Market for Property on the Internet Growing Steadily

The internet audience in South Africa is growing steadily, according to Nielsen’s latest OPA stats. For local visitors only, the monthly unique browsers (number of individual computers which access the internet) are sitting at just over 6 million in the first quarter of 2009. This is an improvement of 1.2 million from the same period in 2008, which equates to a 25% increase in just 1 year.

The internet is increasingly becoming the place to market property for sale in South Africa, too. The number of unique browsers in the Real Estate sector of the web increased just over 17% in the first quarter of 2009 when compared with the same period last year.

The website with the lion’s share of the market is Privateproperty.co.za. Their average unique browsers have improved by 43.7% in the past year to around 270 000 per month, and they can now claim an impressive 53.4% share of the online property space. Their closest competitor, Property24.com, currently holds 38.8% of the market, leaving just under 8% of the remnants to split amidst the rest of the industry.

CEO of Privateproperty.co.za, Justinus Adriaanse, says that they have noticed other signs of growth in the market. “We recorded more than 3 500 online offers on property available on our website in the first four months of this year. That’s a considerable amount when taking into account the recession and subsequent dip in the market as a whole.”

What is certain is that more and more people are looking for property online.