Websites now the prime marketing tool of real estate agencies
Rawson - South Africa
If a real estate agency has limited funds — or indeed any sum of money – to promote itself, where should it be spend first and foremost to achieve maximum marketing impact?
“There can,” says Wayne Albutt, Western Cape Regional Sales Manager for the Rawson Property Group, “be only one possible answer to this question – devote as much of the available funds as possible to a website, before looking at other promotional activities.”
“Although it is undoubtedly true that certain successful agencies have been able to operate without a website, our experience is that over 95% of all enquiries fielded by our agents come from members of the public who have already consulted a fair number of websites,” said Albutt.
“Most of the product information, i.e. the specific details and photographs of homes for sale”, said Albutt, “will usually appear in the two main property portals, ‘Property 24’ and ‘Private Property’ as well as many others.”
Rawson
Property Barometer – Area value bands
FNB - South Africa
2014 appears to have seen house price growth momentum building up more in the Low Income Area Segment, possibly the early sign of affordability deterioration in the residential market. 2015 could be more of the same.
After the end of the 2008/9 Recession, and the big interest rate cutting by the Reserve Bank (SARB) though 2009, the house price growth recovery appeared to be led more strongly by the Low Income Area end of the residential market.
This stands to reason. These low end areas had experienced more extreme price deflation around 2009, and thus came off a lower base. Households in these lower end areas are arguably more credit dependent and interest rate sensitive, too, so big interest rate cutting caused them to “emerge from the woodwork” in more significantly growing numbers
Property_Barometer
Millions lost in contract calamity
Business Report - South Africa
Johannesburg - Nearly R360 million later, the government is having to contend with an old, paper-based land registration system because the multimillion-rand contract awarded to Gijima for a digital system has collapsed.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform confirmed this week that it had stopped negotiating with the JSE-listed company for an amicable termination of the contract when the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) told it of its court application to have the deal set aside.
The investigating unit will also look to recover money paid over to the company since it was awarded the contract in 2010, making a protracted court case a likelihood.
The Sunday Independent reported last month that the SIU had asked the North Gauteng High Court to declare the contract invalid and set it aside.
Business Report
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