or Edge and capture each one from the side panel. Do the listing first, it is the one that disappears.

The package seals itself

Every file is hashed with SHA-256, the manifest is signed with an RSA-4096 key, and the manifest hash is anchored to Bitcoin. The capture time is recorded in UTC, independent of your device clock.

Lodge the complaint with the file attached

Complete the Tribunal complaint form and attach the packages, labelled and in date order. The Tribunal reads a tidy file far more easily than a folder of undated images.

What is in a Rental Housing Tribunal evidence package?

Between 11 and 15 files depending on your plan, delivered as one ZIP that anyone can check without installing anything.

Full-page screenshot

The whole page, not just the visible window, stitched and hashed.

Saved page source

The document as rendered at capture time, including the head, meta tags and structured data.

Extracted page text

Searchable plain text, so a quote can be found and cited without retyping.

Technical metadata

URL, page title, HTTP response headers, browser, operating system and the capture time in UTC.

Signed manifest

SHA-256 for every file, signed with an RSA-4096 key whose public key ships in the package.

Blockchain timestamp

The manifest hash anchored to Bitcoin via OpenTimestamps, so the capture time cannot be backdated.

Chain of custody and forensic log

A record of what happened during the capture, in the order it happened.

Evidence report as PDF

A readable summary you can attach to an application, a notice or a report.

Verification instructions

Written steps plus scripts, so the other side can re-check the hashes offline.

Anyone can verify it, including the other side. Drop the ZIP onto the public Trust Verifier and the hashes, the signature and the timestamp are checked in the browser. Nothing is uploaded and nothing depends on ProofSnap still existing.

Three ways to get the evidence

Prices are charged in USD. Approximate rand figures are shown for orientation only, and your card issuer sets the actual rate.

One dispute

$4.99 once

about R83

A SnapPack is a single up-front purchase for a set number of captures. No subscription, no auto-renewal, no trial. Best when you have one problem and you want it documented today.

Get a SnapPack

Ongoing matters

$8.99/month

about R149

For anyone who captures regularly: practitioners, property managers, HR, investigators. The 7-day free trial requires a credit card. Cancel any time during the trial and you are not charged.

Start the 7-day trial

We do it for you

$44.99 per URL

about R747

Send us the link and our team captures the package for you, with nothing to install. Useful when the capture should not come from a party to the dispute.

See the capture service

ProofSnap is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. South Africa has no equivalent of the EU qualified timestamp, so the timestamp here is corroboration rather than a legal presumption. What section 15 of ECTA asks about is reliability, and a hash over every file with a signature and a recorded capture time is what answers it. Optional eIDAS qualified timestamps issued by Disig a.s., a Qualified Trust Service Provider on the EU Trusted List, are available on Enterprise plans for cross-border matters.

Official sources

Every figure and deadline on this page comes from the following primary sources. Check them yourself rather than taking our word for it.

Western Cape Rental Housing Tribunal how to lodge, what the Tribunal can decide and the complaint forms.
Rental Housing Act 50 of 1999 the Act itself, including the deposit provisions and unfair practices.
Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 section 15, admissibility and evidential weight of data messages.

If the landlord or the agent has also been posting about you, the defamation guide covers that separately. Label every document and put the ingoing and the outgoing inspection side by side. A Tribunal reading a tidy, dated file decides on the merits. A Tribunal reading a pile of undated photographs decides on whatever else is in front of it.

Questions people actually ask

Capture it now, lodge it properly

The advertisement, the inspection and the thread decide it. Preserve them while they still exist.

Capture the listing now ProofSnap in South Africa