Behind the scenes at Private Property

At the Sett, we are situated next door to Private Property's head office, so we have gotten to know the team very well. Our friends pop in for morning coffees and quick chats and feel like part of our family.

We chatted to them about what makes the company so cool and found out how we could win a huge prize in their most recent competition...

We like to think we’re SA’s first choice of portal for everyone who’s looking for the home that tugs at their heart-strings – because we do things differently.

Our most recent industry-first is the release of a “responsive” version of our website.

Simon, our Chief Operations Officer, says:  “We deliver the best property browsing experience in South Africa. Never before has a property website been optimised like this for mobile devices. Now, when a browser navigates to www.privateproperty.co.za, the website recognises the device’s type and screen size, and responds by giving the best possible version of the site for that device – whether it is mobile or not. This multi-award-winning responsive site is definitely the future of property searching.”

This achievement is just one of many industry firsts, of which we are very proud. But we started from humble beginnings 14 years ago in Justin Clarke’s garage in Durban North, with just three staff. We now have more than 100 employees nationwide and host millions of property shoppers monthly.

We’ve grown to become SA’s favourite property portal! We’re also part of Africa’s largest online classifieds network, One Africa Media.

Our business is driven by our people. And by that, we mean our motivated and lively sales and support peeps, our top-notch software team that makes us the technology leader, and our marketing pros.

 We’re constantly working on ways to appeal to more advertisers. The more listings we have, the more options you have!

So, we’ve invested heavily in TV with a twist: instead of traditional advertising, we’ve partnered with SABC3’s premium lifestyle show Top Billing, to bring more than five million viewers every week the most exciting property news and massive, relevant competitions.

Last year, we presented a R5-million lifestyle prize including a R3.5-million dream home, the largest prize ever to be given away in Africa, to an ecstatic winner.

This campaign was such a success that we’re doing something even bigger and more exciting this year – starting with an opportunity to win a ridiculously BIG TV worth R70 000. Enter here!

We continuously engage with South Africa. Our social media manager chats with more than 33 000 Facebook fans every day, and we talk to around 150 000 newsletter subscribers every week. Are you one of these?