Skilpad.Com Community Blog

Nothing slow about this tortoise. Skilpad.Com Property Portal has just passed the 100 000 property listings mark.

Skilpad.Com which lists property for free for South African estate agencies was launched in 2008. This tortoise is going places!

South Africa’s fastest growing property search portal, Skilpad.Com is adding property research to its range of services.

The idea is that the growing number of property buyers and real estate professionals who regularly visit Skilpad.Com to view property for sale or to let will now also be able to tap right into a wealth of relevant property-related data and information. Visitors will benefit immensely from having one comprehensive and easily accessible destination for all of their property search and property research needs.

In a first step towards implementing its ambitious research goal, Skilpad.Com now has economic indicators (currency exchange rates, etc.), property calculators (for determining bond costs, affordability and payment strategies) and a property news feed. Soon, these humble beginnings will be reinforced with deeds office data (title deeds, suburb price trends, online valuation), mapping data and a storehouse of other statistics and tools that will provide visitors with information that will assist them to make wise property decisions.

Watch this blog for more news on research developments on Skilpad.Com!

In a good news development for the South African real estate industry,  Skilpad.Com Property Portal has announced that South African estate agencies may list their properties for free on the portal on an ongoing basis.

Skilpad.Com is the fastest-growing property portal in South Africa, with some 80 000 property listings at the time of writing, and is a leader in innovative property advertising and searching technology.  Free listing on Skilpad.Com is therefore a valuable opportunity for estate agencies to secure quality advertising exposure without any additional cost. Advertising is a major expense for real estate professionals and many agencies have been forced to cut back on adspend due to the current tough market conditions.

In response to enquiries from estate agencies, Skilpad.Com spokesman Andre Viljoen has confirmed that the portal’s free listing offer is not for a trial period only but is a cornerstone of the company’s long-term business model. “We are committed to expanding the portal both in terms of the number of listings and the amount of relevant features and content. Keeping listing free for estate agencies will assist us in our vision of empowering property buyers with a website which will offer all of the properties and all of the resources they need in order to make informed purchases.”

Easy registration procedure

Estate agencies who wish to get their listings up and running on Skilpad.Com can do so by registering online by clicking on the “Estate Agents>Register” link and completing the quick registration form. Estate agency groups who wish to register can contact Andre at andre@skilpad.com or 083 309 7030.  Agencies can choose between automatic listing, in which their properties are automatically added to the portal and updated daily, or manual listing via a control panel, which is ideal for agencies who wish to add selected properties only or those who do not currently have a website.

Skilpad.Com was developed by a Port Elizabeth-based team and launched nationally in July 2008. A few of the industry-leading innovations introduced since then are simple tools for adding video clips to listings via Internet or cellphone, a highly effective mobile search (at http://mobile.skilpad.com) and an interesting interactive property map search (at www.skilpad.com/mapsearch.php).

Many more new features are scheduled for addition to add value to the free property listing platform. In the future the portal will offer various value-added services that estate agents may choose to use for a fee.

Skilpad.Com Property Portal is proud to introduce a brand new tool that makes it a breeze to find South Africa property on the map.

One of the nifty features of the new tool, which integrates the Skilpad.Com  property database with Google Maps, is the way you can zoom in deeper and deeper and discover more and more property.

There are over 80 000 properties to find on our map. You can search in map, satellite or hybrid view. Give the South Africa property map search tool a try now!