Real Estate Search Engine

Been doing alot of surfing lately and I came across another great site.
Unique in it's own way, Ahyer.com! is a completely FREE real estate search engine listing site. Their technology is unparalleled and leap years ahead of Trulia which by the way has been really unsuccessful.

With Internet search engine marketing and optimisation being such a forefront in real estate and mortgage these days you want a serious bunch of online tecchies helping you out!

Ahyer.com has been very successful in countries such as Malaysia, The Philippines and The Caribbean and are hoping to continue their success in South Africa. Although their forms seem to be a little longer than most, don't be put off, it helps eradicate junk spam and will enable your real estate searching and selling experience become a pleasure vs a burden.

Could Private Property be on their way out?

Check them out Ahyer.com

SA Property - Free Property Courses Online!

Happy Tuesday morning to you all... Why am I so happy you may ask yourselves, well firstly my website is finally averaging over 100 hits a day. I know it doesn't sound like alot but I'm ecstatic.

Secondly I found out that Thursday is a public holiday in South Africa, which means SA Property gets to play golf of Thursday morning. Wooohoooo....

Thirdly, after much debate and chatting with the powers at be, SA Property will be putting together the first FREE ONLINE PROPERTY COURSES. This will include manuals and course material for South African property buyers, South African property sellers, South African mortgage originators, South African property attorneys and anybody else interested in property laws, regulations and the like.

It's an initiative that I hope will make SA Property Blog the number one Property BLOG in South Africa for good informative material and real estate related news. If there's anything you'd like me to add or would like us to discuss please feel free to comment on this post.

Thanks to all involved and keep posted people, it's going to be awesome!

Property Site tells users where to find Property!

Your Property woes are gone. Finally, an initiative, maybe even a world first from the owners of Gravity.co.za, South Africa's first property search engine.

An article from the owners of Gravity.co.za...




"For quite a while we've wanted to provide our users with an area-type search feature where they could see, at a glance, all the houses in a particular area/within a given radius.

Most real estate property sites overseas would probably implement it as a map, but since South African agents don't provide street addresses for their listings and reliable street/area information biased towards real estate (e.g. that include estates, brand new road and suburbs that are continually appearing) is not really available, map searches are not an option.

There just seemed no way we could get something useful out until we suddenly realised that we had hundreds of thousands of users who had been telling us exactly what suburbs they thought were relevant to them. South African users are patient and diligent when looking for property due to the lack of user-friendly search capabilities like Google Mashups etc. They had given us really great data to analyse for trends. We ran a few basic algorithms to answer the question "if a user is interested in property in suburb X, what other suburbs will he/she most likely search" and the answers/correlations we got were just incredible. We optimised the algorithm and extended it to "if a user is interested in property in suburb X, Y and Z what other suburbs will he/she most likely search" which was launched on 1 August, try it out for yourself:

go to the Gravity Property Index homepage - www.g.co.za and enter the suburbs you're interested (comma separated) in in the Quick Search Text box. Select your price and hit enter - you'll see at the top of the results page that is returned, a list of recommended suburbs.

The powerful thing about this feature is that it's changed the search results from 'nearby' to 'most relevant'. GPS/map-based solutions have 2 shortcomings which 'most relevant' solves:

1. "Other side of the road". Often more expensive ('X') areas border on lower cost areas ('Y') and on map-based/radius searches both will be included in search results. It was quite interesting to us that although people looking for houses in X would never specify Y in their search (as you'd expect), the converse was not - people searching in Y would search a house in X. Intuitive I guess but satisfying to see 2 completely different result sets. If you're familiar with Cape Town, try a search for Rondebosch (X) and compare it Athlone/Rondebosch East(Y) - they border one another and even sound the same, but the relevant suburbs are not at all similar

2. "Similar Suburbs across town". It seemed buyers were interested not only in the location of a suburb, but its overall profile e.g. property values, great views / location next to the sea, near schools A OR B (across town from one another) etc. Area searches don't correlate 'LIKE' suburbs, just ones close together. Just as important we found was that, in a region with say 10 suburbs, often 3 or 4 would be LIKE, so the user would not have to search all 10 to get the houses in the most relevant 3 or 4.

And this was only possible thanks to the information contained in the minds of our visitors - keep searching!

TOP 5 Most useful online real estate sites

So, if you've been reading my BLOG, you'd know that I was in Cape Town over the last couple of days and yesterday, being an incredibly rainy day in what I thought was the most beautiful city in the world "HELL NO WE WON'T GO", I managed to slot in some time and surf the NET.

Here's some cool reading and tips for those of you who are online property and real estate professionals. WizardMan's TOP 5 most useful online real estate sites sites in S.A. It'll probably change next month, but what the hell, it'll give me another topic to write about! So for now, this is my TOP 5. Any new additions or sites that you may think are awesome, please add them to the comments section.

Number 1 on my TOP 5 real estate sites list this month is:
RSS Pieces (ok, sorry I know I said it would be S.A's top sites but this site is worth it). A great site, that teaches you how to BLOG for real estate, what topics to write about and if you're running short of idea's, IT'S DA BOMB!

Number 2 on my TOP 5 real estate sites list is:
If you're looking to do a property search then GRAVITY is your site. A great new initiative by a South African company.

TOP 5 real estate - NUMBER 3:
Well I'm afraid that with all this HOOHA about the new credit act we couldn't leave out the good old National Credit Act regulators. It's a good resource and if there's anything you need to know about the new credit regulations, this is the site to visit.

Number 4 or is it 24!
Property 24. They've got up-to-date news (most of the time) and well it's good all round, news and financial portal. Thanks Naspers or is it Media 24!

Finally Number 5...
Where would property in South Africa be without Private Property. Love these guys. Love what they do and how they work. We need more companies like this in South Africa that can help the lower income sellers sell their properties without having to pay those huge commissions!

So that's it for TODAY! TOP 4 most useful online real estate sites with WizardMan's Number 1 resource site included ;-)

Decorex - Improve your lifestyle!

I know this is a property BLOG but, i thought it would be nice to throw in a little light hearted article on the biggest decorative show South Africa has to offer... After all, it's kinda property related if you think about it!

Anyways, I'm a little late with this article as Decorex Durban has already passed (For those of you who were lucky enough to go, share your comments with us please!). However, Decorex Cape Town starts on the 26th April 2007 and Decorex Johannesburg starts on the 8th August 2007 (Yeah we're always last dammit).

So if you're keen on the latest and greatest decorative fashion styles for your new loft apartment, or you just love shows, go on down to Decorex, it's going to be huge!

Top 5 ways on how to make that agent earn their commission

Do no try to please or befriend an estate agent

Beware the "Big Lie". An agent will often inflate the price they say they can sell the property for to get the business

Interview several estate agents and make sure they know you are doing so

Sign nothing before thinking carefully and getting independant advice

Remember, the estate agents commission is huge, make them earn it.

That's it!
Happy Buying!

Myroof.co.za

Online property listing site specialists

A great little website I came across the other day called Myroof.co.za. They are a property listings company, not an estate agency, kinda like Private Property. They currently deal only in the Pretoria area.

Due to the fact that they're 100% online property site, and all their business is one via SMS and Email it makes it virtually impossible for estate agents to compete with their pricing structures i.e. you don't pay those exorbitant commission charges.

SALE OF PROPERTY

1. Myroof's process package includes; property evaluations, electrical certificates and change of ownership
   
2. MyRoof advertise your property their database of buyers via email.
   
3. MyRoof randomly rotate your property to the front page of our website under a featured property section.
   
4. MyRoof informs all of their buyers should you plan to show your house.
   
5. The MyRoof team will help you set up and sign a contract and guide you through the rest of the selling process to make this as smooth as possible.
   

BUYING PROPERTY

1. Myroof keep you updated on new properties listed on their site (myroof.co.za) via email to ensure you’re always up to date using our My Alerts section
   
2. Myroof make it easy for you to keep track of and rate properties you’re interested in. They have a appointments and email reminders feature to make sure you’re on time for viewings.
   
3. After viewing a property you can add pro’s and con’s to each property on the My Favourites section, making it easy for you to compare properties you’re interested in.
   
4. The MyRoof team will assist you through the whole process of acquiring a property, from helping you find it, to making an offer, getting a bond and transfer of the property
   

This is an exciting site and they have great potential. So if you're looking to list your property online and you can't afford the astronomical estate agent costs, call MYRoof.co.za

WizardMan Out!

South Africa Property Blog Updates!

Good evening all...

Firstly, thanks to all of those visitors who've been returning to my site on a daily basis, you guys have managed to inspire a whole lot of people who thought this BLOG would be a FLOP. I'm not saying it's been successful (yet) but we've got a constant stream of visitors in and out and that's enough to get my jingles tingling!

Secondly thanks to all of those other BLOG sites, especially Live The LIFE, South Africa BLOG and Back to SA who've not only linked to our site but given us a little article as well...

I thought it would be fit to give you an update in the world of property BLOG South Africa. As of today I (WizardMan) am officially unemployed. Believe it or not this makes me one of the happiest people on the planet right now. I will however be joining Wizard Midrand FULLTIME as of Monday morning.

We plan to make loads of changes to this BLOG. Postings will be coming fast and furious (Going to have to switch on some real creative minds here). Keep a sharp lookout over the next couple of weeks as well. We're going to be running AWEsome competitions from this BLOG and some great tips will be posted daily!

What we'd really like from everyone who reads this site is "IDEAS". Tell us what you like, what you don't like and what you'd LOVE TO SEE! Email us at wizardmidrand@gmail.com or look to right of this page and SKYPE us if you just want to chat.

WizardMan Out!

Google Base - Real Estate Search

Will Google buy Trulia Search



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EProp.co.za - Commercial Properties

I came across a website today called Eprop. They are specialists in online commercial property in South Africa dealing with Office, Retail and Industrial property sectors.

I'd heard of them before but never realised they were so big...
They apparently have more than 15 000 visitors to this site on a constant basis and are the biggest commercial property marketplace in South Africa.

If anybody has more information regarding this company, possibly who they're owned by and how long they've been going for let me know.