Property shopping - the only way

Taking  Property Searches  into the 21^st Century

A Johannesburg businesswoman, frustrated with the admin-heavy and out-of-date property and estate agent sites that proliferate the web has come up with what she is touting as the be-all and end-all of single-point contact services for people looking to rent or buy – and the agents servicing them. The innovative website, Find Me a Home, has drawn massive local and international interest and has provided a platform for estate agents to increase their market with NO effort at all.

“I was so despondent, looking for a property to buy” says Heather Wildman “every site I visited required that I dump huge amounts of personal information into it before I could get realistic details of a property I was interested in – then I would have to wait sometimes days for an agent to call – if at all! And more often than not, by that time the property was no longer available.” Heather also told of many sites that don’t provide contact details – something as simple as an email address for those people who don’t want to start their search off by speaking to an agent going for the hard-sell.

Bemoaning this state of affairs, Heather swore that she would be the agent of change she wanted effected in this industry. Heather pored over countless sites, stats and articles and found that a staggering 80% – 90% of property searches are conducted on the web because, for the main, it is easy to use and has access to more potential properties than any one newspaper supplement could hold – and it is a freely available resource.

But that’s where the convenience ends! Customers, who want to expand their property searches to other agents – even within the same group – have to enter in reams of personal information for each agent, each company – making the process repetitive and frustrating. Add to that the untold numbers of outdated properties no longer available and the picture that emerges is one of an untapped – or rather – inadequately managed resource.

“It’s a matter of agents being drawn away from what they do best – SELLING – in order to do menial but necessary admin, technical tasks and other things that steal the time they need to service their clients” continues Heather. “What WE are offering is a smooth, efficient machine, that agents don’t have to maintain or update, and asks potential customers their critical information only ONCE. That information is then farmed out to all the agents registered in the customer’s particular region, and the agents, having received a detailed lead via email or sms, can call the customer with existing available properties on their data-base. This cuts out the need to upload pictures, and remove properties that are no longer available. On the customers’ side, searches and personal information do not have to be entered over and over. The whole process is simplified for both agent AND customer, and SERVICE can become the focus at last.

“ What we have done, really, is take the internet property letting and selling industry and turn it on its head.”

Agents – and for that matter customers too – that are mostly technophobes will love the ease of use of the site. Details are entered once, by the customer, and presented to the agent in a simple format of their choosing with no complex administration or advanced skills required!

In its first month of operation, www.findmeahome.co.za drew an incredible response, with some agents drawing as many as 60 leads a week from the site.