One in every two sales from internet marketing.

Report by Andre de Villiers - Chas Everit franchisee for Cape Town's False Bay, Constantiaberg and Southern Suburbs territories and National Brand Manager.

It has been five years since I last did a thorough analyses of where the buyers came from for sales from my four Cape Town offices, that cover the area from Cape Point to Mowbray.

The exhaustive analyses completed is for the twelve months ending June 2008. It significantly shows that the growth in internet responses now dominates results.

For the period 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008 the results are;

49% INTERNET / WEBSITES
8% LOCAL PRINT MEDIA
7% FOR SALE SIGNS
26% SHOWHOUSES
9% OTHER (Mostly office walk ins)

(A previously recognised category “Referrals” that accounted for 7% of all buyers has been excluded from analyses and the source of the referral identified and included in the above 5 categories)

Compared to five years ago the figures were;

17% INTERNET / WEBSITES
28% LOCAL PRINT MEDIA
8% FOR SALE SIGNS
29% SHOWHOUSES
11% OTHER (Mostly office walk ins)
7% REFERRALS

The actual investment in print media has actually not changed much as a % of my marketing expenses and I believe this to be true for most other real estate businesses. At a time that the market demands a more prudent allocation of resources and lowering of operational costs it can be argued that the continued significant expenditure on print media is to appeal to seller's expectations and for purposes of branding the company and agent.