Skilpad.Com Community Blog

There has been a shift in mindset in the real estate industry since mid 2008 when we launched Skilpad.Com: Property Portal: at least that is our perception.

When we started introducing our portal, relatively few estate agents embraced our view that it was high time for the Internet to overtake print as the primary medium for advertising property listings in South Africa.

Today, we are taken far more seriously when we present our case. Many of the agents we speak to ask informed questions and we are being  approached by agents who are actively researching online options. More and more Internet savvy real estate agents are also discovering the benefits of participating in social media networking.

…the shift from print to Internet is now entrenched and irreversible

So what has changed? Certainly the current tough market conditions have forced agents to seek opportunities to reduce their running costs. And it is not difficult for them to see that Internet advertising costs a small fraction of what they pay for print advertisements. This raises questions like: What if we moved most of our advertising to the Internet? What if we beefed up our own websites and listed on the best property portals? How would the buyers react?

At the same time there are changes afoot that will improve broadband access and affordability. Wireless broadband, including 3G/HSDPA mobile data services now rival available fixed-line ADSL offerings in terms of both speed and price. Telkom has launched a WiMAX service and others are following, including the second national operator Neotel. The arrival of new international submarine fibre optic cables later this year will bring down the cost of international bandwidth dramatically. The rapid growth in the availability and performance of internet capable mobile phones is also providing the South African public with more reasons to makes us of purpose-designed facilities like http://mobile.skilpad.com for mobile property searching.  Another interesting statistic noted by Nielsen Online researchers is that the age group that saw the highest growth in Internet usage in South Africa in 2008 was the over-50s.

Taking all of the key factors together, viz. vastly cheaper advertising for estate agents, improved and more affordable connectivity, and much more convenient and more efficient property searching on the Internet, I believe that the shift from print to Internet is now entrenched and irreversible.

It may take a while before 87% of property purchased is first found on the Internet, and 92% of estate agents contracted are found on the Internet, as is the case in the United States. But it is definitely moving that way!

The title of this post sums up the challenge that we have taken up. And by “we” I mean the founders of South Africa’s new property portal www.skilpad.com .

So what do we want to change? We want to change SA from a country where most people look for property by consulting ads in various print publications, to a country where people search for property online.

Why do we want to bring about such a change? Print advertising is very, very expensive but in the present environment most estate agents have no choice but to pay up if they want their properties to be seen. It is putting many agencies under huge financial strain. And ironically, as long as the South African public rely on newspapers and magazines as their main source of property information they are settling for second best. Due to the cost and physical constraints, printed ads can only provide very limited information about available property. First prize for the public would be an online property portal providing easily searchable, well organised, information and pictures about all of the available property in South Africa.

How do we plan to bring about such a change? By building, branding and promoting a website that offers the public everything they could want from a first choice property portal. And by offering it to estate agents at a small fraction of the cost of print advertising. Have a look at www.skilpad.com which we launched in July 2008. Let us know what you think.

Who are we? Neil Dorward, Collin Schwagele and Andre Viljoen, three guys from Port Elizabeth, with a background in real estate, IT and advertising. Do we face a big challenge? Yes, but we are passionate and persistent (See out first post – 2nd killer tortoise - which is in fact a copy of our Skilpad.Com October online newsletter).

How can you help? You can help enormously by telling others about www.skilpad.com and/or this blog. (You could use this link to tell a friend )
You can also help by offering suggestions or constructive criticism: we value all input. And finally, if you have a website, you can help us by linking to us as follows: TITLE: South African property for sale and to rent at Skilpad.com; URL: http://www.skilpad.com
Because we are so new, we are still working hard to increase our search engine rankings: we are making good progress each month but it is an inevitably slow progress. By spreading the news about Skilpad.Com and by linking to us, you can fasttrack this process!

Thanks for reading this post!
- Andre