For the last couple of years we’ve been living in a world where selling properties is all about exposure. Be it via word of mouth, billboards, brochures or the web. As Africa is steadily following others in relatively affordable broadband solutions, the web has taken the lead. If you don’t have your property on the web you put yourself at a huge disadvantage compared to your competitors. Unfortunately just having it somewhere on the web is just not enough anymore. It is either making sure your property is first on the list in search engine results or have it displayed on as many sites as possible and hope there’s a buyer interested in yours.

Currently the preferred option is having your property on a portal site where people come specifically to find their next home. For lesser known estate agencies this is their only option, due to the small amount of users that will visit their own website, but for big players it is as valuable (maybe even more) having the most effective property search available.

The biggest problem with having your property in multiple places is double capturing. Although the way’s of putting your property on the web as quick as possible have been refined, it does take time out of your day. Especially if you have to capture the same property twice, maybe even more. Currently, the bigger franchises employ people specifically to capture and manage properties online which cost them money.

So in order to optimise their time and their resources they require one point of entry from where their properties are distributed to 3rd party vendors.

This comes with its problems as well. In order to provide a successful solution it relies on some of the following:

1. The side providing the data is required to provide data on regular occasions. This is usually done via an automated process depending on how often the updated data is required.Unfortunately this service for various reasons is not always as reliable as you’d hope for.
2. Reliable, correct and up to date data. The biggest problem in this industry (as with most others) is providing the public with misleading information. Be it the properties cost, its features or its location. The last thing agents want is to have to inform an interested buyer that they’ve been given the wrong information. Probably the area where they get the most pressure is from the person who’s property there are selling.
3. The vendor or receiving site displaying the data received in the correct way. Often vendors have their own pre-setup database structure their site runs off. Usually the biggest problem is restructuring data received in usable format and linking up definitions.

Malfunction in one of these sections usually cause big user dissatisfaction. The challenge is managing these sections and putting procedures in place to help the process.

In my next entry I will start to elaborate more on each section and give some advice on how to ensure this process runs smoothly.