Adventures & Observations in the real estate technology landscape #3
3 min readDec 4, 2017
- I’m quite surprised that only 21% (5) of South African real estate franchises passes 2 critical SEO signals, including responsive design and defaulting to HTTPS. When you have a national footprint, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the best technology, or follow best practices. As a bare minimum you need the basics in place, and make sure you are not left behind.
- The above leads me to the next question, should national franchises invest in building their own systems? It is an expensive exercise but with the way real estate is changing, real estate companies are now more focused on technology than anything else. We will see more tech powered real estate firms (like Redfin and Purplebricks) launching. In order for existing franchises to transition to that stage, they need to be clever and follow a gradual move in the adoption of their own technologies. They need to be selective and focus on the features that matter to their clients, and distinguishes them from the rest. It is for this reason our company launched stand alone products like our listing syndication system, called Sync, which acts a ‘switch’ to portals and allows companies to focus on building their own management systems and websites by integrating with our real estate API’s.
“I can get up every morning and know that everyone is on the same page.” ~ Bob Wolff, Harcourts.
- Bob from Harcourts did over $1 billion in sales over his 36 years in real estate, impressive. He claims having management who is helpful and supportive has made a big difference in his career. Bob is a Super Agent, and I think we will see more of these super agents and highly productive small teams in going forward. The real estate industry is only getting more competitive, and commissions will be put under more pressure from low or set fee commission firms, which will eliminate low productivity agents or agencies.
- See HomeBid’s view of SA Homeloans’s decision to back online estate agent, PropertyFox. Valid points? You decide.
Stress often comes from procrastination ~ Herschel Jawitz
- We’ve launched an upgrade for national real estate client, Realnet. I like how the site turned out. Our group websites are all custom developed (not just the home page). Realnet was one of the 1st real estate companies in South Africa who launched a responsive website years ago. Companies like Realnet have helped us to follow our passion for real estate web development, and stay completely independent.
- We are extending our ImmoAfrica sponsorships, we are already sponsoring the top 3 listings in search results for our clients, and have further invested in banner space that will go up soon.
- 5 years ago we attended the 1st Amazon AWS cloud conference in Las Vegas. It was an awesome event and we had the chance to see the now $100bn (!) worth Jeff Bezos in action. As an early adopter, we took a brave move to move all our services to the cloud but it surely is paying off now. Calculated risks are part of every business. If you don’t take risks, you will be swallowed by mediocrity.
