According to a report on the local agent-facing publication Property Professional, the move is designed to "solidify the Group’s expressed intention that the platform should be an open marketplace that creates opportunities for all industry stakeholders, thereby ensuring that all real estate professionals can continue to transact with more than one major portal in South Africa."

BetterHome Group CEO Rudi Botha praised the portal's management in comments accompanying the news.

“The Private Property management team has made a number of constructive changes to set the business up for greater success in the future. Aside from increasing operational efficiency and investing in employee development, is has also brought in industry experts with specialist skills to move the business forward. Private Property has always been a long-term investment for our Group and we are entirely committed to seeing the platform grow over time to ultimately  compete successfully to ensure the sustainability of all stakeholders in the property market,”

BetterHome is a Johannesburg-based financial services company while Private Property is the number two portal player in South Africa behind Prosus-owned Property24.

BetterHome may have been able to extend its shareholding in Private Property following an unprecedented recent ruling from South Africa's competition commission. After an extensive investigation, the authority concluded that the two leading portals were impeding competition in the market and decreed that major agency groups must divest from Private Property.

In a judgement that could shake up the hegemony of the two dominant portals, the regulatory authority's Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry Report found that:

• Property24 and Private Property impede competition in South Africa's online property classifieds sector.
• Private Property's unique partnership with large national estate agencies via its relationship with industry associations (Rebosa) has allowed it to secure the majority of listings, creating barriers for other platforms.
• The nature of property classifieds syndication software favours the two market leaders and hinders other platforms from securing listings.
• Property24 and Private Property's pricing strategies and multi-year contracts limit opportunities for competing platforms.
• Extensive price discrimination based on listing volume discriminates against smaller agents and dealers, further impeding competition.

The South African real estate classifieds industry has long been dominated by two competing portals.

Property24 is the market leader in terms of traffic and is owned by the country's media giant, Naspers (which is also a major shareholder in several European portals via Prosus).

Private Property counts the likes of local media group Caxton & CTP, the financial services firm BetterHome Group, home loans company ooba and the investment company Fledge Capital among its shareholders as well as a number of national agency groups.

The competition authority's report alleges that one reason for the lack of any serious competition in the market is the situation around how portals ingest listings from CRMs in the South African market.

The two major portals are providers of syndication software used by many estate agencies and charge a monthly fee (said to be R500) to ingest listings from external software. Most smaller suppliers of listings syndication software do send listings to smaller portals but the largest independent supplier of this type of software, PropData does not.

Taking this into account the Competition Commission imposed several new conditions on the two property portals as well as on PropData:

• Property24, Private Property, and PropData must provide interoperability at no fee for estate agents to feed listings to other platforms.
• Property24 and Private Property must cease charging for incoming listings and end multi-year contracts with large agencies.
• Rebosa has been instructed to cease supporting Private Property as the preferred platform for the industry.
• An application will be made to the Competition Tribunal for national agencies to divest their shareholding in Private Property.
• To address listing and promotion fee discrimination, property platforms must substantially reduce prices for smaller agents and dealers to a level closer to that of larger partners.
• Property24 must introduce a Small Independent Business Package (SIBP) priced at an average per lead or listing level within 15% of the average of all other business users, reducing to 10% later.
• Property24 must introduce a free historically disadvantaged persons (HDP) program, providing personalized training, site design and support, branded listings, five value-added services per month, and access to market intelligence reports.
• New HDP agents must receive a 12-month free standard listing subscription.

The report was blunt and damning in its indictment of the practices of the leading portals with particularly fierce wording reserved for the pricing tactics of Property24:

"The inquiry find that the exorbitant fee increases by Property24 influence the decisions of the the business users and their willingness to pay for the services of smaller platforms. Exorbitant price increases have forced estate agents to prioritize their marketing budget by spending more on established platforms such as Property24 (while receiving the same level of service) at the expense of smaller platforms."

When contacted, Property24 boss JP Farinha said that the company noted the publication of the report and is still considering the findings. Private Property has so far not responded to our request for comment.

The ruling is considered a landmark case and is without parallel in the world when it comes to the conditions imposed on leading real estate portals. Its consequences in the South African real estate market might open the door for smaller companies such as Entegral, a company that offers listings syndication software as well as running one of the smaller portals mentioned in the report (MyProperty).

Adriaan Grové, the CEO of Entegral told Online Marketplaces:

"The ruling is historical for the online real estate space in South Africa as it will empower independent proptech companies like Entegral and others to access all property listing feeds within the next 12 months. This is not only important from a portal perspective but also to build 3rd party apps that rely on listing data. Access to listing data has held our portal and 3rd party portals we work with (via our listing syndication services) back (as also pointed out by the Competition Commission).

I think we could have seen more innovative products launched over the years in a more competitive open data environment, so it is now time to catch up."

Any marketplace site that makes its money by selling premium slots and greater visibility on its results pages will eventually run out of space for those listings. A whole page of 'premium' listings just looks odd, right?

So what's the solution here? How do real estate portals that run business models where agents pay progressively more for packages with higher degrees of visibility rise above their visibility ceilings?

One solution is to partner with Flow, a South African company that specialises in amplifying the reach of property listings off-site. We spoke to the company's Co-CEO and Co-Founder Gil Sperling about how portals can gain a bit of extra real estate for their listings.

Sperling began by highlighting the challenges faced by subscription-based portals in their quest for revenue growth.

"Subscription-based portals every year are trying to innovate and grow in certain directions to increase their revenue." Traditionally, portals have two options: increase pricing or introduce additional valuable products. However, these options may have limitations. Sperling noted, "You either increase your pricing which everyone hates or start offering some really valuable added products... but the problem is that you start cluttering the UX."

Flow's solution lies in offering a value-added product that seamlessly integrates with existing subscriptions. Sperling described it as an "off-site featured listing." He explained, “What Flow offers is a value-adding product that gets bundled into existing portal/marketplace subscriptions. This is a true revenue generator that allows portals to provide additional value without cluttering the user experience.”

By retargeting users who have already visited the portal, Flow enables portals to reach potential higher-intent customers on various online platforms. Sperling highlighted the immense potential of this approach, saying, "A great portal has an average user visiting the portal for one hour a month. That same user generally spends two to three hours a day on social media. So you can retarget your same audience on social media and therefore have an unlimited inventory."

While some agents may already be using social media ads, Sperling emphasised that Flow's service provides superior results. He explained, "The real key, and where we really see a return on investment and success is when you've got your own audience data to retarget." By leveraging a portal's proprietary data, Flow enables agents to target specific demographics and interests more effectively than they could on their own. This targeted approach ensures better outcomes for agents and a higher return on investment.

Sceptical real estate portals often wonder about the differentiation and branding opportunities Flow offers. Sperling addressed these concerns by stating, "We provide the back-end and the plumbing to enable this for a portal to completely white label and own the product, to configure it how they want."

This means that portals can fully customise the product to align with their unique brand identity. Unlike other service providers that operate at the brokerage level, Flow ensures that portals have complete control and ownership of the product.

Flow's commitment to innovation sets it apart from competitors. Sperling highlighted the company's focus on creative ability, particularly in incorporating video into their ad campaigns. He stated, "Our creative abilities are more advanced, and this is really where you get the performance on social platforms… It's quite proprietary." This emphasis on cutting-edge creativity enables Flow to deliver world-class campaigns and outstanding results to portals and their agents.

In terms of implementation, Flow aims to make the process as seamless as possible for portals. Sperling assured, "We put a lot of focus on ensuring that the onboarding and the integration is as slick as possible." By handling the integration of feeds and offering user-friendly interfaces, Flow simplifies the process for portals, ensuring a smooth transition.

Any portal wanting to integrate its services will have to pay a licencing fee but Flow mainly operates on a revenue share basis. Sperling says that his company is generally pretty flexible when it comes to how it gets paid: "We take a much smaller revenue share and enable portals to have the upside of the revenue that they unlock, but the base license fee can be broken up into different features that you use too. So there's some flexibility."

"We ensure that the portal ultimately has the benefit of the upside because it's their brand equity, position and power in the market that enables the additional revenue stream… I think other providers are quite aggressive when it comes to the revenue and we're less so."

Flow's off-site ad solutions empower real estate portals to grow revenue, deliver superior results to their agents, and expand their reach across various ad networks. By leveraging social media platforms and providing seamless integration and customization options, Flow enables portals to unlock new opportunities for success. To find out more visit their website or connect with Gil on Linkedin.

Laghmari joins after spending seven years as the founder and CEO at Umbrella Capital Trading, a business development company also based in Morocco.

Laghmari said:

"I am eager to work with such a dedicated and talented team to evolve the brand and reach new heights. I look forward to the challenges and opportunities this role will offer, and I’m ready to contribute to the continued success of Avito."

Avito.ma is 100%-owned by FDV and is the Group's biggest contributor to revenue across the MENA region across horizontals including real estate. However, revenues fell 4% YoY (to USD $1.1M) in Q1 2023.

As of 30th June 2023, Online Marketplaces has published 29 stories about investments of six figures or more in portals and adjacent proptech businesses worldwide this year—11% of our total output, almost equal to the 34 we covered in the whole of 2022.

But where is the money going? Who's getting the lion's share—and why should you care?

Over half a billion dollars invested in 2023 so far—a positive trend

The big picture is that we've covered financial investment worth at least $606M worldwide in the first six months of the year. However, 2023 is on track to fall slightly behind our 2022 estimate of $1.42Bn—which doesn't include undisclosed funding rounds.

The US and LATAM regions lead the way by some distance, with each of the six biggest deals occurring in North and South America respectively.

Seed funding is the most common form of investment

Seed rounds (including pre-seed) were the most common type of investment in the real estate industry in the first six months of the year, constituting over $24M of investment.

Understandably, (pre) seed recipients trend towards younger businesses that launched between 2015-2021.

The award for the largest seed round is shared by US marketplace Propertymate (now Newhomesmate) and LATAM brokerage Pulppo, both of whom raised $5M. Meanwhile, El Salvadorean marketplace Propi raised $2.5M of pre-seed investment.

Investments H1 2023, Series A-E

The biggest investment, Colombian iBuyer La Haus' $62m Series C round, actually went through in 2022 but wasn't announced until this year.

Indian marketplace operator NoBroker, founded in 2014, was the only Series E fundraiser at $5M.

Do big investments indicate the rise of the iBuyer?

iBuyers and marketplaces took the lion's share of investments:

But the sums involved are skewed strongly in favour of iBuyers:

It's difficult to judge the relative strengths and weaknesses of iBuying considering the sheer weight of conflicting information surrounding the sector. On the one hand, investors are putting money where their mouths are to make some significant moves, particularly in Latin America and the United States.

But bad news is never far away.

In the US, Offerpad raised $90M of private placements in February—but recorded net losses of $80M in Q3 2022.

Meanwhile, Europe's big-name player Casavo raised $400M in Series D funding in the summer of 2022—only to lay off 30% of jobs and exit an international market within a year of the investment round.

The most notable recipient of funding is Colombian iBuyer Habi, which has gobbled up over $150M of investment this year alone.

And Keyzy ($3.8M in seed funding) is the most recent British iBuyer to get significant financial backing.

Crowdfunding is dominated by European marketplaces

Interestingly, all the crowdfunding we've covered has taken place in Europe, with over $2.8M crowdfunded across four startups, three of which are traditional marketplaces.

Buscoresi (Spain) raised $370,000, while Tutti and Student Rents (both UK) crowdfunded $380,000 and $500,000 respectively.

Meanwhile, Spanish real estate investment proptech Masteos raised $1.6M in crowdfunding in March and then followed it up with a Series A round worth $13M shortly after. One to watch.

Who has floated on the stock market this year?

One business has gone public so far this year, or two if you're feeling generous.

Ohmyhome, the tech-enabled brokerage based out of Singapore, raised $14.8M when it floated on the NASDAQ in March. Shares debuted at $4 per share and have steadied at $3.90 since flotation.

The other flotation story of the year is that of REAL Messenger, a specialist listings app-cum-social media platform in the US, which announced its intention to go public within 12 months of its 2022 launch.

REAL aims to go public in a deal worth $150M via Singapore-based special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Nova Vision Acquisition Corp by the end of the summer.

Other highlights from around the world

Malaysia-based Frontier Digital Ventures raised $13M specifically to acquire LATAM portals InfoCasas and Encunetra24.

And the sole recipient of funding in Africa (that we have heard about) was a $4.5M Pre-Series A round for Flow Living—the biggest fundraise in African proptech history.

Named Casa Mozambique, the new portal is aiming to become the market leader in a country where economic recovery is beginning to gain momentum, with a growth rate of 4.1% in 2022. Mozambique had an internet penetration rate of 23% last year and in a press release, Tech Africa expressed high hopes for the market.

Casa Mozambique will be competing with the likes of South African-owned Property24 and Portuguese-owned Casa Sapo.

Founded in 2015, Tech Africa is the venture-backed owner and operator of leading Angolan real estate vertical AngoCasa as well as the AngoCarro autos vertical and several other classifieds sites in the country.

Having acquired its main competitor, Jumia Angola in 2017, the company had been looking for new opportunities with the fellow Portuguese-speaking nation of Mozambique presenting a logical target.

The new-look startup has raised EG 150B ($4.9m) from an undisclosed source and will feature 30,000 residential, commercial and administrative units from more than 100 of Egypt's largest developers in a bid to bring more visibility to Egypt's available real estate to a wider audience across Africa and worldwide.

No launch date has been given, with the URL "estatewaves.com/comingsoon" the only indicator that Meta Egpyt is set to launch.

Coldwell Banker Egypt is a real estate consultant spanning residential, commercial, rental and resale properties, while Estate Waves is an Ontario-based all-in-one 3D marketplace for off-plan and completed projects.

The Egyptian market is receiving a lot of interest at the moment, with real estate vertical operator Property Finder announcing it will invest more in Egypt this year.

The African market in its entirety is also attracting more attention. Online Marketplaces recently spoke to VENCO founder Chude Osiegbu, Akintola Adesanmi from SPLEET, and Kelvin Nyame from MeQasa, while South Africa's Flow Living raised the biggest investment round in African proptech history in January.

Yet the country faces serious supply issues and is fighting against a catastrophic financial crisis that is leaving families without access to cash and even energy.

Chude Osiegbu founded VENCO in 2022 with the mission to create an all-in-one solution to manage multi-unit residential and commercial communities.

We caught up with him to ask about where the idea for VENCO originated, how he monetized his business, and how he plans to stay ahead of the curve in the coming months and years.

Can you start by summarizing the real estate industry in Nigeria?

The real estate industry in Nigeria is a significant contributor to the country’s economy, with rapid growth and development in recent years.

The industry is characterized by a significant supply-demand imbalance, with a huge housing deficit estimated at over 20 million units, with challenges including inadequate infrastructure, lack of access to financing and regulatory hurdles. The government has initiated policies to address some of these issues such as the National Housing Fund, which provides affordable mortgages to Nigerians.

Overall, the Nigerian real estate industry presents a significant opportunity for proptech innovation and investment, particularly in areas such as property management, property search and financing.

Where did the idea for VENCO come from?

The idea of VENCO started in 2018 in Port Harcourt, when the chairman of the estate I lived in at that time requested my technological expertise to help with managing the estate.

The initial plan was not to commercialise the solution. However, after moving to Lagos and experiencing and hearing about similar challenges on estates across the city, I thought the solution could be useful for solving a real problem in Africa.

What problem does VENCO solve?

Of the 2.5 million households in Nigeria that earn more than $1,000 per month, 80% live in multi-property communities.

25% of their income is spent on rent, and 50% is spent on other household needs like food and drink, utilities, internet data, cable TV and more.

However, the process of managing various aspects of life in residential and commercial communities is mainly manual and paper-based, resulting in inefficiencies that negatively impact residents’ experience and profitability for property owners.

VENCO leverages technology to deliver new services and experiences that will transform how people live in Africa’s growing cities, creating better value for everyone across the board and enhancing the living experience across the continent.

This market for household spending represents a $22.5 billion opportunity in Nigeria and $100 billion across Africa.

What is VENCO’s USP?

Convenience and speed of service have always earmarked our services to our clients and residents.

Our all-in-one technology platform helps property owners, property managers, and residents to run their communities sustainably and with minimal stress. Our solutions simplify everyday processes from managing collection, reconciling payment, visitor access to issues management, utility vending, and other estate management processes associated with multi-unit property developments across Africa.

Residents can now build an economic profile based on their financial transactions on the VENCO platform. They can now access a range of embedded financial services including insurance, credit facilitation for rent, service charges, household spending and more.

How does VENCO generate revenue?

In 2022, we processed more than $13 million in transactions value via our platform.

We make money via the subscription fees we charge for deploying our software solution. We also earn income on the sale and financing of prepaid utility meters for our customers.

In the near future, we aim to add other revenue streams by launching a third-party marketplace that will see us earning commissions on transactions that we facilitate between residents and service providers.

Tell us about your “buy now, pay later” solution to the currency crisis*.

*When the Nigerian government recently replaced its former currency with a new one, a lack of new notes meant Nigeria's cash-dependent economy reached crisis point, which led to street protests.

VENCO recently introduced a “buy now, pay later” solution for residents to buy energy packages.

The introduction of energy tokens was inspired by the network downtime currently being experienced with bank transfers in Nigeria.

The emergency token provides a resident with a limited amount of energy—no more than 100KW—just enough to see them through a short period until they can pay for the energy. There is a cap on the number of times the emergency token can be used in 30 days, so this is a limited product.

What is the most common request from clients?

Most customers are interested in the collections features on the VENCO platform, which lets them automate the collection of service charges and other estate obligations, as well as prepaid payment for utilities.

However, we are seeing increasing demand to use our platform for rent collection—opening up opportunities for us to deliver rent financing solutions through our platform.

What is something our readers may not know about the Nigerian real estate industry that they would find interesting?

Multi-unit, residential and commercial communities.

One of the things that aren’t immediately apparent is how large an internal economy they house and how large a market there is in helping these communities take advantage of their collective purchasing power.

Platforms that serve these communities can create value by aggregating demand for the products and services consumed within these communities, while also leveraging data accumulated on the platform to provide more cutting-edge services to all stakeholders.

What isn't the real estate industry talking about that it should be talking about?

Sustainable development.

There is a need for more environmentally friendly and sustainable construction practices in the Nigerian real estate industry. Topics such as green building certifications, energy-efficient building technologies, usage of sustainable materials and construction practices that result in an overall reduced cost in operating buildings and communities should be more widely discussed.

How do you see the market evolving, and what will VENCO do to stay ahead of the curve?

I believe that we will see increasing digital transformation along the complete real-estate value chain as more businesses adopt proptech solutions.

VENCO plans to build our platform into a full vertical operating system that addresses all the needs of operators, owners, and residents in our customer communities. Embedded finance solutions for households and operators of these communities, delivered on the VENCO platform, is a key area of interest.

There is one PropTech company out there that recently raised $2.6m to help home hunters over these obstacles. Spleet started life as a pure marketplace but recently has been adding finance solutions to its offering.

We caught up with CEO and co-founder Akintola Adesanmi to find out more about Spleet's opportunity in the Nigerian market...

Akintola Adesanmi, CEO & co-founder of Spleet

What is the problem that Spleet solves?

Any typical Nigerian is well aware of the struggles of renting a home either from the perspective of a tenant or a landlord. From the tenant's perspective, you have the struggle of having to pay 1-2 years of rent upfront and on the landlord's side, you have the issue of being unable to adequately and properly verify prospective tenants and collect rent with ease. 

What is Spleet’s USP?

Spleet equips both landlords and tenants with the tools that they need to make the renting process an easier and more comfortable experience. We are fractionalizing rent into monthly payments for tenants.

How does Spleet generate its revenue?

Spleet currently generates revenue from 3 channels, our marketplace, our Rent Collect product and our Spleet Verify product.

We've already housed over 1,000 tenants, processed over $3.5 million in rental payments and have over 35 corporate and individual landlords on the books.

Spleet's Products

Has Spleet always had the embedded finance solution for tenants or is it something you built on top of the marketplace?

Our pilot product was our marketplace but as we researched, observed and listened to the market we realized that the need for a financing solution is essential to solve the problem within the renting system in Nigeria. We ran a private beta of what we call “rent now, pay later”, an embedded finance solution that enables tenants to pay their rent upfront which in turn enables the tenant to pay monthly.

How did Covid-19 change the landscape for Spleet?

Covid-19 actually played a very important role in our journey as it revealed just how severely flawed the renting process is in Nigeria. It also increased the demand for a comfortable and easier means of renting a home, which improved the value of our solution and gave us an avenue to further research the rental market in Nigeria.

What is one thing our readers might not know about but would probably find interesting about the rental market in Nigeria?

The Problem. Paying rent 1-2 years in advance is a pain point for almost every Nigerian. Also, with that upfront cost, comes agency and legal fees of up to 25% of the annual rent cost. 

What is Spleet’s biggest challenge?

Being at the forefront of the protech industry in Nigeria means trying to solve very vast and important problems with little or no data which results in more time and resources being allocated to research. This is why it thrills us to see more people enter the proptech space in Nigeria and contribute to data collection and research within the industry.

What is Spleet currently working on?

We are currently working on perfecting our rent financing product (Rent now, pay later)  as well as expansion strategies into markets outside Nigeria with similar problems.

What is the most common request from clients?

The most common request from clients is without a doubt rental loans, which they can pay back in monthly instalments. This is because the 1-2 year deposits required to rent a home in Nigeria are financially taxing for most Nigerians.

How do you see the market evolving and what will you be doing to be ahead of the curve?

From our analysis of the global trends and the Nigerian real estate market, we can confidently say that the rise of proptech in Nigeria has begun. This boom has incentivized other players to enter the protech space and solve unique problems within the industry. We at Spleet are very excited about the growth and expansion of proptech in Africa, and look forward to partnering with other players to solve problems in Africa.

The leading real estate marketplace in Kenya was part of the One Africa Media Group of online classifieds titles before the merger with Swiss-headquartered marketplace operator Ringier in 2017.

Since then the portal has been part of a group which includes leading Senegalese property vertical MaMaison, the generalist platforms Pigiame (Kenya), Expat Dakar (Senegal) and Qefira (Ethiopia) as well as several leading employment portals across the continent.

Lizzie Costabir has been working for BuyRentKenya for nearly nine years having been promoted to CEO from the marketing department in 2017. Who better to tell us about the challenges and opportunities associated with the business of running a real estate vertical in Kenya..?

Focus on business intelligence since Ringier's arrival

Like most players in Africa, BuyRentKenya operates a pay-to-list model for estate agents, developers and private individuals. The company also sees a lot of value in adjacent revenue streams and, like most leading portals around the world, is engaged in generating mortgage leads for third-party financial institutions.

BuyRentKenya clearly wants to do more than generate leads though. Costabir says that since Ringier took came in, there has been an emphasis on business intelligence and the portal has doubled down on technology including a back end for agents that helps them manage their properties and listings.

Kenya is an attractive market with Property Centre, PropertyPro and Property24 as well as horizontals like Jiji all present but Lizzie is proud that her team is the only one of the vertical players whose team is locally based in Kenya and the only one with dedicated account management services.

"We're quite proud when it comes to thought leadership and stakeholder partnerships in the market in the industry."

Kenya an attractive African market

Ringier obviously sees the value in continuing to invest in the Kenyan online classifieds market and recently bought out co-shareholder SEEK Ltd from ROAM. The attraction to her home market for any overseas-based investor is clear for Costabir.

"Kenya is one of the more stable economies in the region. Its currency has only devalued by around 20% over the covid period which is much better than most of the big African economies. So it's really seen as one of the best opportunities for success in the region."

Along with a mature banking sector, hospitality plays a big part in keeping the economy flowing and tourists are starting to come back to Kenya after the worst of the pandemic which Costabir says is having a positive trickle-down effect on the housing market with the sense of opportunity palpable.

"The ceiling for innovation is just infinite at this point."

However, unlike in Nigeria, where PropertyPro CEO, Fikayo Ogundipe told us that there are companies exploring the idea, Kenya is not ready for tricky models and ideas like iBuying according to Costabir:

"There is the rise of FinTech. There is the rise of e-commerce. But we're not there yet."

Challenges around trust and educating users persist

In terms of the challenges of operating a real estate vertical business in Kenya, Costabir says that they are the same as her counterparts in other developing markets: a lack of trust and transparency as well as fraud and cons on social media channels which are still all too common.

There is also the issue of user sophistication and confusion about the role of a real estate marketplace:

"There's also limited understanding when it comes to an online property marketplace. There's confusion between a marketplace and a real estate agent. You'll get people ringing you up and thinking you are an agent."

The issue of educating users and customers alike to the benefit of online real estate is improving though. Like in Nigeria and Ghana, Costabir says that the pandemic was a catalyst to raising the level of digitization for real estate brokers and that this trend is expected to fuel the growth of the core listings business over the next few years as more are persuaded to do business online.

It was also a catalyst for BuyRentKenya to start offering more solutions such as virtual tours and market intelligence and price estimation. Costabir says that business intelligence and consumer education are key for anyone running a marketplace business in the market as well as educating the market, something the portals are increasingly doing...

"...by filling gaps of information and providing accurate and up-to-date transparency when it comes to property information. That's what BuyRentKenya's trying to do, democratize these structures."