Proptech Archives - AfricaBusiness.com

24Sep

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate

Key Insights at the 15th Annual Africa Property Investment (API) Summit

The 15th Annual Africa Property Investment (API) Summit concluded last week Friday on a high note, offering deep insights into the transformative power of technology within the real estate sector. Among the standout sessions was the panel discussion titled "TECH IN REAL ESTATE: Top-Down Influence: How Technology is Influencing Listed and Private Real Estate," which featured industry leaders exploring the intersection of technology and property services. The panel, facilitated by Phil Barttram (Director of Pooled Data Services), included esteemed speakers such as Imogen Mantel (Head of Analysis, Liberty Two Degrees), Waldo Marcus (Industry Principal, MRI Software), Gary Goliath (Innovation Lead, Quoin Technologies), and Malcolm Horne (Group CEO, Broll Property Group). Together, they discus...

23Apr

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

Increased competition and bond switching set to shake up the SA property market

As interest rates remain stable against the backdrop of a challenging economic climate, banks are being pushed to innovate and offer more competitive home loan terms to attract customers. This environment has given rise to a practice widely adopted in the UK but is yet to reach a tipping point in South Africa: bond switching. Clive Bredenkamp, IT Executive at Proptech specialist e4, explains the potential shifts: “The property market is inherently sensitive to interest rate changes. While the rates are currently only marginally higher than in 2019, the market’s response to the current interest rate has been disproportionately severe due to the very low rates we experienced during the pandemic. However, with new players entering the market and offering up to a 1% discount on interest rates...

25Jan

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

Proptech trends on the horizon

Proptech is reshaping the real estate industry, with technological innovation continuously improving value creation for all stakeholders, generating efficiencies, improving transparency, and further refining the user experience. As in any industry, it’s essential for businesses and consumers to understand and utilise these shifts to guide their decisions and movements going forward. Andrea Carr, Head (R&D) at leading proptech company e4, says these are the trends that will influence the industry in 2024 and beyond: Smart contracts: The real estate industry has long been plagued by inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and high transaction costs, says Carr, but blockchain technology is changing this. “Blockchain technology and smart contract development is revolutionising the way th...

14Aug

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Business, Real Estate

Get Smarter about Connecting Buyers & Sellers in Online Marketplaces

Key Insights from GOM Conference 2023 By Gil Sperling, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Flow Connecting buyers and sellers in more effective, efficient and content-rich ways is a key focus in the online space at the moment, no matter the industry. Making use of rich data, retargeting audiences and working smarter to deliver a better user experience are the keys to success, across verticals. As a tech platform that's already connecting buyers and sellers on social media, Flow is creating seamless solutions for this transformation. We recently visited the Global Online Marketplaces Conference 2023 in Miami to talk about off-site social ads for portals, why they need it and how it unlocks more revenue for them. The Global Online Marketplace Summit (GOM) brings together C-Level leaders from online ...

South African proptech leaders Flow secure $4.5 million in funding to enable the global property industry

19Jan

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

South African proptech leaders Flow secure $4.5 million in funding to enable the global property industry

South African proptech innovators Flow have secured $4.5million (+-R78 million) in funding at the conclusion of their pre-Series A investment round - the single largest investment in the country’s proptech sector at that stage and amongst the highest in African proptech funding history. The investment will see co-founders and co-CEOs Gil Sperling and Daniel Levy drive the business’s B2B growth strategy, integrating the power of the astute Flow social media-driven real estate marketing platform into existing international property portals and CRM platforms. Levy and Sperling previously founded adtech and performance marketing company Popimedia, the largest buyer of Facebook media inventory in Africa for some of the world’s biggest brands. Popimedia was acquired by global communications gro...

Flow Brings Billboard Advertising into the Digital World for Estate Agents

24Aug

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

Flow Brings Billboard Advertising into the Digital World for Estate Agents

Nowhere in the world has an SMME been able to access major billboards in prominent locations before - but local proptech innovators Flow have handed estate agencies and individual agents the opportunity to mix with major global FMCG brands in the Digital Out of Home (DOOH) space, at a fraction of the cost. Having embarked on a mission to revolutionise the real estate industry by harnessing the power of social media to match agents, buyers and sellers, Flow’s next step allows agents to own space in hotspots across South Africa to promote their brands and individual properties to millions of commuters, every day. “Traditional billboards are booked months in advance, require creative teams to conceptualise and design them, an agency to produce the massive physical print and a media buying...

15Mar

By Gabbi Brondani RegoNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

Zero – R100 Million in One Year: A New Industry is Born

In the space of a single year, targeted social media advertising has helped South Africa’s estate agents notch up hundreds of millions of Rands in residential sales – with numbers set to increase tenfold in the next few years. This social media boom has changed the way the South African property industry finds leads and concludes deals, while creating an entirely new revenue stream – and dragged it into the 21st Century. With the global uptick in ecommerce adoption over the last two years has come an exponential rise in social media advertising, with brands targeting millions of users on the platforms they spend hours on, each day. This shift to the online advertising world has proven to be a challenge for some sectors as marketers have struggled to get to grips with the complexity of Fac...

16Feb

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Tech

Proptech Trends Set To Dominate in 2022

By Gil Sperling & Daniel Levy, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs, Flow 2022 is proptech’s year. So many other industries have seen massive disruption with the introduction of tech, drawing huge investment and becoming mainstream, replacing legacy players. Proptech has been growing steadily around the world as more capital has flowed into startups in the space and, as Flow’s recent step into the Australian market shows, it can solve global problems. Consumers will find their ideal properties on social media Because of the way proptech is going mainstream, it will become a more obvious tool for consumers looking to buy, sell or rent properties. Discovering properties that match your exact needs via social media – not traditional online property platforms – is going to become commonplace. That’s...

17Dec

By Gil SperlingNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News

There are lessons in the US iBuyer Bubble Burst for the South African property market

By Gil Sperling, Co-CEO & Co-Founder: Flow The US housing market suffered a seismic shock last week when leading property listings portal Zillow exited its iBuying business after a $1 billion loss over the course of three years – and there are lessons in the move for the South African market. iBuying has been a growing trend over the course of the last three years, with companies like Zillow harnessing their knowledge of hundreds of millions of American homes and the areas in which they were situated and leveraging that data to make house flipping profitable at scale. iBuyers move quickly and offer home owners premium pricing, based on their predictions for the supply and state of the area – a real win for the owners in a globally-depressed economic climate. It turns out that Zillow...

7Dec

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Real Estate, South Africa News, Startups

South African Proptech Flow Expands Reach Into Australia

API platform connecting real estate agents and social media users leverages significant growth on the continent to target global property market Flow, a proptech startup that enables real estate agents and developers to seamlessly advertise properties on social media, has announced that following consolidated growth in South Africa the company is launching in Australia. Flow’s move comes at a time when African proptechs are building scalable solutions with application beyond the continent more frequently than ever before, with strong reception from global markets seeing the viability of home-grown African businesses. Boasting 90,000 agents and a housing market value of $9 trillion, Australia offers a latent opportunity for Flow to change the way that people find places to live and wo...