Your property can never be too exposed

Even Yahoo! Real Estate - which attracts 7,63m unique visitors a month and is arguably the world's top real estate portal - only has a 6,51% share of the US home search market.

Posted at 11:19AM Sep 02, 2011 by Editor in Marketing  |  Comments[1]

Estate agents say bank lending criteria hampers market

Estate agents have painted a rosier picture for the residential property market in 2011, but warned that prices were being held down by bank's strict lending requirements.

Posted at 09:46AM Jan 06, 2011 by Editor in Marketing  |  Comments[11]

Online estate agents 'need to clean up their act'

The internet, says Lanice Steward, Managing Director of the Cape Peninsula estate agency, Anne Porter Knight Frank, has become a powerful marketing tool for the residential property sector - but, she warns, it is being abused and real estate people need to clean up their act here and put a stop to certain far from honest practices.

Posted at 09:28AM Sep 22, 2010 by Editor in Marketing  | 

Watch by-laws on for sale signs

There is some confusion over whether municipal approval should be sought before placing "to let" or "for sale" signs to attract public attention - and how many of these may be put at one property.

Posted at 10:28AM Sep 28, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

Tackling Renovation in a Down Market

You have been transferred and need to sell your current house – what to do?

Well, says Berry Everitt, CEO of the Chas Everitt International property group, presenting your house at its best in any market it is still sound advice.

Posted at 01:42PM Jun 05, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

Agents Reveal Sales Tricks

Residential property owners who need to sell their homes have to go the extra mile in a bear market, which means sprucing up for showdays.

Tony Hickman, KZN chairman of Seeff said showhouses worked better than viewings by appointment, "provided the price is right and the property is well presented.

"Sellers need to create kerb appeal to encourage buyers to view inside their homes. Pay attention to verges, exterior walls and remove old appliances and tools stacked outside the garage."

Keith Wakefield, CEO of Wakefields Estate Agents,

Posted at 08:01AM Jun 01, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

'Single search' breakthrough

Visitors to the IOLProperty website can now search classified and print advertisements for the home of their dreams at the same time as they search online listings.

After almost four months of research and development, IOLProperty has launched the groundbreaking "single search" facility, which uses character recognition software to integrate print property adverts with the site's huge database of web listings.

"Our new print publication database contains more than 1 600 print pages from 10 weekly publications," says IOLProperty GM Grant Leigh. "This gives us 5 000 new listings a week to add to our massive database of online listings, which has more than 270 000 entries on any given day.

"This guarantees instant access t

Posted at 09:51AM May 18, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

Technology boosts property sales

Posted at 10:55AM May 11, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

IOLProperty’s single search goes live

Visitors to the IOLProperty website can now search classified and print advertisements for the home of their dreams at the same time as they search online listings.[Read More]

Posted at 06:59AM May 07, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  | 

Consider options before going private

Savings in commission are an incentive to sell a home privately, but the decision of whether to use an estate agent should be carefully considered.

This advice comes from Heather Downs of Shepstone & Wylie Attorneys' property department.

While commission savings are attractive, estate agents are often able to secure a better price for you than you are able to by yourself because, among other benefits, they have access to existing buyer bases, says Downs.

Private sellers most often have little or no skill or experience in negotiation, marketing, financial or legal implications surrounding the sale of a house.

Furthermore, she advises that when making the decision whether to sell privately, consider the demands on your time commitment, your knowledge of the property market and advertising costs.

"A good estate agent should take care of all the marketing detail for you, show the house, and help you to determine a price by advising you of your house's real value in the current market so that you do not make the mistake of over- or under-pricing your house."

Downs stresses that if a property is over-priced it obviously won't sell and will become "tainted" after being advertised for months on end, leading to perceptions that there is something wrong with the property - other than its inappropriate price.

Posted at 10:49AM May 04, 2009 by Editor in Marketing  |