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!

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.